Dying for a Living (A Jesse Sullivan Novel)

by Shrum, Kory M.

  “I miss her,” he said. “But I understand that God needs her now.”

  It sounded like something my mom would have taught him to believe. “Are you okay though? Where are you going to live now? Who’s going to take care of you?”

  “Uncle Paul and Aunt Jody,” he said. Aunt Jody was Eddie’s sister—one of the few names I recalled, but no real memory of her existed.

  “Are they nice?” I asked him, fearing the worst. I knew I was in no shape to take custody of a child right now, but I’d be damned if I was going to let this kid end up with anyone depraved.

  “Uncle Paul and I fish a lot and he lets me drive his truck through the fields. Aunt Jody can be a little OCD about keeping the house clean, but she’s a real good cook and she’s helping me catch up on my homework. They don’t live too far away so I won’t have to change schools or nothing.”

  “Anything,” I corrected. When his description didn’t scream molesters or child abusers, my shoulders relaxed. “It sounds like you’ll be happy with them, Danny. I’m really glad.”

  I spoke too soon. He teared up and his little lip quivered. “I wish she didn’t die though.”

  “Me, too, buddy,” I told him, even though I wasn’t really feeling too sad about her death. There was nothing of the woman I knew in this box and nothing of this house that I felt any emotion for except the barn and that was burned to the ground. Maybe it was the room full of people. Maybe it was not talking to her for seven years, I’m not sure. I just know that whatever I expected to feel about this—I didn’t. My pain was completely unrelated to the corpse. My regrets came from somewhere else.

  “I want her to wake up,” he whispered. “Like you did.”

  I saw this orphaned kid staring at his mother with tears in his eyes and it broke my heart. “Oh, honey. It doesn’t work that way. I wish it did, but it doesn’t.” Because I inherited my NRD from my father.

  “Why didn’t you come home?” he asked. “You could have saved her.”

  I should’ve seen this coming. I looked him straight in the eye so he’d know I meant what I was about to say. “It wasn’t because of you, Danny. Okay? I promise it wasn’t because of you. Mom and I just didn’t get along.”

  “But we missed you.”

  No way in hell mom missed me.

  “Did you think I wouldn’t love you anymore because you’re a zombie?” he asked.

  I bit my lip and swallowed a laugh. Anytime anyone uses the word “zombie,” a hot rush of angers fills me head to toe. However, hearing it come out of my little brother’s mouth, when his voice was still sweet and pre-pubescent, it just made me smile.

  And he was old enough to handle at least some of the truth. “Mom told me not to come back. I guess she was worried I’d hurt you.”

  “That’s not what Mom told me,” he said. “She said you got a job and moved away. She says that’s what grownups do.”

  “She talked about me?”

  “All the time,” he said.

  “No way,” I blurted. And she couldn’t tell me this shit? “What did she say?”

  “She was proud of you,” he said.

  I kissed the top of his head and squeezed him again. I used the little guy to hold my shaking body in place. I didn’t know what else to do.

  I saw Kyra coming through the back kitchen door and she gave a little wave. I was out of time.

  Danny must’ve sensed the change. “Please don’t go. I promise it’s okay. Aunt Jody doesn’t like zombies, but Uncle Paul doesn’t care. He says God has a plan for everything.”

  “I can’t stay,” I told him. “Let me get some things in order and I promise to visit.”

  He squeezed me tighter.

  “I promise I’ll call more, write more, email, whatever you kids do these days. Do you text?” I asked him.

  He shook his head. “I don’t have a cellphone.”

  Christmas present, check.

  “Tell your uncle that I have money and if you need anything, he should call me,” I said, handing him one of my crumpled business cards. Then I shoved the wad of cash Ally had given me into his hands. “Take this too and put it away for just in case.”

  His eyes were huge. I’m guessing he’d never seen so much money at one time. “In case of what?”

  “Anything,” I said. “If you need me, you call me okay? Hey, how did you get my number the first time?”

  “It was in Mom’s address book.”

  Jesus, Mom. Really? You kept tabs on me for seven years, told people how proud you were, but you couldn’t even manage a phone call?

  I gave him one last hug, still amazed at how easy it was to coddle him. What had I expected, him to be aloof? Distant, maybe, now that he was an orphan.

  But the fact remained, it really was time to go. I’d seen the corpse. I’d checked on the boy. If I stayed any longer, I ran the risk of getting caught or having one of those dramatic family member blowouts that I’d been worried about to begin with.

  So I turned my back on my mother’s house, knowing I’d never see it again.

  Chapter 17

  I sobbed like a baby all the way back to Nashville. I’m sure Herwin would just call it years of repressed anger and depression working its way to the surface. Worse, I was drowning in all that Rachel and Brinkley had said, seeing my little brother all grown up, the fact that I half-orphaned him, and my Mom might have loved me after all.

  It was too much.

  I told Kyra what I’d remembered in the woods, leaving out the part about Gabriel. “When I hired Ally, she said we were friends in high school. I recognized her, but not as my best friend for like years. I hadn’t forgotten about what a douchebag Eddie was, yet I’d forgotten her. That doesn’t make any sense!”

  “You know you have brain damage,” Kyra said. “How many years had you been dying before you saw Ally again?”

  “Five.”

  Kyra made a there you go gesture. “Five years of dying. Of course, you’d forget.”

  “But why didn’t Ally tell me we were best friends?”

  Kyra shrugged. “She probably knew it’d be weird to bring it up if you didn’t remember.”

  Somehow Ally had found me in Nashville, applied for my assistant position and then she pretended like nothing had ever happened.

  I fell against the seat. “God, I feel like such an asshole. Why couldn’t she tell me?”

  “I’m sure she has a good explanation,” Kyra said. “Just talk to her when you get back. Apologize if you feel you have to. Tell her you were brain dead from all that death-replacing but you’re good now.”

  “I just want to sleep and when I wake up, poof. All better.”

  Kyra pulled a pillow from her backseat and offered it to me, without swerving once. We lapsed into silence as I delved deeper into my own thoughts. Rachel, Brinkley, Gabriel, Ally, Danny, Eddie, my mother, my father—they each played on a loop in my head until I dozed off, exhausted from sleep deprivation.

  Then Kyra thrashed me. “Jesse, wake up. Wake up!”

  My eyes focused first on the dashboard clock. Hours had passed and ahead the outline of Nashville’s Centennial Park came into view—then the cop car behind us, flashing its swirling lights.

  “What do you want me to do?” she asked.

  I gestured toward my ragged complexion in the visor mirror. “When have I ever had a good plan?”

  “Good point,” she muttered.

  Kyra pulled over and turned on her emergency flashers. “Damn. We were so close.”

  “I think we should just go with it. I’m too tired to make up a story.”

  “You can’t lie for shit anyway,” she said. “If they take you, I’ll call Ally and tell her where you are. She can ask her brother what to do.”

  Kyra fell silent just before a tap-tap-tap sounded against her window. She rolled it down with a push of a button, and a waft of chilly air rushed in. Agent Garrison leaned down into the window, wearing his usual half-neutral, half-pained expression.


  “Dare I ask where you ladies are heading?” he inquired.

  “Breakfast,” Kyra said. I guess that could’ve worked since it was noon and we still wore the clothes we’d worn the night before. Certainly we looked like we’d just rolled off someone’s couch, starved.

  “Yes, can I please have breakfast before you interrogate me?” I asked. It was a sincere request. I’d only had gas station food—an orange juice and sugar-laden snack cake since we left.

  His eyes narrowed as if inspecting me more closely—my disheveled hair, smeared makeup and puffy eyes. “We won’t keep you long.”

  “I guess that means no.” I gathered up my bag.

  After a little wave to Kyra, I slid into the back of the cop car with minimal grace, but managed to keep my skirt down so that Agent Garrison’s partner didn’t get a free peep show. Also, I tried not to let the overwhelming smell of leather and the fact that my doors didn’t open from the inside freak me out. God, Eve had scarred me for life.

  “So, am I finally being arrested?”

  “That depends,” Garrison said. He ran a hand through his hair. “On how well our discussion at the station goes.”

  “For the record, I maintain that I’m the victim here.”

  They clearly didn’t agree nor did they indulge me in little chatter until we arrived at the station—which was noisy. I didn’t know how anyone got any work done with all that racket. A couple of officers glared my way as we passed. I hoped they didn’t think I was some hooker—excuse me, sex worker—with day-old eyeliner and the slutty schoolgirl-gone-bad look. Given the fact I looked young, they probably would peg me as some juvenile delinquent caught doing something equally juvenile. Aside from these few glances, most of the officers were too busy to even spare a look.

  Garrison looked through my bag and held my toothbrush up in the overhead lights as if it was evidence.

  “Haven’t you ever been clubbing?” I asked. “Girls always pack a toothbrush and their underwear just in case we go home with someone else. No crime there.”

  The partner snorted as Garrison returned my bag to me. He couldn’t prove I left town. Especially since the directions were still in Kyra’s car and I’d given Danny my chunk of cash.

  Agent Garrison sat in the seat opposite mine with a large metal desk stretched between us.

  He opened a file and clicked his pen once so the little ballpoint extended itself. The folder was terribly thick. I leaned over to see whose it was, and he slid it away.

  “Is that whole file on me?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer. But unless I needed new eyes, I was pretty sure that was my name on the top tab and that some of the papers were written in Brinkley’s handwriting. I had a record. That’s something I needed to know. And Brinkley said he’d kept me under the radar.

  “Where did you go last night, Ms. Sullivan?” Garrison asked.

  “At what time?” I asked, being evasive.

  “The whole time,” the partner said. He was just downright mean and I wasn’t in the mood for mean after the trip I’d had.

  “Hi, I’m Jesse Sullivan,” I said, extending my hand toward him. He jumped back as if I’d burned him. “I’m a real person with feelings, so maybe you can treat me like one.”

  Agent Garrison cracked a smile. Whoa. Too bad I didn’t have a camera to capture that brief miracle. His face was a mask of calm again before his partner even had time to react.

  “Can you get me a coffee, please?” Garrison asked. The partner wandered away without as much as a glance my way. I guess we disagreed on me being a real person.

  “Wow, and I thought the good cop, bad cop thing was just a cliché,” I said. “Good to know some television still gives it to you straight.”

  Garrison laced his fingers in front of him. “I think your humor is your defense mechanism, Ms. Sullivan.”

  “I think I already have one government-issued therapist, thanks.”

  “This conversation is going to end in one of two ways. Either you’ll cooperate and I’ll let you walk out of this building, or you won’t cooperate and I’ll serve this warrant.”

  He tapped a piece of paper beside the file. That certainly got my attention. Did he really have a warrant? Don’t they serve those when they arrest you, so why wait? Or was he bluffing to get me to talk?

  Garrison spoke in a low, guarded tone. “Let me be clear. My sole objective is to discover who is responsible for the recent events and hold them accountable. However, interagency diplomacy is on its last leg. Detectives like Bobkins have little or no patience for our involvement, so I do not have much time—do you understand?”

  I nodded. “Then why are you even working with them? Don’t you have your own office?”

  “The FBRD doesn’t have a Nashville Branch,” he said. “So I must work with what I have. And if you refuse to help, let’s just go with the understatement you won’t like what comes next.”

  I tried to remember what Brinkley had told me about the FBRD corruption. If Garrison knew what was going on, why would he feel any kind of ‘pressure’?

  “What do you want? To kill me and get me out of the way? Get promoted? A fat check? Why should I believe that you want to protect me at all? How do I know you aren’t just looking for my weaknesses?”

  Garrison’s face had a strange unreadable expression. “Did Brinkley tell you the FBRD meant you harm?”

  If I couldn’t lie for shit, there was no point trying.

  “What else did he tell you?” he pressed as if I’d spoken. But then Bobkins reentered the main office from the adjacent corridor, Styrofoam cup in hand.

  “Nothing you want him to hear,” I said and nodded in Bobkins’ direction.

  Garrison’s intense gaze made my skin itch just to look at him. I diverted my attention to Bobkins approaching with the coffee.

  Garrison’s tone changed when he accepted his coffee. His veiled warnings from a moment ago still hung mid-air between us, but he spoke as if nothing had been said. “When you left the club with Ms. Kyra Fenton, where did you go?”

  “Back to her place.”

  “How long were you there?”

  I’d stick with the truth as long as I could. “Not long.”

  “Do you know what time you left?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not even sure what time we left The Loft.”

  “Where did you go next?”

  “We stopped at Arby’s for milkshakes.” Technically true even if those two stops were hours apart. “But they were cleaning the machine so I didn’t get one.”

  “When is the last time you saw your assistant, Alice Gallagher?” he asked.

  The mention of her name was enough to make my heart jump. “Last night at the club.”

  “Have you spoken to her since?”

  “No,” I said. I definitely noticed this shift in the conversation. “Why?”

  “Are you currently aware of Ms. Gallagher’s whereabouts?”

  “Aren’t you aware of her whereabouts?” My heart pounded harder. “You’ve been following us for days.”

  “Ms. Gallagher left the night club alone. We quit tailing her in an attempt to find you,” he said.

  My heart felt like it was completing a series of 180-degree flops in my chest.

  “Do you have any reason to suspect that she may have conspired with Eve Hildebrand to kill you?” he pressed.

  “No,” I asked.

  “Are you aware that Alice and Eve Hildebrand are members of the same fitness club?”

  I couldn’t breathe.

  “I’ll take that as a no,” he said, scrawling something on the paper in front of him.

  “Stop!” I yelled. Several heads turned my way as Garrison asked me to calm down. “Just stop, okay! Why are you asking me these questions about Ally?”

  Bobkins answered me. “We have tried to contact her but we cannot reach her.”

  “What do you mean can’t reach her?” I dug in my bag furiously for my phone and called Ally twice. She didn�
�t answer.

  “No, no, no.” I dialed a third time.

  Garrison watched all of this in silence.

  When she didn’t answer again, I slammed my fist against the desk. If the police quit watching her in an attempt to find me, and something happened to her, I’d never forgive myself. When Bobkins came toward me I knocked him away, much farther than a tiny person like myself should have been able to move a man that size. For some reason, I thought of Rachel taking out those two men.

  “Why didn’t you protect her?” I screamed at Garrison. “You’re an idiot if you think the people who want to kill me wouldn’t go after her. Nothing would make me come running faster.”

  “You’re assuming the attack was personal—not random, or even orchestrated by yourself,” Bobkins said.

  My body turned electric. Something inside me moved and shifted and all I could think was God, please let her be okay. I have to tell her I’m sorry. I have to tell her that after all that she did for me, all those times she consoled me after what Eddie did, when she told me everything was going to be okay, after all of that—

  You must calm down. Gabriel appeared behind Garrison, wings stretching out before tucking. It is not safe to lose control here.

  I swallowed, inhaling quickly. I didn’t think I was losing control. I wasn’t hurling desks or choking people. My body was still electric, like a small current ran through my veins.

  Garrison’s eyes were wider than before which meant I was at least a little frightening. He motioned to Bobkins, but the officer objected. Whatever I was doing, Garrison saw it and Bobkins didn’t. What was I doing? What was happening to me?

  Ally is not yet harmed. Focus, Jesse.

  Ally wasn’t hurt. Yet. He’d said yet. Focus. Focus.

  “Where did you see her last?” I asked. I couldn’t remember the last question he’d asked so this was the best I could do as I slowly drew deep breaths in and out of my nose.

  “I think you know where she is,” Bobkins said. He wasn’t happy about being pushed. At least, they weren’t trying to arrest me for assault just yet. “And I think you know what’s going on.”