Ain't Your Bitch (Interracial Urban Erotica)(155)

She settled herself into the restaurant. She thought about sitting up at  the bar, but it would have sent the wrong message. She wanted to take  up as little space as possible, not get picked up one last time for the  night. That thing with Roy had been a mistake. She pulled out her phone  and scrolled down to his entry in her contacts list.

Her thumb hovered over it for a minute, hesitating for a moment. Then  she long-pressed on it and hit 'delete.' A message asked her if she was  sure, and she said she was. She would love to see him again. He was a  great guy and she'd had a great time. But that wasn't the same thing as  being a real relationship and it sure enough wasn't enough for her to  keep a number in her phone in the hope that one of them moved across the  country to have a repeat performance.





Six



Who the hell was awake at this hour?

Jamelia looked up at the corner of her phone screen to check the time  before she answered the call. It was earlier than she thought. Only  midnight. She was awake at this hour, when she wasn't on vacation. The  number wasn't one she recognized, but there were precious few that she  would. Dad's ringer said "Dad," but he wasn't going to call.

Becca's said her name as well, but it obviously wasn't either of them.  And it wasn't Roy because it was a 213 number, and that meant L.A.

Finally she picked up the phone on the fourth ring.

"Jamelia Brown speaking."

"Jamelia, I know we told you that you need a vacation."

The captain, then. Okay.

"And I'm taking one, just like you said. I might not have wanted to, but I can take orders, at least. Sir."

"That's not why I'm calling Jamelia. There's been …  something happened. You should come in as soon as you get the chance."

"I'll be in town tomorrow morning."

"You're serious. Jamelia, where did you go for your vacation, your neighbor's house?"

"I'll see you in the morning, Captain."

"Jamelia, I just want to say, before you have to get into all this shit …  I'm sorry."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You'll know what I mean when it's important. Now get to sleep, if  you're really going to be back by morning you need it. You need to sleep  more."

Jamelia was wide awake now. Four hours was plenty, and she still had to  get to the airport. Three hours was enough time to get a cup of coffee,  take a ride through town and maybe get breakfast before they went up.  Plenty of time to wonder what the hell the Captain was sorry about.

No, not wonder. She was worried. That old son of a gun wasn't the kind  of person to be sorry for calling her in early. They understood each  other, and he understood that getting called in would probably be a  godsend for her. Work was all Jamelia had, outside of Becca, and even  then they hadn't spoken in a few years.

Not since Becca had gone to live with their father, and that was just how it would have to be.

Well, maybe things would be fine. Maybe she was overthinking it. But she  didn't think so. She didn't think so one damn bit. Whatever had Captain  Blunt calling at midnight to tell her to get her ass back in town at  first convenience, it was something big. If he was apologizing, then she  was right to worry.

Had something happened to her father? That was a best-case scenario, but  her relationship with dear old dad wasn't something that she wore on  her sleeve. So Captain would have been worried about how she'd take it.  He would probably worry more when she took it about as well as being  told that they'd had to buy a different brand of coffee this week.

Most people who reacted that way, they reacted that way because they  were so upset that they weren't registering what had happened. Shock,  they called it. Jamelia had seen people in shock, and it was disturbing  to say the least. People get hurt, then they think that they're immortal  because they're so high on an absurd cocktail of chemicals that they  don't realize what the hell they're doing.         

     



 

She pushed herself out of bed and dressed. She tried to take it slowly  but she was out the door in ten minutes anyways. She'd packed the night  before, and now it was just a matter of getting her suit on, shoes on,  tied, and out.

She checked out and fit herself into the comfortably small seat of the  compact rental she'd gotten. It was just as nice as she remembered it  being. It still ran better, quieter, and cheaper than the Jeep, but it  still didn't have the character. In other words, just the way she'd left  it.

The way down the mountain wasn't as bad as they made it sound. Sure, a  couple of corners made her a little nervous, but they'd made her nervous  on the way up the mountain too, and that was when they were still  relying on artificial snow because the first snowfall hadn't hit yet for  the year.

Now there were high berms of snow on the low side of the road and it  created a strange claustrophobia as every curve became blind, and she  had no way of knowing whether or not there was a car about to come  blazing around the next corner until she made the turn.

Okay, maybe that wasn't super safe for ambulance drivers, after all.  They made risky choices when they thought they could afford it. For  speed. Passing folks, stuff like that, and with all these blind corners  that turned into a logistical and safety nightmare.

Still, for someone taking it slow, it didn't present a problem. Not even  at one in the morning. She hit the city by two, and was sitting down in  a twenty-four hour nationwide diner chain that claimed their eggs  couldn't be beaten. How someone could make that claim, she would never  know, because as far as Ashanti was aware everyone could at least  sort-of cook eggs, and they mostly tasted about the same.

She got waffles instead, and asked for extra butter, because she didn't  have the type of body that tended to need to worry about her arteries,  and with the way that she often lost herself in her work she wasn't  about to get that kind of body, either.

The waitress walked away still writing on her order pad and came back a  few seconds later with Jamelia's water. She took a deep drink. She'd  never been to Wyoming, but she could see the charm. The mountain was  beautiful, and the view of the town down below was a sight to behold,  when she could see it after the rain cleared.

This had all the makings of a great trip. She met a guy who happened to  live on the wrong coast, but a guy nonetheless. More than she could say  for the past ten years in L.A. The skiing, for the amount she'd been  able to do, had been great. The views-gorgeous.

Then it turned out that she couldn't bear to be away from work for more  than three fucking days and back on the plane she was already going. The  fact that the captain had called her specifically to tell her to get  her ass back into town, well that was just icing on the cake, after all.  She was going to be there anyways, now she just had more motivation.

Jamelia put her earphones in and turned her music back on. The interplay  of the instruments was why she listened to jazz. Kept her mind moving.  Now more than ever, she just needed to keep moving, long enough to get  back into town and find out what the hell the Captain had been so  worried about.

Maybe he'd let her work on something again. Not necessarily likely, she  knew. There was a reason she'd been told to take a vacation, and whether  she agreed with it or not, she doubted that Captain Blunt would change  his mind just because she'd gotten a little bored out there.

But that didn't mean that a girl didn't have the right to dream, and vacations didn't stop bad guys.





Seven



Jamelia felt strangely numb. She hadn't realized that she could feel  this way, but it was how she felt and it wasn't going to go away no  matter what she did. So she might as well get used to the idea that she  was going to be numb for a while. Shock might have been the right word.

It wasn't her first time seeing a body. She saw them all the time, and  most of the time they looked much worse than this. With her eyes taped  shut, Becca looked as if she was sleeping lying there on that slab.

Jamelia turned to ask the Captain what had happened, what the scene  looked like, but he had left. A minute to grieve by herself. She leaned  on her arms, her hands bearing the weight of a body that didn't know  exactly how to hold itself up any more.

"What were you doing in California?" Jamelia could feel the anger  building inside her, the anger that would prop her up. It would be the  thing that kept her moving in the days to come. Anger at herself. At her  sister. But most of all, anger at the son of a bitch who had done this.

Rebecca wasn't going to answer her, but Jamelia gave her time  regardless. She had always been the good sister. The good daughter. It  was no trouble for her to drop everything for Dad. If it would help, of  course she would go. It was no trouble, after all.

It didn't matter that she would have to give up her silicon valley  internship, the one that she had been working for since practically the  day they had come out to California.

More upsetting, though, was seeing herself lying there on the slab.  Identical twins. Which also, Jamelia thought with a sour sarcasm, meant  that now her boss knew what her tits looked like. The thought hit a  darkly humorous funny bone, but her frustration and anger deadened it.  She took comfort in the fact that at least he was old enough to be her  grandfather, so hopefully he hadn't thought too much about it.