Prologue
Won't you look down upon me, Jesus?
You've got to help me make a stand
You've just got to see me through another day
My body's aching and my time is at hand
And I won't make it any other way
Oh, I've seen fire and I've seen rain
I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I'd see you again
"Fire and Rain", by James Taylor
Warner Tower, New York City, 1997
"Therefore, I am pleased to introduce to you, the new Vice-President of Corporate Finance for the Warner International Corporation, Blair Warner."
David Warner, CEO of The Warner International Corporation, one of the wealthiest and most powerful companies n the world, stepped away from the microphone, clapping as he watched his only child, Blair, fulfill what was, for David Warner, a life-long dream of seeing his heir ascend to the top ranks of the company his father had built. Blair had been groomed for this position-and eventually to be President, and then to succeed her father as CEO, since the day she was born.
As he stepped away, Blair moved toward him, David wrapping her in a hug, and kissing her cheek. He had not been the greatest father in the world, he knew that. He and his ex-wife, Monica, who was Blair's mother, had shuffled Blair off to one private school after another in her still-young life, both of them too busy to attend much to their daughter-David, because of his drive to attain wealth and power, and Monica, because she was too busy bedding every man she had her eye on.
Yet David has always played by the rules, and had run as ethical a business as he could, which was a departure from his father, who had not only been unscrupulous in his business practices, but had even been a member of the Ku Klux Klan. David had spent most of his adult life changing the very fabric of what was originally Warner Textiles, now the Warner International Corporation.
As Blair Warner stepped up to the microphone, dressed in an expensive (of course), gray pin-stripe pencil skirt and matching jacket, with a light blue polyester blouse, she exuded confidence and charm, something instilled in her, but something that she also came about naturally. He was proud of her, as she glanced around the gathering of employees and media, many who were also clapping and smiling at the new company Vice-President.
She turned to look at her father just before speaking again. She still had the broad, beautiful smile on her face, and seemingly beamed at her father.
But David Warner wasn't fooled.
Five years earlier, something had forever altered his daughter, and she had never quite been the same. The smile on her face hadn't reached her eyes in those five years. She had buried herself in the company, not letting anything else enter her life since that fateful day.
Blair Warner's face looked happy, but when her eyes caught her father's, they only said one thing to David Warner.
I wish I knew where Jo was, Daddy. I miss her.
Phoenix, Arizona, One Year Earlier
The brunette with green eyes huddled near the fire that she shared with a few others on the outskirts of Phoenix. She had become accustomed to such a fetid lifestyle over the past four years, a style that she had chosen of her own volition.
The green eyes had once sparkled with fire and drive, but were now faded and void of any hope. She had once been a strong, sinewy young woman-athletic, active, full of nervous energy. As she munched down on a sandwich that she had received at a local homeless shelter, one couldn't help but notice how bony her arms were, her eye sockets sallow and sad.
She was once a Valedictorian at her exclusive Prep School in New York State: a former gang leader from the concrete jungle of The Bronx, who had been shaped by a hardscrabble existence, before her incredible intelligence had given her a true chance to leave those streets.
Now? Now she just survived, sleeping under overpasses or in alleys, or, occasionally, if there was room, in one of the homeless shelters nearby. Survival meant relying on soup kitchens, and those same shelters for a little bit of food and water. It means using, and sometimes even trading drugs, and binging on alcohol to numb the pain in her mind and body that had descended on her a little more than four years earlier.
It meant wearing old clothes that were picked up occasionally at a homeless shelter, or maybe the Salvation Army, just enough to keep her thinning frame covered. She had never been into fashion, but her current life took her rejection of such things to a ridiculous degree.
Surviving meant moving from city to city every few months, because she didn't want to be found, not staying long enough to let anyone really get to know her, but long enough to add to her collection of phony driver's licenses, with different names on them.
Surviving meant drinking bad booze to forget her pain, and even taking drugs to escape her reality. She still had some of the money she had gained when closing her bank account in New York, but most of that had been stolen from her in the rough-hewn world she now existed in. She still had enough so that she could hope on a train or bus when it was time to move to another location. She had been in Phoenix now, for four months, and soon, it would be time to move on again.
Surviving had meant putting up with torturous heat, as in Phoenix, or out in sub-zero temperatures, or during snowstorms, like in Denver, simply trying to find a way to hold on, and not die because of the elements.
This was the life of the woman who used to go by the name of Joanna Maria "Jo" Polniaczek. A life that she had chosen when she fled a quite town along the Hudson River, north of New York City, just more than four years ago. She had fled because of who-and what-she was, and had always been. She had fled when she finally declared to her parents, and to the one person that she loved, to this day, more than any other on the face of the Earth, who she was and what she felt, and had been rejected out of hand by all three.
It had broken Jo Polniaczek: not just her heart, but everything that she once had been and had aspired for.
Later, as she had fallen into another night of wary, nightmare-filled sleep, the images she saw haunted her and would not let her go: of her parents, of the life she had lived, and, most vividly, of the woman she would always, desperately love. She always woke up in a cold sweat, tears running down her face, each tear representing it's own bitter regret.
