Worth Dying for (A Dying for a Living Novel Book 5)

by Kory M. Shrum

  The screen changes. The woman in the warm, dry studio is replaced by a man in a bright yellow wind jacket braced against the torrent tearing at his hair and face. He clutches the microphone against his chest while holding his hood in place with the other hand.

  “Cameron here on the highland coast. As you can see behind me, three orcas have washed ashore.”

  “How sad!” Maisie exclaims. She crushes Winston against her chest. Immediately, he starts rooting around in the folds of her sweater for dropped candies.

  “It’s the latest in reported beachings. Scientists suggest that ocean conditions and navigational errors are causing these animals to—”

  “Can we turn this off?” I ask.

  Ally flips the channel. “Maybe something educational?”

  “The NOAA reports a very active solar storm brewing on the Sun’s surface as we speak. Dr. Okasai is here with us to explain what a solar storm is and how it affects Earth.”

  “That’s correct, Mrs. Hatchet. One storm alone could irreparably damage our ecosystems or extinguish all life on Earth. Thankfully, we have a shield that protects us from this threat. The strong electromagnetic field surrounding the planet prevents radiation, solar winds, and other space debris from entering our atmosphere. Without the shield, life on Earth may not be possible. In recent years, we’ve seen changes in our shield and given its importance, you can understand why scientists are concerned about the possible consequences of these developments.”

  “Jesus Christ!” I throw myself back against the pillows. “This planet is falling apart. Why bother saving it?”

  Maisie gasps. “Because this is where Winnie Pug lives. And the orcas.”

  I give Ally a look. “If you don’t turn this off, I’m going to explode the TV.”

  “But I want to watch it,” Maisie begs, smushing Winston’s wrinkly face against hers. “I’m trying to learn stuff. This is the only education I’m going to get!”

  Nikki steps into the room with her hands on her hips and scowls down at me. Ally reaches out and places one hand on my leg while looking up at Nikki. It’s a small comfort. Sasquatch looks at the hand, then tugs on her ponytail, tightening it.

  “Jackson refuses to let us accompany you.”

  Ally doesn’t say anything. She knows the plan as well as I do, and Nikki and Jeremiah have no part in it. It’s us and Caldwell for this final rodeo. More people means interference. And what good are they anyway? When Caldwell showed up, they stood there waiting for a clean shot that never came and now Monroe is dead.

  You didn’t do anything either a little hateful voice says in my head. What did you do to save him?

  “You’re going to get in your trucks and drive away because you know better than to cross Gloria,” I say. It’s more of a wishful statement than any kind of command.

  “Then you’re going to follow us anyway,” Ally says still holding Nikki’s gaze.

  Nikki’s face softens, going all doe-eyed. She kneels down so that she can look Ally straight in the eye. “I won’t be far.”

  “Oh god. This isn’t a soap opera.” I push myself up off the couch. “Get off your knees, Lancelot.”

  I storm out of the room only to be stopped by Gloria on the landing before I can run up the stairs and lock myself away again. I’m itching to talk to Gabriel. I want his help to decipher Brinkley’s message. Remember he said.

  The problem is my memory isn’t so great. But Gabriel helped me with that once before. When I returned to my old house for my mother’s funeral, Gabriel made me remember everything I’d forgotten about my past. I’d remembered Ally. Some of the worst parts of Eddie’s abuse. My mother and little brother Daniel. It hadn’t been pleasant, but I’d remembered. And I want Gabriel to help me remember again.

  Gloria stops me on the first step.

  “I need to talk to you.” A rush of protests come to mind, but Gloria never asks me for anything. So the pure novelty of the request is enough to surprise me.

  “Now?”

  “Now.” She pushes open the screen door and holds it open.

  Damn. Asking for Gabriel’s help will have to wait.

  Before she closes the door behind us she turns to Ally. “We’ll be back in a little while. Stay near the house.”

  “Okay.” Ally looks as surprised by Gloria’s request as I am.

  “Bring me some chicken!” Maisie shouts. “And a biscuit!”

  I wait on the little stoop for Gloria to pull the door closed behind her and descend the steps. She heads down the garden path without looking back to see if I’m following her. I meet up with her as she passes through the wrought iron gate and steps out onto the Rue Dauphine.

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  “I want to take a walk,” she says, offering no more explanation.

  “O-kay,” I say, keeping up with her. This part of the French Quarter is relatively deserted. We hurry down the clean streets and vacant balconies. I keep waiting for her to give me a clue what this is about, but she just keeps hurrying along.

  At the next intersection, she hooks right onto Toulouse, marching past the green shutters of a hotel, toward two large flags waving in the wind. Like Chicago, this place has a constant breeze that blows in off the water. Unlike Chicago or New York for that matter, this place is pretty warm for January. And I’m not complaining about that one bit.

  I settle into the rhythm of our walk and appreciate the breeze on my face. The wind is a welcome change to the stuffiness of Monroe’s house. Somehow, it went from cozy to stuffy the moment he died. Funny how a dead body can totally change your mood.

  “I’m sorry about your friend,” I say. “He seemed like a good guy.”

  “He was a drunk and a fool,” Gloria says, without changing her pace.

  I gulp down a fit of laughter. “Uh, I’m sorry about that too…?”

  Her face softens as she adjusts her sketchbook under her arm, repinning it between her ribs and left arm. “He was a good man.”

  “How did his kid die?” I brace myself for some horrible story. Caldwell strung him up and skinned him, trying to get Monroe to comply, to fight and forfeit his power. Or something worse than I can imagine. With Caldwell, any level of depravity was possible.

  “It wasn’t anyone’s fault. It was accidental, but he’s dead all the same.”

  “Do you want to die?” I ask.

  She stops walking.

  “I just meant that you’ve lost a lot of people too.”

  “Yes.” Her voice is deep with sorrow. “I think death will be very peaceful.”

  Before I can add some platitudes about how much she has to live for, she speaks again.

  “But I have work to do.”

  And as if to illustrate this fact, her pace doubles.

  My legs start to ache as she hooks a left on Chartres Street. The sound of jazzy trumpets erupts, but the spunky tune isn’t enough to cheer me. By the next block a cramp settles into my right ribcage. “Oh my god, where are we going? Are we getting our 10,000 steps for the day? Walking for a cancer cure?”

  “I want to show you something.” She nods toward some unseen destination up ahead. “Come on.”

  “Can you show me the light post right here? No really. Let’s sit down and admire its, uh, craftsmanship.” I wheeze.

  “You’re out of shape.”

  “Don’t body shame me, G! All bodies are beautiful!”

  She picks up her pace. For fuck’s sake.

  “If I’d known we were going to powerwalk today, I wouldn’t have had that fourth pancake at breakfast. You have to tell me these things ahead of time.”

  Chartres ends at St. Peter, opening up the palatial Jackson Square. The jazz band is in full swing here, with onlookers clapping and dancing along to the tune. Two toddlers in light jackets spin drunken circles on the stone walk as if that is the best way to enjoy this kind of music.

  I make eye contact with a girl at a card table and read her little sign aloud. “Tarot Reading. Looking
for love, money, or truth? It’s right here.”

  She grins and I see a flash of fangs. As we pass, I also realize her eyes are like a snake’s, slits from top to bottom. “Cool contacts,” I mumble, hoping both are fake as hell. After all, there’s already enough monsters in the world.

  I dodge the twirly kids and catch Gloria on the steps of the Jackson cathedral. She maneuvers around the gawking tourists easily and slips into the dim atrium.

  I place one hand on her arm, holding on so that I don’t lose her in the push of the crowd. She doesn’t shrug me off so I take that as permission to hold onto her, even though I’m pretty sure Gloria doesn’t like to be touched.

  The church is barely lit inside with the exception of small, red candles ignited by patrons seeking blessings. A person can drop their money into the offering box, take a candle, light it, and make a prayer.

  Save your money, I want to say. If he loved you, he sure as hell wouldn’t pick my ass to save you.

  Actually, why don’t you hand that cash straight on over to moi? I’m the best chance you’ve got.

  Jackson slips into an empty pew and slides over enough so there’s room to sit beside her.

  “Oh god, we aren’t going to pray for our sins, are we?” My heart hammers. “Because we don’t have enough time in the world for me to get through that list.”

  “This is a safe place to talk.”

  I look around the cathedral at the gaggles of tourists. “Uh, if you say so.”

  She flips open her sketchbook and finds a page. “When we arrive in Arizona, I’ll probably need you to blow through this wall.”

  She shows me the old military compound with its bright white barrier. It’s like a fortress sans moat.

  “I can do that.”

  “Then I will get the power turned on.”

  “Yeah, don’t want to wander around a creepy deserted torture camp in the dark,” I say with a gulp.

  “The device we intend to trap Georgia in will also require power.”

  “Right. So blast the wall. Get the lights on and then wait for them to come. Do you think they’ll show up early?”

  “We would be in danger of that if Monroe had failed to kill him.”

  “That was on purpose?”

  Gloria nods. “If we’d managed to kill him, the plan was to split the power three ways between you, Monroe, and Maisie. But the minimum objective was achieved nonetheless. Monroe bought us safe passage to Arizona. Caldwell will wake up before we arrive, but he will have a hard time tracking us in motion. He’s been trying to use A.M.P.s to follow our movements, but they aren’t as good as Micah.”

  I feel like I should apologize again. After all, she had to kill her own brother in order to protect us from Caldwell.

  “Now we must focus on making the best decisions,” she says.

  “I make good decisions,” I say, defensively. “Okay, maybe I shouldn’t have bought that sixty-dollar blender from the infomercial, but that was one time. Well, okay, yes, I guess there was also the hundred-dollar Puppy Plush Palace, but Winston loved that thing!” Before I burned the whole house down that is.

  “Here.” Gloria looks up from the sketchbook, glancing around her to make sure everyone else is far enough away.

  I scoot a little closer so I can look at the picture. It’s so dim in here that the detail isn’t great. Yet even in the low light, a couple of things stick out.

  First of all, the dead bodies. Caldwell. Ally. Gideon.

  Ally.

  Ally.

  “Don’t panic.” Gloria’s voice is perfectly even.

  I blink at her, sucking in a sharp breath.

  “Don’t,” she says with slightly more inflection. “There are people in here.”

  I’m not panicking. I want whoever is making that horrible noise to shut up. Oh wait, that’s me. The low guttural moan that actually sounds a lot like panic grows louder.

  “Say something.”

  “She’s dead!” I shout. Immediately, several people shhhh me. My head snaps up to see an obese woman in socks and sandals pressing one finger over her lips. Gloria’s fingers dig into my arm.

  “She’s dead,” I hiss through clenched teeth.

  “So is Caldwell,” Gloria says.

  “Fuck Caldwell, Ally is dead.”

  “I know,” she says, the first sign of impatience showing in her face and tone.

  “What do you mean you know, Gloria. What the hell does that mean?”

  “Keep your voice down,” she whispers. “I don’t want to be kicked out. This is one of the few places in the whole city where I can show my drawings and they won’t end up on satellites or someone’s MyPage.”

  I bite my tongue so hard I see stars. It swells instantly, which shuts me up more than anything. Pain in the mouth has a way of deflating my rage unlike anything else. It’s totally different than stubbing a toe. Stub a toe and I want to murder someone.

  “The way I see it,” Gloria goes on, emboldened by my self-imposed silence. “We manage to kill Caldwell in the desert as planned. That’s what we want.”

  “I want Ally alive.” I want it way more than I want Caldwell dead. In fact, I would probably let Caldwell go be a douche to someone else if it meant that Ally and I could live in peace for the rest of our lives. But I know I’m not that lucky and Ally would never turn a blind eye to injustice.

  “Here is the alternative,” Gloria says. She flips to the next page and the body count is much higher. In this picture, Gloria is dead. Maisie is dead. Georgia is dead. Gideon is dead. Rachel is dead. Their bodies strewn like litter across the desert floor. Basically everyone but Ally is dead.

  “We don’t actually fight him in the desert, do we?” I say, a glimmer of hope welling up in my chest. “We’re in the facility. So maybe this is wrong. You’ve been wrong before.”

  Gloria gives me a hateful look. “If you focus only on saving Ally, we all die and Caldwell gets away. That’s the bottom line. I want you to know that before we go in.”

  “What kind of ultimatum is that?”

  “You are free to do what you want,” Gloria says.

  “It’s not like I want you to die,” I say, guilt hardening in my stomach.

  “I don’t care if I live or die,” she says in a perfectly even tone. I have to believe her. “It’s about the mission. If Caldwell gets away, we do not fulfill the mission. And I haven’t chased this man for ten years only to let him go.”

  She closes the sketchbook and looks up at the angel statue in front of us.

  I search for an idea. Anything. Anything that will keep Ally alive and take out Georgia and Caldwell as planned. But my mind blanks. Instead of brilliant useful ideas, all I feel is blind panic. The image of Ally dead flashes over and over and over again.

  “I have an alternative idea,” Gloria says.

  “I’m listening.”

  “We use Maisie as bait, have her draw Georgia into the room so we can get her in the device and have the upper hand. It will be better if Maisie is with Ally, in the shield, and we are exposed.”

  “They may not come,” I say.

  “They will if the prize is appealing enough.”

  I frown.

  “If I wound you, you’ll seem like easy prey. Caldwell will target you.”

  I blink at her. “You want to incapacitate me, your fire-bombing cannon girl, the moment before the most important fight?”

  “Yes.”

  I’m trying to piece together her ideas. Lie down and play dead. Caldwell comes. We all die. And then what? Maisie brings us back to life. “I don’t know. The last time you tried to out-plan the bad guys, Lane and Ally were stabbed to death in a basement. Brinkley and I didn’t fare too well either.”

  Brinkley.

  Brinkley and the weird dream—vision—whatever the hell it is, comes back to me.

  “And I think Brinkley wants us to save Rachel more than kill Caldwell,” I say. Gloria pivots in the pew so she can see my face. She frowns and then arches her
eyebrows, encouraging me to spill it.

  I tell her about the beach house. I tell her about Brinkley’s visit and his message. She smiles once or twice—when I mention the leather jacket and the beer cans. But by the time I finish the story she isn’t smiling anymore.

  “You don’t know it’s him,” Gloria says.

  “It was him,” I insist. “I don’t know how, but it was him. It—it…it felt like him, if that makes sense. It even smelled like him. That cologne—”

  “Drakkar Noir,” she says without hesitation.

  “O-kay.” I grin. “Don’t know how you know that, but sure. Anyway, it was him. He wants us to help her, not kill her.”

  I realize what I’m saying. How did this happen? How did I go from believing Rachel would never betray me to accepting she’s a homicidal maniac?

  “Rachel’s actions are influencing this outcome as much as yours. That’s why the vision is unclear.”

  “Can I see it again?” I ask, nodding toward the sketchbook.

  Gloria opens it up to the page. If you only focus on Ally, we all die. That’s what she’d said. Yet, when I see her body, Ally is all I can think about.

  Could I really let us all die and rely on Maisie to bring us back? What if Maisie is taken before she can? Or is killed? It seems too messy, reckless, and unclear. But keeping Maisie away from Georgia does seem like an inherently better plan. The more I realize what a struggle this is for Maisie, the more I think she should be far away from Georgia during the fight, lest her instincts to protect her mother take over.

  In the picture, Ally is lying there so peacefully. Her face perfectly serene and smooth. She could be sleeping. In this version of some possible future, did Caldwell kill her? But how? Her neck isn’t twisted. There’s no gaping wound from a bullet or assault. No blood even. The only other time I’ve seen a body just fall dead was because of Georgia. When she uses her death ribbons, the serpentine black smoke makes her victims fall dead without an apparent mark on them.

  But I’ll be damned if I let Georgia kill Ally. I’ll have to be sure I’m the one that strikes first.

  Chapter 26

  Rachel

  “What the fuck is this?” I pull myself up tall from where I slump in the passenger seat. We’ve been in Illinois for a long time and all I’ve seen is a whole lot of nothing. Empty fields lay barren as far as the eye can see. The monotony is occasionally broken up by a tree here or there, but overall, it’s dead, flat land. Jessup was born somewhere out here and it’s truly hard to imagine given how urbanized she seems now with her mismatched sneakers and black hoodies and Starbucks coffee.