And my house is too damn quiet. I keep going into rooms and hitting light switches only to have nothing happen. I should have told Ally about this electrical problem before she took a vacation. Maybe I can get Lane to do it. And the window. I can’t forget about the window. What good is a lock with a big damn hole by my door? I should also consider an alarm.
But I’ll think about all that later, after I talk to Lane.
My downtown office isn’t that exciting. There’s a parking lot in the back, connected to Broadway by a short, narrow alley. I park in the lot, then walk around to the storefront of Full Bleed, Lane’s comic book store. It’s how we met actually. He owns the building and I rent one of the offices. Brinkley chose the location, so it isn’t like I chose my office space for the hottie landlord.
Though it is totally something I would do.
I find Lane standing by a glass case talking action figures with a kid that’s probably sixteen years old. The kid wears black jeans and wide shoes matching the red skateboard leaning against his thigh. The kid points at something in the case and gestures wildly. I know this for the geekspeak it is and don’t interrupt.
The place is tidy and well-lit. Lane takes good care of it. Some comic book stores feel cluttered and dark to me, like a mother’s basement inhabited by a troll. But Lane’s store feels like what it is, a store. The center tables have comic books alphabetized like CDs and you can flip through each of the plastic-coated volumes. In the glass case, the cash register sits on is where the role-playing dice, collectables and anything Lane is nervous about getting stolen are kept. Along the walls are other action figures and paraphernalia for this or that series or show. In the corner, are two kids playing the newest version of Call of Duty: Ghosts.
That is the extent of Lane’s generosity, the option to preview most games before purchasing them.
After the skater leaves without buying anything, I approach Lane.
“Hey.” I think this is an acceptable greeting. Obviously not.
“I’m working.” His snotty tone is hard to overlook. Because Lane is usually incredibly sweet, it makes his tantrums more obvious.
“O-kay.” I know waiting it out will just cause a bigger fight later. “What did I do?”
Lane plops onto the high stool behind the cabinet. “Nothing. You just did your job. I’m doing my job. Everything is fine.”
At least it’s something to go on. “So you’re mad about Jones.”
“You saved a man’s life,” Lane says, but his jaw is working on an invisible strap of leather.
“Yet here we are,” I tell him.
“I’m not mad,” he spits.
“Oh really?” I ask. I touch my forehead with my index finger. “That’s not what this vein in your forehead here says.”
“Just drop it, okay? You don’t understand.”
I shift my weight, leaning against the counter to try and alleviate the pain in my hip. Freaking rigor mortis.
“I get it. You didn’t complete the replacement. You’re disappointed and you hate that your license will be postponed. But you will get it, I promise.”
“You’ve replaced 100 people—”
“84,” I correct. “Jones was 84.”
“84,” Lane hisses, venomous. “None of them died.”
“And you’ve only replaced like 8 or 9,” I say.
“11,” he counters.
“I lost Nessa to the same man who’d stabbed you,” I say. “And I almost lost you.”
He gives me a look. A look I have never seen before.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing.”
“Look, I’m just saying I think Nessa would disagree,” I say. “Just because you got lucky and sprouted your NRD wings doesn’t mean everyone walked out of that church alive.”
“And what if I hadn’t?” Lane asks. He looks me dead in the eye and it’s almost a challenge.
I don’t understand. “What if you hadn’t what?”
“What if I hadn’t sprouted my NRD wings?”
I lean my weight against him. “Then I’d be a really sad girl.”
Lane makes a show of cleaning the fingerprints off the glass. I keep touching a corner, leaving a big thumbprint for him to wipe off until annoyed he looks up at me. When he opens his mouth to argue, I stick my tongue in it. What starts off as another attempt to annoy him, turns into a good long kiss, until the last bit of fight is gone from him and I feel his arms finally wrap around my waist.
“Wooo,” a chorus rings out from behind us. The boys playing the video game, a boy and a girl actually, have the game on pause, watching us. “Go, Mr. Lane.”
Lane grins, caught off guard. “Are you going to buy that game or what? I’ve let you play it for hours.”
The boy looking worried that he is about to lose his game privileges turns back to the game immediately. The girl is more reluctant, grinning at us for several heartbeats longer.
Lane pulls me into his arms. It’s rough and possessive but it feels good. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be mad that you saved him.”
“I still like you. And don’t be so hard on yourself. We can’t all be as awesome as moi.”
His grin falls at the corners, and bit by bit draws itself up into a pout.
“Oh come on,” I say. Man, I’m just saying the wrong thing left and right today. “I was joking.”
“But that’s it, isn’t it? Death-replacing is your thing,” he says.
“I’ve been doing it for years!” I say. “You’ve been doing it for months.”
“But even from the beginning,” he says. “You’ve been good. When I found out about my NRD I thought ‘Awesome’. This is it. This is my something.”
“I thought comics were your something.” He talks about being on the other side of the page a lot, being the artist, not the seller, but he isn’t sure how to launch himself in that direction. He’s the type to want more, the next thing, no matter what it is.
“Yeah, maybe. It’s becoming clear that I’m not meant to be an agent,” he says.
“Why can’t you be both?” I say.
“I’m not like you,” he says. “I wish you could see yourself in action.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” he says. “You can tell the difference between an Olympian running for the gold and Joe Schmoe out for a jog.”
“Who else have you seen death-replace?” I ask.
“No one, but—” he begins. I don’t intend to let him get farther.
“Exactly, no one. The girl who trained me, Rachel, she did like 200 something replacements. She makes us all look like amateurs.”
“You elec-tro-cute people,” he says, emphasizing each syllable. “You are different.”
I drop my voice low. “You’re not supposed to mention that.”
Lane glances at the kids playing the video game before murmuring. “They can’t hear me.”
But I know better. Someone is always listening. And I am a little different, aren’t I? A little freaking weird. I have the crazy vision, thermo-whatever. I have the gut twinge cramps that come just before the death itself. And my hallucinations—
“About that,” I say. “Do you know anything about electricity? Wirings and stuff?”
“Why?”
“My house,” I begin, but I’m distracted—by the big black crow that has landed on a light post outside the store, as the remains of the day bleed out. The last time I saw a crow, it appeared heralding Gabriel’s appearance in my life before everything went to shit.
And though this crow doesn’t look supernatural in anyway, and I’m almost certain that it’s just a bird on a light post, not some messenger that the worst is yet to come, I curl deeper into Lane’s embrace. It’s the way the black feathers shimmer the suggestion of cascading light, like seeing the world in thermal. Like seeing the shadow of something approaching around the corner, before the something is actually there.
Gabriel. I don’t know how I know but Gabriel is ba
ck, circling somewhere just beneath the surface and I don’t know how long I can hold him back. Because I realize that’s what I’ve been doing. Holding him back, pretending I’m okay and normal-ish again. But it isn’t working anymore.
“Your house?” Lane asks, frowning down at me.
“You were saying something about your house?”
But his voice is so far away.
Ally
I pull up outside the safe house and see Nikki’s car parked by the dumpster. Seeing the deep blue trim makes my heart lurch and I stay in the car a tad too long before deciding to go up.
Thighs burning from the climb, I rap twice on the outer door and it opens. Parish gives a little salute without looking away from the monitors. It’s a Burger King spread today, not McDonald’s, covering the work station. I try not to stare too hard at the crumpled orange wrappers, French fry boxes or seeping soda cups. But I admit I’m a little horrified by the way he eats.
“Where’s Jeremiah?” I ask.
Parish is particularly fixated on a camera in the upper left corner. It’s a small dark woman and a man conversing in black and white pixels like an old movie. White words appear across the bottom as their mouths move.
“What is that?” I ask. I point at the monitor in question.
“Closed Caption,” he says. “I don’t speak Spanish.
Delaney is translating remotely.”
I recognize the name, but I can’t recall the face or where he’s located. Chicago? Portland?
“Where is that coming from?” I ask.
“Arizona,” he asks. Then as if he remembered my first question. He waves toward the back. “They’re with the bitch.”
“Don’t call her a bitch,” I say.
Parish huffs. “She spit on me when I offered her my last burger. She’s a bitch.”
“Maybe she’s vegetarian,” I offer, already moving away toward the dim hallway.
“Vegetarian? That shit’s for the birds.”
I pat his shoulder in friendly way. “Birds eat insects actually, and sometimes smaller birds. They aren’t vegetarian at all. And Jesse is vegetarian. I’m going to tell her you said that.”
He grumbles through a half smile, then leans closer to the monitors as if trying to read something unclear. His mouth moves slightly but no sound comes out.
I inch toward the torture room, musing on my own ignorance, how just days before I hadn’t even known this room existed, believing it nothing more than a glorified mop closet. And now—it’s amazing what the presence of a woman and a couple of chairs can do to change the purpose of a room.
Jeremiah has her hair wrapped up in his hand as he knocks her hard across the jaw. The cheek blooms immediately, flowers purple and the long stretch of her exposed neck and the jaw bone that protrudes blushes deeply.
My hand goes over my mouth and a small sound escapes my lips. The hallway is suddenly cold as my skin ices. The blood in the corner of her mouth catches the overhead light and could be mistaken for smeared lipstick, if not for the thick moist appearance.
I look away from Jeremiah and the woman to Nikki.
She’s stoic, almost casual, in the corner as she watches the two of them. It is strange to see her that way—so cold and hard—when she is so warm with me. She says something to Jeremiah and he lets go of her hair and straightens. I can’t hear her words through the glass and realize the room must be sound proofed. Jeremiah regains his composure and pulls at the bottom of his thin sweater. The woman says something and Jeremiah tenses but doesn’t say anything.
Instead he turns his back on her toward a tray on the low table behind them. It’s a fold out dinner tray more than anything. The horror digs its claws into my spine as he lifts a silver scalpel from the tray.
I’m rapping hard against the glass before I realize what I’m doing. Both Jeremiah and Nikki look up, then at each other. The woman looks alarmed and I can’t bear it. The wide whites of her eyes in fearful anticipation. Her hair has grown greasy and damp in the warm room. I could only imagine how sore her body is from sitting in that chair for days. Her chaffed wrists, red, swollen, and peeling, are hard to look at, but easier than her bruised face. And I have to look. It’s the least I can do.
Jeremiah and Nikki both come through the door. Jeremiah’s face tightens in anger when he sees me. At least Nikki still looks concerned, if a little worried.
“What is it?” Jeremiah says.
“I have news,” I begin. I realize I’m shaking and my voice trembles with the rest of me. “I know of a child Caldwell took. It’s a little girl that Jesse replaced recently.”
Jeremiah’s anger recedes and his questions begin. I answer what I can but I don’t know any more than what Regina told me.
“The father is uncooperative,” I add.
“No surprise,” Nikki says.
I’m doing my best not to look through the glass back at the woman. But it’s harder to look into Jeremiah’s eyes than I thought it’d be. “I’m hoping we can make arrangements for the mother and the child, if we find her. Is there somewhere we can send them?”
I already know the answer is yes. We’d send them away like we’ve sent away dozens of others. But I need Jeremiah to share his rationale. I need him to act human before I run out of this building and never return.
“If she was taken yesterday then it wasn’t like the other children.”
“No, it wasn’t,” I say, and I tell him about the men who collided with Regina before taking her daughter away. None of us marvel over the audacity to run over a woman and take a child in broad daylight, the lack of police involvement and so forth. Caldwell has deep pockets and we’ve known that for a long time.
“Either Julia is a special circumstance,” Jeremiah says. “or this woman isn’t as integral to his plan as we thought.”
My heart leaps at the opportunity. “Let me take over.”
“Excuse me?” Jeremiah shifts his weight from one leg to the other.
“Beating her to death isn’t getting anywhere. Let me investigate this Lovett lead and see if we can find the children that way. Just put her on ice for now.”
Please, please, please. Let me show you this isn’t the right way.
“I’ll help her,” Nikki says. “We’ll go through the intel we already have and try to pinpoint a better connection. We can collaborate with the mother, get descriptions, run them through and follow the leads. A traffic camera might have gotten the plate.”
Jeremiah opens and closes his hand. I wonder if it’s his boredom with torture more than my well-timed request that works in my favor.
“Fine, but you only have a few days. After that we either need to transport her or kill her.”
He pushes past me toward the large front room where Parish sits at the monitors. I turn and watch the two men exchange words. Soft fingers brush my abdomen, making me turn back.
“I know you’re trying to save this woman,” Nikki says. She leans against the wall with the door and watches me with careful eyes. “Let me help you.”
“I’m trying to save a lot of people,” I say. I sound bitchy even to myself. But I know Jeremiah would have never let me take the case if she hadn’t spoken up for me. I squeeze her hand for just the briefest of moments.
“You can’t save them all,” Nikki warns.
“It doesn’t mean I won’t try,” I say, but I’m terrified that she is right.
Jesse
It’s 12:30 at night and I’m gobbling my stack of pancakes while Brinkley catches me up on the status of the Lovett hard drive. He managed to decipher most of it and it has given him two pertinent pieces of information. But it’s hard to take him seriously in his current disguise, a ridiculous disguise if you ask me: long strawberry-blond beard and mustache, dark shades, and Rasta beanie hat. He’s kept the leather jacket, but he’s changed the collared dress shirt for a Bob Marley T-shirt and jeans full of holes. His boots are the same black combat boots as always.
“I have reason to believe t
his is the list of potential targets,” he says, the beard bobbing.
I cut one more bite of my pancake stack and shovel it in. “This is a million pages long.”
“Look up the word hyperbole,” he says. “It’s only 44 pages.”
I roll my eyes. “Yeah but look at how tiny the font is. It must be 100 names per page.”
He shrugs. “Roughly. Your name is on the first page.”
I was about to add more ketchup to my hashbrowns but shove my plate aside instead. “Let me see.”
I am on the first page, second name.
“Why am I the second name?” I ask.
“I think it’s ranked in order of importance,” he says. “I would consider anyone on the first couple of pages top priority.”
“Is Lane—”
“Page 44,” he says, stroking his fake beard.
Brinkley has to wear a disguise whenever in public for a couple of reasons. The most important is that he’s supposed to be dead. According to the FBRD’s record, he died in the line of duty, protecting his charge—me. He even has a grave marker and everything at Mt. Olivet.
“At least he isn’t a priority,” I say. I exhale a breath I’ve been holding and my shoulder blades slide away from my ears.
“He isn’t the only one we know,” he says.
It’s hard to read Brinkley’s face in this getup of his. But I know the bad news voice.
“Who?”
I scan the pages again, more closely. I sweep my eyes down the column and don’t see it. Then I look again and rely on the point of my finger to separate the names out of one big alphabet soup blob into individual lines.
Name: Alice Gallagher. Last Known Location: USA/Nashville. Priority 8
“She’s number 8,” I say. How could I miss that? “If I’m number 2, how the hell is she number 8? She’s not even a zombie!”
“Keep your voice down.” Brinkley’s cheeks reddened ever so slightly at the z-word.
“But they only know about Ally because of me and I’m not even the most important person,” I say. I look at the names again. “Liza Miller is number one. Wait, I know that name—”
Brinkley stops me from saying more. “Gloria’s trail is hot. Not that I’m surprised.”
Dying by the Hour (A Jesse Sullivan Novel Book 2) Page 9