Dying by the Hour (A Jesse Sullivan Novel Book 2)

by Kory M. Shrum

  Putting one arm on the glass, I use it to brace myself against the world whirling around me. I try to slow my breath again and again. To focus and breathe the way my therapist taught me to breathe through my anxiety. It begins to work. But Jeremiah isn’t finished saying what he needs to say.

  “My father died of a heart attack at sixty-three. Only he didn’t die,” Jeremiah says. “Once he realized he was the one who had NRD—who had given Ruth her condition—he used the shotgun on himself.”

  My chest is so tight I can’t catch my breath. “But what about the law?”

  The first real hint of anger tinges his words. “The law sided with the boys. The good boys from good families. The attention my family drew from their demands for justice incited more threats of violence. My father lost his job. My mother’s closest friends quit speaking to her. You think there is a right way to do this, Alice, but there isn’t. The corruptors take the right way and twist it. What do you think Caldwell is doing with all his law-making? All of his propaganda and media attention.”

  I turn away from the wall because I can’t bear to see the woman, but I leave one hand to steady myself as I face Jeremiah. “It doesn’t mean we should become like them. If that is what I have to become just to win, it isn’t worth it.”

  Jeremiah turns to me, taking his eyes off the woman for the first time since beginning his story. “She has told me the location of two children. Jo and Hector have already found one child and took her to a safe house. I need you and Nicole to pick up the other.”

  “From where?” I ask. But I am not paying complete attention to him.

  “I’ll go,” Nikki says. “Ally needs sleep.”

  “She’s twelve,” Jeremiah says. “And she’d been on the run for almost seven months before they caught up to her. When her mother discovered her NRD, she turned her out. You would be surprised how many of the homeless children are homeless simply because they were thrown out.”

  “40%,” Nikki says. “It’s the same for LBGT youth.”

  I turn to leave but Jeremiah grabs ahold of me.

  “No one is looking out for them,” Jeremiah says, releasing me gently. “But I am.” He raps his fist against his chest. “I am but I need you with me, Alice. And we need Jesse.”

  “She’s been through enough,” I say. “I can’t ask anything more of her.”

  Jeremiah’s face softens for the first time. He nods and turns back toward the glass. I’m almost at the end of the hallway, at the edge of his sight when he stops me one last time.

  “Unfortunately,” he says and his expression is soft and sad. “Jesse may not have a choice.”

  Jesse

  I’m really dragging ass on the way home. I can’t quit thinking about Caldwell, especially when he was still Eric. Back when he was just some mechanic, married to my mom, Danica, with a chatterbox kid following him everywhere. Back when he was my dad.

  No—He isn’t Eric Sullivan anymore.

  Your dad is dead.

  But—his smile, his face as he opened his arms and bent low to scoop me up. The smell of him: cedar, oil and aftershave.

  He ordered his men to kill you. He considers that life as over as you do. You are not his kid anymore.

  And it’s definitely true that my old life seems a million miles away. So why can’t I stop thinking about him?

  When I open the back door to my house Winston comes running. It’s something that never happens unless it is dinner time. I think that much fat just makes it hard to run. And he is solid enough to knock me back a step as he throws himself against my legs and whines. His tail is tucked and ears up and alert.

  “It’s okay, baby,” I say. I coo in the pug’s ears and rub the soft velvet between my fingers. “What’s wrong?”

  He whines more desperately, staring toward the front of the house. He wants me to pick him up, but he’s too fat for that. And I need my hands anyway because something is obviously wrong.

  The hair on the back of my neck is at attention. I see knives in the block on the counter and think about grabbing one, but that feels dumb. I’d probably just stab myself like some stupid horror movie girl.

  I creep, pug close at my heels still whining to be lifted like a baby. I want to soothe him, but I am trying to pay attention. One room at a time, I strain to hear anything despite the racket my panicked heart makes.

  The kitchen is empty. The space between my counters and island are clear. Nothing is hiding under the dining table nor is anything lurking in the high archway leading into the living room. The office is clear and so is the living room, unless they are crouching down between the couch and coffee table, on the other side out of sight—which is a possibility I acknowledge.

  I take a few tentative steps to the left so I can check the front door before moving toward the stairs that will take me upstairs.

  Then I see it.

  A spray of glass in the foyer glitters and in the mess, a small wrapped bundle lay in wait. I order Winston to stay. He doesn’t listen, taking a step forward as I do, his nails clicking on the wood.

  “Stay.” I say. My fear and anger fills my voice. Feeling guilty that my voice makes him shiver more, I try to explain. “The glass, baby. You’ll get it in your paws.”

  I take another step closer as I cast a nervous glance into the living room. No one is crouched beside the couch. I strain again to hear anything over the silence: a floorboard shifting under someone’s weight. A stair creaking. Breath or a rustling of clothes. Movement of any kind.

  But I hear nothing except the cool air wafting through the shattered pane.

  Rib cage sore from the still constant flapping of my heart, I carefully take the cloth wrapped bundle in my hands.

  It is an odd shape, and heavy. I unroll the wound cloth and take a good look.

  It’s one of my T-shirts—bloody and torn and one of my shoes, smushed flat, both wrapped around a brick which I’m assuming is what broke the window. The shirt and shoe I recognize. They came from two different jobs, but they were both lost during replacements. On the shirt, written in blood—and this is when I start praying it isn’t my blood—someone has written a short, but clear message:

  “Closer than you think,” I say.

  Close enough to snatch the clothes off my dead body.

  “Yeah, that’s not creepy.”

  Crash.

  I scream and jump back but trip over my stupid dog. I reach out to catch my fall and let go of the brick at the same time. The dog yells as I step on him and I hit the floor hard just after he scampers out of range. Then the brick comes down. I slide my forearm on shattered glass when I yank away from the explosion of pain as the brick connects with my knee.

  My arm burns. An angry red welt rises to the surface as a tuff of torn flesh fills up with blood. My knee burns too where the brick fell on it, but my jeans have protected the skin, so what I feel instead is the dull throb of impact.

  Winston is okay. He’s trying to climb on top of me as I lean on my uninjured elbow and inspect myself. I say more than a few words that are as ladylike as a sailor’s whore.

  I am even more pissed when I realize it was just a piece of glass that had fallen from the shattered pane that made the noise in the first place. But it freaking terrified me.

  Winston is jumping up and down trying to lick my face.

  “I’m okay,” I say, pushing him away but he just won’t give up. “Gee-zus. Fine. Fine. Come here.”

  I pick up the dog like he wants, but God, he’s heavy.

  But there is something else wrong. It isn’t until my heart slows from a jack rabbit pace to something like mild cardio that I realize the silence in my house. Pure silence. I manage to pull myself together onto my feet and shuffle into the living room. I check a couple of light switches and my suspicions prove true.

  I’d blasted it—every single light in the house is blown—and everything else probably.

  With no lights and threats written in blood, it’s time to get the hell out. I decid
e not to check upstairs but instead I put Winston in the car and drive to Gloria’s. Brinkley wants me to pay her a visit anyway and there’s no time like the present. I’m almost to Gloria’s when I realize I should’ve left a note, in case Ally or Lane came by.

  Whoops. If they do I’ll certainly get a call.

  Gloria lives in Nashville proper, in a little neighborhood of one-story houses. Her house looks like a face. Two front windows for eyes and a door for a nose-mouth. It’s brick with peeling shutters. It has some wrought iron for a nice touch, but the paint on the wrought iron is peeling. Her grass is uncut and probably houses a million-strong rabbit colony.

  Still shaking, I knock and knock but no answer, so I use my spare key to let myself in.

  In the creepy basement is where I find her. She’s sitting at a long desk, a massive beast that stretches from one corner all the way to the water heater, the entire length of the wall, like a cafeteria table, with its hard fake wood top and metal corners. Her back is to the rickety wooden stairs, creaking as I make my descent clutching the pug. A light swings over my head, swaying a little with the unsettled house. All over the concrete walls are pictures, taped with chunks of duct tape to the painted cinder blocks beneath them.

  By the time protective custody was started, the military had just finished conducting ESP research to see if they could develop psychic warfare. This research was discontinued, but what came out of it was remote-viewing. I’m not making this shit up. Google it: remote-viewing.

  They experimented and tortured the elite soldiers they pulled from their ranks until the ones that weren’t brain damaged to the point of death became discharged outcasts with little to no benefits. The only option most of them had was to become Analysts of necromagnetic phenomenon—A.M.P.s—and only if they were good at remote viewing, particularly death prediction, did they even have this option. Otherwise it’s food stamps, unemployment, or homelessness.

  It’s my understanding remote-viewing is like clairvoyance because viewers see pictures of stuff in their heads, but remote-viewers can do more than just see something. Somehow they can keep “entering” into a vision differently to get several pictures. Then they piece these pictures together for a more accurate assessment of the situation.

  And as I search the walls, I realize she is definitely looking for someone now.

  The sound of her pencil scratching furiously over the paper fills the basement. I put Winston on the cold concrete floor. He still doesn’t stray far, but he’s feeling better, or at least brave enough to search the basement’s corners for stray crumbs.

  I want Gloria’s attention, but I know better than to interrupt. Though Winston’s snorts don’t seem to bother her. I search the pictures for clues as to what’s going on.

  It’s the same girl in every single one of the pictures, from different angles. Sometimes she’s smiling. Sometimes she’s looking at the viewer, in others it’s her profile. It varies. But in every one, she is young—fifteen or sixteen with thick dark hair, a big nose and thin lips. She stands in protective postures, like someone who isn’t comfortable with herself, cradling skinny limbs across her small chest. Most of the time her wild hair covers half her face.

  Gloria finally stops, and puts her pencil down.

  “Who is she?” I ask.

  “Liza Miller.”

  “She looks young,” I say. What I really wonder is what would Liza think if she knew an African-American woman in her late 40s she’d never even met was sitting in her basement drawing pictures of her.

  I tell Gloria about the brick.

  At the end of my story she says, “Call Dr. York. Ask him where the clothes were. Who had access? And get it tested to see if it is your blood.”

  “You didn’t see this coming?” I ask.

  “I can’t see everything,” she reminds me. And even if she could, it doesn’t mean she can stop it. In fact, trying to save me proved to only put me in danger last year when we got trapped in the church basement. “You still need to report it.”

  “And say what?” I laugh. “I can’t tell them who it is. Most people would at least have an idea, but not me. Is it a religious freak? Someone with a zombie fetish? Or it could be—”

  Gloria intercepts my escalating voice. “I think we have established that Caldwell isn’t the type to get his own hands dirty.”

  “He has minions,” I say. “It could be another Martin-drone.”

  “What happened to your arm?” Gloria asks softly.

  She sounds as tired as I feel.

  “I tripped and the brick fell on me. And there was glass.”

  “You tripped over a brick and fell on it?”

  I let out a long exhausted breath. “No. I tripped, holding a brick and then dropped it—on myself.” A long stretch of silence expands between us with the exception of the low click of Gloria’s water heater and Winston’s investigative snorts. “And I think I broke my house.”

  “You broke your house?” She asks, flatly.

  “Yeah, like all the electrical stuff.”

  She pushes away from her desk and starts to ascend the stairs. “A headache is coming. I need a drink.”

  I scoop up Winston, happy for an excuse to get out of that dark dank basement. By the time we reach the top of the stairs, Gloria is chugging a 2-liter of Coke like a beer at a frat party.

  I remember why I came. “Brinkley said you’d know what was next.”

  “Liza Miller is next.”

  “Is she a zombie?”

  Gloria gives me a warning glare. No one but Lane appreciates the z-word.

  “I don’t know what she is,” Gloria admits. The plastic coke bottle, which partially deflated in her ravenous sucking, pops back into place. Winston lets out a startled grunt from the floor and I give him a reassuring nudge with my foot.

  Her cheeks redden. “Brinkley should have planned this better. The three of us are not enough.”

  “Don’t Black Ops operate in small tactical units?”

  “You, Brinkley and I do not make a tactical unit. I’m surprised Lane and Ally aren’t doing more.”

  “Lane would help but he’s trying to get his certification and Ally—” I say. “I think she needs a vacation, not more work.”

  Gloria’s gaze narrows. “She still loves you.”

  I shrug and force a tight laugh. “Yeah, she’s just tired of my shit.”

  “She just has her own way of doing things,” Gloria says, twisting open a new 2-liter of Coke.

  Yeah, without me, I think. And then, it’s your own damn fault. Did you think she’d be happy you got all monogamous with Lane? Would you be happy?

  “No,” I murmur to myself because Gloria has stopped listening to my girl problems. Something else has darkened her features.

  “Any signs of the other player?” I ask, taking a guess.

  The other player is what we’ve taken to calling the mystery A.M.P. up Caldwell’s sleeve. He—or she—has already managed to outsmart Gloria a couple of times. That can’t be easy on the ego.

  “I want to be sure,” she says.

  “You’re the best at what you do, G,” I say. “You were just caught off guard. We all were.

  How they hell were we supposed to know someone was viewing you? We couldn’t have.”

  I try to reassure her, but she still looks so defeated, standing in her yellow kitchen with its aged yellow counter tops and yellow-brown floor. Even the fridge is the color of spicy mustard and the cabinets—you guessed it—yellow metal matching her card table turned dining set. Only the white sheer curtain covering the small window above the kitchen sink looks like it’s been bought in this decade.

  My phone goes off and Lane’s picture appears in the screen. It hits me like a thump in the chest that Ally hasn’t called me all day. She used to call multiple times a day to check on me, and that was only when she couldn’t be with me.

  Maybe she really is, slowly and painfully, untangling herself from my life.

  Ally


  I’m exhausted. My limbs are little more than wet bags of sand.

  The stairwell to my apartment building is dim and quiet as I trudge my grocery bags up the stairs and then down the narrow hallway to my door. My keys are impossibly loud as they jingle and clank against the wooden frame and metal lock.

  As soon as I close the door behind me, I fall against it. Home.

  I feel like I haven’t seen it for years.

  Immediately, I dig through the bags for the chocolate and cleave a giant truffle in half with my teeth. I put on the kettle for a cup of tea and while it builds steam, I put away my groceries.

  Only then do I settle into my fluffy chaise by the balcony. The heat of the tea warms the cup and my hands. There are no windows because my apartment is an interior room, but the balcony lets in the light of orange streetlamps framing the parking lot and the high half-moon above.

  Jesse may not have a choice.

  I remember the night of her suicide. I’ve played it over and over in my head many times. I said go to sleep. We’ll talk at school. Because it was in the middle of the night and my mom had yelled at me because she’d called so late. But I should have known something was wrong. I should have known that slur in her voice wasn’t sleepiness. But how could I have known she was calling to tell me goodbye.

  And then there were the dreams. Jesse is always in this white night gown. The blaze of the pole barn her father built before we met, before he died, lit up the whole night. In the dream, she is always walking toward it, slowly, deliberately, as if entranced.

  I’m always behind, screaming and screaming her name. I beg her to stop, beg her not to go into the fire but she does anyway.

  Every time.

  And I can only watch her nightgown catch first and burn.