No fighting.
No death.
If only I could make Ally understand that, then maybe she wouldn’t pull away from me.
Ally
What am I doing here?
Nothing good can come of this. Best case scenario, I’m about to suffer through the most awkward dating encounter I’ve endured in years. Why am I even trying to date? Why now? I mean, I guess I could argue why not now? After all, Jesse isn’t going to leave Lane any time soon. They’ve been together for a whole year, much longer than I anticipated that lasting, actually. And I’ve been single for—longer than I care to admit. But she isn’t going to dump him for me.
That has been made clear.
And maybe that is why I’m here, trying to date someone Jesse doesn’t even know about. The word date suggests I want to get to know someone better. You don’t go on a date with someone just to tell them this will never work—you don’t drive to the date compiling a list of reasons why not to be with them. Just because I’d finally agreed to having coffee with Nikki after months of her insistence didn’t mean this was a real date, did it?
I wedge my Smart car between two massive SUVs and spot Nikki immediately standing outside the coffee shop. She’s looking my way and probably saw me park. With every moment I wait in the car, her smile falters a little. And though I’m dreading telling her what I’m here to tell her, I’m not cruel. I take a breath and yank open the door.
She recovers most of her smile before I can cross the parking lot, dodging strollers, unruly dogs and a couple of cars cluttering the busy shopping complex.
“I thought you might change your mind,” she says. She stands taller than me, even in her flat sneakers. It’s a change considering I am used to looking down at Jess. Nikki’s eyes are gray today, but that could simply be the lighting. Nikki has those eyes, the kind that conforms to what she is wearing or the light around her. The slant of her eyes make me think of a cat. It could be the roundness of her cheeks and nose, or the way she does her makeup to exaggerate the kittenish look or the one thick strand of hot pink in her hair despite the platinum blond.
“I didn’t change my mind.” I try to hold her gaze, but I can’t.
“Good,” she says. She slips her hand in the pocket of her jeans and uses the other to brush her bangs back away from her face. “Because I’ve only been trying for a year. If you had said yes, only to say no again, it would’ve crushed me.”
“You exaggerate.”
She puts a hand against her chest and mimics shock with an open mouth and wide eyes. “I’m devastated just thinking about it.”
She thinks she’s funny. But it’s practiced. She isn’t the kind of natural hilarious that Jesse is just by pure dramatics and a gift for hyperbole.
“I’m certain,” I say, humoring her. “But you’ve only shown your interest a few weeks ago.”
“It feels like years,” she says. And there is her amused smile again. A little quirk in the corner that is more smirk than smile. It isn’t that vulnerable look Jesse gives—the one that says she’s only having fun if you are. Nikki is far too confident to need my reassurance.
“Can we go inside or do you want to hold the dangerous ground between people and their coffee?” she asked.
We go through the motions of ordering coffee. I pretend to look at the noticeboard while the barista makes our drinks. I pretend to be interested in all the information tacked to the wall—lost dogs, offers for tutoring, other services, work from home flyers, and meditation classes. The warmth of the café is slowly melting the chill of the afternoon away, but it isn’t enough to make me sit down.
I don’t know why she makes me so nervous—or why I can’t just sit down and talk to her. We’ve been working together for a year. Not as intimately as I work with Jesse, but she is hardly a stranger. We have common interests, similar aspirations—for the time being anyway. From what I can tell, she is intelligent and compassionate. She is certainly attractive and takes good care of her body. I should want this.
From a few feet away, jiggling a bundle of sugar packets between pinched fingers, she watches me silently debate all of this but pretends not to. Is this her attempt to give me space? After adding sugar to the black coffee, she becomes impatient with her long hair and pulls it up in a high, twisted ponytail, securing it with the elastic tie she keeps around her wrist.
The barista calls my name and I go to the counter as if I’m a robot, relying purely on my programming. I choose the table beside the window so I can pretend to look out of it, and we both finally sit down.
“Relax,” she says, settling into the squeaking chair. “I’m not going to throw you down and have my way with you.” She nods in the direction of an empty sofa beneath a large splatter painting at least half as big as the wall itself.
I smile. It’s genuine enough. Perhaps the words have my way with you did it. “I haven’t dated since, Jess. I’m sorry if I’m being—weird.”
“Did you date Jesse?” she asks. She arches an eyebrow. “I thought you just spent a lot of time in her bed.”
I still spend time in her bed, I thought. But it was probably best not to mention that. “You know what I mean. Since we’ve been together then, however you want to put it.”
Nikki blows the steam rising from her ceramic cup, then sips. “How is she?”
“In bed?” I blush.
She grins and presses her lips together against a laugh. “Uh, no. I was referring to work.”
“She’s fine,” I say, feeling stupid. “83 replacements and going strong.”
Why did she look away when she asked me about Jess? Does she want me to change the subject? Or is she trying to not sound too interested? Or maybe she only asked to be polite and doesn’t even want to talk about her at all. I’m probably overthinking this.
There. Her smile does tighten. I’m not imagining this.
“Institutionalization of death replacement agents is becoming more common. We’ve recorded a significant rise in the past few months,” Nikki says as if I’m not haunted by the statistics already. “She needs to be careful.”
The federal policy of being interviewed by a therapist after a few replacements hasn’t changed. If Jesse were to lose her mind, I think that would hurt almost as much as losing her completely—to see her live out the rest of her life broken, lost.
“Jesse’s old mentor Rachel was institutionalized,” I say, I think I do a decent job of sounding casual.
Nikki nods like she already knows about Rachel, and I want to ask what else she knows. I’m sure Jeremiah has checked up on Jesse’s past as thoroughly as he investigates everything else. And Nikki appears, for all intents and purposes, to be Jeremiah’s second in command. It would make sense he would tell her everything. About me. About Jesse and her NRD—or even Caldwell—if he’s even made the connection between Jesse and Caldwell.
Or maybe they’re learning everything from me. Jesse uses the word expressive to describe my face. Perhaps I am being too expressive now.
Nikki smirks. “You can ask.”
“What?”
“Whatever it is you want to ask,” she says. “You’ve got this look on your face like you want to ask me something. Just ask. You don’t know much about me. And the way we met was—interesting, but not conducive to building a friendship.”
I grin. “You weren’t wearing pants. And you were drunk.”
“Exactly,” she grins. “You must have questions.”
I look out the window as the first drops of rain begin to fall. It’s a slow, sleepy drizzle. People cover their heads with newspapers, briefcases or bags. Very few manage to have an umbrella on hand.
I ask her the only question that matters. “How did you meet Jeremiah? How long have you known him?”
“Shop talk? I say you can ask anything and you choose shop talk?” She crosses her legs and leans back in her chair. “Has anyone told you you’re a workaholic?”
“You don’t know me well enough to make that judgment.
”
She senses my irritation and backs off.
“Fair enough. I met Jeremiah same way I met you.”
“Pantless?” I ask.
“Through our common interests,” she says, twirling the cup between her hands.
“Why do you care?” and for clarity because I worry my words were too sharp, I add, “About all of this.”
She cocks her head to one side as if listening. “Why do you care?”
I hesitate. Is it too soon to bring Jesse up again? It has been so long since I’ve dated—high school probably—that it is all I can do just to sit here, pretending to drink coffee and obsess over my ex-girlfriend. Oh my God, am I one of those sad, sad people?
“I know you’re worried about Jesse and you think she’ll be attacked again. So I can only assume you joined up with Jeremiah in hopes of making sure that doesn’t happen. He told me he found you online, all cavalier, spreading the “be safe” anti-victim rhetoric to anyone who would listen. Then when he realized you were in Nashville, asked if you wanted to get a little more physical in your campaign.”
“We were attacked.” I want to draw attention away from Jesse.
Nikki isn’t fooled. “Yes, but I’ve seen you working enough to know you’re a bit selfless. You might be doing this for the both of you, but it is mostly for her.”
“We haven’t worked together that much. You barely know me,” I say. Again I’m irritated. Pissy even. Wow, I am really terrible at dating.
“Okay, so you are doing this for yourself,” Nikki relents. “I suppose being stabbed in the spleen is decent motivation for joining a rebel cause. And I can hardly blame you. I’m rather attached to my spleen.”
“And what was your reason?” I ask. And Jeremiah’s? Maybe I could grow to trust them and tell them more about Jesse if I understood why they’re doing this. I’ve known them for almost a year but I’ve only worked a handful of jobs with them. So I guess it is natural that I feel like I don’t know nearly enough. “Or are you just a general do-gooder who would take up arms against any unjust cause?”
Nikki looks out the window at the rain splattering the glass. One bead connects with another, doubles in size and begins to glide. Those collide with another and another until it becomes one unstoppable droplet funneling down, like a thick silvery trail left by a snail.
When she doesn’t answer, I take the first real drink of my coffee because I don’t know what to say. I’m not sure I want her to talk about it. Every day I ask myself what I would do if Jesse died—if I had, by some cruel fate, been the only one to survive that basement horror scene. Would I still fight? Could I after losing her again?
I take another sip of my coffee and a smooth taste of bitter chocolate warms my lips, tongue and throat. “Do you like bowling?”
She laughs. A genuine cackle that isn’t as adorable as Jesse’s but it is infectious nonetheless.
“Do you bowl? I can’t imagine you in those hideous shoes.”
I’m shocked. “You think I’m prissy?”
“You seem a tad more girlie than me,” she says. When I fall back against the back of the chair, she asks. “Does that offend you?”
“I don’t think I’m girlie.” I turn the cup in my hand. “I’m feminine, okay—but so girlie you can’t see me bowling? That’s just wrong.”
“Your nose ring is pretty hardcore,” she says. She leans forward as if to inspect it. The look in her upturned eyes makes my stomach quiver. “But you take an obvious nonviolent approach to our work. Jeremiah and I go in with guns and you’re all Band-Aids and water.”
“There’s quite the distance between bowling and violence,” I say. The café is comfortable and I get the sense that there is more to her. I don’t know if it’s attraction, but there is something there. An allure. “But that depends on how you’ll play, I guess.”
“Is that an invitation?” she asks. “To go bowling with you?”
My confidence falters. The train just stops. And she is smart enough to see this for herself.
She puts her ceramic mug down and it clanks against the saucer. “Listen.”
I look at her. Note the furrowed brow. But her mouth is soft, not hard in agitation.
“You still have feelings for her.”
The honesty almost incites me to protest on principle alone. But she doesn’t give me a chance for such a knee jerk reaction.
“That’s fine,” she says with a dismissive wave. “Really it is.”
“Is it?” I ask. I keep positioning my cup in its little saucer.
“But it doesn’t change the fact that I like you,” she says. “You’re gorgeous, smart, and brave.”
The heat rises in my face as if someone is holding a match under my chin and my heart is doing something strange. It’s her voice. I realize for the first time that I really like her voice.
“I’ve known these things about you ever since Chattanooga.”
Chattanooga. Jeremiah received a tip from his network that six people with NRD were being held captive by one of Caldwell’s cells—the smaller tactical groups he relies on to do his dirty work and keep his hands and image clean—like the group that got Jesse, Lane, Brinkley and I last year. This group had the hostages chained up in a suburban house, torturing them for days.
“I watched you talk down a gunman,” she continues. Her admiration is apparent in her beaming face. “You reasoned with that guy like a pro. I bet professional negotiators aren’t half that good. And like I said, all you brought were Band-Aids and bottled water.”
“You’re exaggerating again.” And my face is on fire. “I would never bring a plastic bottle to a gun fight. Plastic is so bad for the environment.”
She reaches across the table and takes my hand. And it isn’t just that we are in a public place, in the South, in a generally homophobic region of the United States. It’s that I feel like I’ve done something wrong. By touching her, or letting her touch me—and for liking the feel of it.
Jesse isn’t your girlfriend. I remind myself. She chose Lane. Get over it. You have to get over it.
I manage to keep ahold of Nikki’s hand despite the clenching in my abdomen.
“I just want to get to know you,” she says, still beaming. “This beautiful girl who does amazing things.”
“Ok,” I say, but it feels like a mistake. Like a betrayal. “What do you want to know?”
Nikki grins and it’s triumphant. But even as she settles into her seat like a victor ready to relish her first prize, I can already feel myself pulling back, curling around Jesse’s secrets protectively as if they are my own.
“Start from the beginning,” Nikki says. “I want to know everything.”
And that is what I’m afraid of.
Jesse
I wake up to an empty bed. First I spread my arms wide, seeing how much of the mattress I can take up by myself. But then a sort of panic settles in. I’m so used to sharing my bed with Lane, or Ally, that so much space feels weird.
I hear a plop against my window on the opposite side of the room, like something has smacked against the glass, and jolt upright in my bed. A dart, one of those soft ones with a suction cup on one end, is stuck and wiggling there. The sucker looks like one of those bottom feeder fish slurping away at the glass of an aquarium. And the end of the suction cup, something dangles.
I open the window and work the dart back and forth until it releases with a loud POP into my hand. The attached note says:
Bring you know what to you know where
Is this the best code he could manage? Brinkley is supposed to be a high class secret agent. Or maybe that says more about his confidence in my decryption skills. I guess I wasn’t the one who managed to evade the law, fake my own death, and do some major ground work to uncover a huge underground operation. I’ll give the man his due.
I yank on jeans and pull a T-shirt over my head. And as I grab a black hoodie from my closet, I spot another note on the night stand.
I love the way you lo
ok when you’re sleeping in my arms
I grin. I take a step toward the stairs and my thighs clench, a deep sore ache that only makes me smile bigger. For a moment, I’m lost in the memory of Lane. His hands on my bare back, his lips starting on my neck and ears before working their way down to the soft inner part of my thighs. Lane holding me up, his arms strong around me as I straddle his lap, legs pinned wide.
Winston gets a bowl of kibble for breakfast which he inhales without chewing. Then with the harddrive jutting from the back pocket of my jeans, I grab a banana from the counter and trot out the back door. It’s a sliding door like the Lovetts, but mine connects with a deck, not a patio, and my yard is smaller, unfenced, and less impressive. At least I don’t have any killer trees.
At least none that I know of.
All the houses in my subdivision are two stories high with an attached garage. Lots of trees and flowerbeds and running trails weaving themselves in and out of the woods, forming a two-mile loop around Greenbrook. Each house has an acre or more of grass, and trees are plentiful, which I like. Mine particularly has Japanese maples that Ally planted two years ago. In their dark purple and burgundy hues, they match my house’s white-gray marbled brick exterior and black shutters.
I love my house. It’s nice and comfortable and far enough from the city that I can get some decent sleep every night, without listening to horns blaring, loud music or ambulance sirens. It was Ally who’d picked this house, Ally who put all the furniture inside, and Ally who makes it feel like home. She insists on having her own apartment, but she practically lives here. And for some stupid reason my throat gets all tight at the thought of this—how little I’ve seen her lately. And how long before I lose her completely?
I try not to look suspicious, chomping on my banana as I cut through my backyard to the part of the trail closest to my house. I push past the trees marking the edge of my yard, and it is only a few feet until the dirt trail begins.
Dying by the Hour (A Jesse Sullivan Novel Book 2) Page 4