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

by Kory M. Shrum

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  “I’m fine,” he says but all the color has gone out of his face. When he looks up at me I can’t tell if I’m seeing anger or fear. “I know you’ll find her. And bring her back. We should contact someone.”

  “No,” Gloria says and she looks him dead in the eye. “No.”

  Dr. York looks at his shoes. And there it is, the affection he has for her. She drives him crazy. I know because I’ve heard earful after earful on that score. Her crass tongue, her misanthropic, offhand way with people, her tendency for melodrama. But he cares about her.

  He flashes me a tight smile and says. “Come with me, Ms. Jackson. Let’s put you together so you can get back out there.”

  Gloria slips down off the examination table, clutching the back of the gown closed with her one good arm while the other hand hangs limp in her socket. She stops by the pile of her clothes and releases the gown long enough to hand me a cell phone, the one she retrieved from her house before I brought her here to the hospital.

  “Call the first number,” Gloria says and her voice is low as she glances at the open door to confirm the doctor has stepped out. “Tell him everything I told you.”

  And before I can ask her who I’m calling, she grabs the fold of her gown and disappears into the hallway.

  I scroll through the phone’s history and see the number. It’s not a familiar number and it has no contact name associated with it because Gloria’s contact address book is completely empty.

  I hit send and for some reason my heart speeds up. On the second ring a man answers.

  “You’re late,” the voice said. The unmistakably male voice that I know immediately, having heard it for years. “Talk to me.”

  “Brinkley?” I ask.

  “Alice,” he says and the irritation is gone. “What’s happened?”

  Jesse

  It’s hard to keep my mouth shut as we cross the lobby past three desk clerks. I search the neutral tones and stock furniture, and eye the guests checking in. A woman carries her bags toward the elevator while a couple sits on a couch looking at a map together. None of them look like they can do a damn thing to help me.

  And unless he’s invisible Caldwell isn’t here. If invisibility turns out to be his special gift, I’m never showering or sleeping again.

  Liza grabs me roughly under my arm, her fingers biting into my flesh. “Don’t even think about doing something stupid.”

  Heat floods my face and I shrug her off of me. Even though she’s killed someone, even though she thinks she’s tough shit with her little powers, I couldn’t care less. If Gloria saw Caldwell nearby and spent what was possibly one of her last breaths warning me, then he is my real problem.

  Liza leads me to the edge of the parking lot, out into a large field beside the hotel. The field isn’t endless of course. Beyond it is a thin veil of trees revealing a neighborhood with quaint homes.

  We are near the center of the grassy expanse when she stops walking.

  “I’ll tell you how this works,” she says. “You have to use your power.”

  “Why?” I search the dark shadows of the trees at the edge of the field and my flesh crawls. Could he be in there? Crouching behind some bush or something? The parking lot is empty except for a myriad of parked cars or maybe he isn’t here yet. After all, Gloria doesn’t do exact times.

  “It opens the channel,” she says. “Are you listening?”

  I quit looking around and humor her with a tight smile. “Channels open. Show my juju.”

  She kneels and pulls a knife out of her boot. Just great.

  “I’m guessing you plan to scramble my brains with that after you use your power on me?” I ask.

  “And you said you were a slow learner.”

  I give my best nonchalant shrug. I even smile. “I have my moments. Well, come on then. Let’s be stupid and do this in broad daylight.”

  “This is not a joke,” she says.

  “I’m staring at a tiny girl with a dull pocket knife,” I say. “I don’t feel inclined to make the first move.”

  “Are you kidding?” Her knuckles go white as she twists the knife handle in her grip. The air around us smells like diesel and the cement of the parking lot. A fragrant breeze rustles the leaves in the trees. The hairs on my neck stand up.

  He’s watching. He’s got to be watching. Stop, I tell myself. Don’t get hysterical.

  “If you could just have killed me you would have done it in the hotel room. But here you are waiting for me to do something. If I don’t do it, you don’t win,” I say. “I’ll just wait it out, thanks.” And I’ll wait for him to show his face.

  “That’s your logic?’ She replies, indignant. “I didn’t kill you in the room because he told me to wait. He wanted your friend and I wanted you. That was the deal.”

  The deal. Liza is too stupid to realize she isn’t calling the shots. She didn’t make a deal with Micah. That’s like saying she made a deal with Caldwell’s dog. Who do you think the pooch listens to?

  “So why bring me out here? Why not just pull a double homicide in the room?” I ask. I keep checking my periphery for movements, a sign.

  “He wanted to be alone with her. He said I should bring you outside.”

  “Then he wants us outside,” I say. Why? Why? Because we are two sitting ducks in a field. I crouch, getting low to the ground, looking around me desperately. But I see no one.

  “Get up. I won’t fall for any stupid tricks.”

  “We should hide,” I say. I look at the thick trees. I have a feeling about those trees. “I know you don’t believe me, but I think this is a trap to catch us both.” BOGO, man. Instead of listening like a calm rational person. She screams like a banshee and runs at me.

  I sweep my leg up and kick her in the leg at the right moment. She comes down. Then I do an aikido move, kotegaeshi, that bends the wrist to one side and I’m able to free the knife from her hand. But I don’t stop here because Brinkley told me to always take my opponents weapons first and he included a great many things in the category of weapons. A hand is a weapon, a leg, if they are kickers—and for Liza, her fingers. I saw her do that terrifying snappy thing. And I know she can use it again if she wants.

  I break the first two fingers on both her hands by twisting them back. I hear the snap, and her furious cry. Grabbing the knife and snapping her fingers only takes seconds.

  “Stop screaming,” I say. “And listen to me.”

  “Bitch,” she says. “My fucking hands!”

  She holds up the bent fingers already swelling to a grotesque size. Okay, I might have overdone it a bit.

  “I couldn’t have you snapping,” I say. “Now listen to me.”

  “I can only snap with my right hand! With my fucking middle finger! You broke three others fingers!”

  “How was I supposed to know?” I say. “It’s not like you explained the parameters of your snapping abilities.”

  “I’m going to kill you!” she screams and her face is so red it looks like it will explode.

  Something hits me and cuts off my words. It’s like an invisible wall pushing me down, knocking me back. My feet actually leave the ground for a moment before reconnecting hard, knocking the air out of my lungs as my shoulder blades carve a space for themselves in the dirt.

  Liza is on her feet, a screaming bundle of rage. The ground shakes and I realize what is happening.

  “No, no. This is what he wants. He wants you to show him what you can do,” I scream but my voice doesn’t carry over her own battle cry.

  The ground rises, funnels up like an anthill growing from the earth. Liza’s chest heaves with ragged breaths and she looks crazy with her wild hair and clenched fists. Isn’t she worried about witnesses? Maybe she hasn’t had her five minutes of fame, but I have and I hated the aftermath.

  I don’t stand from the crouching position I’ve resumed even though the anthill keeps growing. I can’t decide what to do. If I run I will be exposed
and Caldwell might take that opportunity to show himself and put the smack down on us. But I can’t just sit here with Liza raising hell.

  “I’m sorry I broke your fingers,” I say. “But I need you to believe me. This is a trap.”

  A wall of dirt hits me from behind. A whirlwind of grass and clay hits me in the face and hair. I’m spitting up dirt furiously, about to be crushed under the weight of it. I’ll suffocate.

  All I can do it cover my face and feel the weight build.

  Jesse.

  The sound of falling dirt fades, softens and begins to sound more like wings. With my eyes covered, the brown becomes black and I can almost imagine the black feathers stretching around me blackening out the sky.

  Let me in.

  He’s here, he’s here and she won’t listen.

  Let me in, Jesse. Let me protect you. In my fear I forget what it means to be sane, that it means keeping the walls up and convincing yourself what you know is real, isn’t really real. I told myself for a year that Gabriel wasn’t real—that I was stressed and scared and I invented him. But now, I’m scared again. The fear is back.

  I reach out for Gabriel, the way a person reaches out for a light switch in a dark room, fingers groping for something they can’t see. I’m filled with that moment of panic when I can’t find it, when nothing happens.

  The dirt stops falling. The weight is heavy but not crushing. Coughing and spitting, I manage to pull myself out of the heaping mound of trembling earth. I turn toward Liza but she isn’t there.

  “Liza?” I say. I spit more dirt from my mouth. “Liza?”

  Then I see her body lying motionless in the dirt. Without thinking, I jump up and run toward her. I go down on my knees beside her and seeing her like that, she looks like a kid.

  Just a kid.

  I roll her over in my hands and see something protruding from the side of her neck, like a miniature dart. I pluck it from the skin with my fingers. “What the hell is this?”

  Jesse! Gabriel’s scream makes my spine jerk. I suck air.

  Something stings the side of my neck. A cold chill runs down my body, making me shiver and cringe. My fingers go to my neck with a fumbling urgency. I’m sure I was just bit by some weird bug until I feel it. Something large and attached to me. I pluck it from my neck and a small dart like the one in Liza’s throat rolls to a stop in the middle of my cupped hand.

  The world slows to a standstill. It blurs as if suddenly made of paint and a giant hand smears everything with one angry swipe. I try to stand but I’m dizzy. The world is moving on a tilt.

  Only a single dark shape, more of a shadowy blob than anything, moves toward me.

  My knees give and I fall right into someone’s arms.

  “Gabriel?” I ask and wonder how my hallucination would be capable of catching me.

  “No,” the voice says. “Try again.”

  Ally

  Brinkley agrees to meet me at the Dunkin Donuts off of 21st Avenue. Dr. York assures me that it will be a couple of hours before Gloria is stitched and braced and ready to go. No matter how much she protests, he will give her a heavy dose of meds and make her sleep for a few hours before discharging her. Sleep is the best medicine he says and having watched Jesse rehabilitate countless wounds in her own hibernation states, I must concur.

  The parking lot is dark, with halos of white light casting circles upon the black cement. When I step from the car, I button my red coat immediately. My breath billows white in front of my face like puffs rising from a winter chimney. I hear his voice first, before ever seeing him.

  “Why do you have Winston in your car?”

  “It’s been a long night,” I say.

  A dark shape hangs at the edge of the nearest white halo spotlighting an empty parking space. He doesn’t want his face to be obvious in such a public place. I concede and cross the spotlight first.

  “Where is she?” he asks.

  I tell him everything Gloria told me to tell him. He’s staring at his shoes like the way a little boy who is in trouble will stare down at his feet, head hung low.

  When I stop talking, he lifts his head, throws it back like he would howl at the first rays of light cracking the horizon. Instead he releases a long exhale and his breath rolls up into the sky.

  “Fuck,” he says. A very precise but accurate assessment. “What I wouldn’t give to still have that tracking node in her neck.”

  I’m not sorry he removed it. It was inserted for a different mission and it hadn’t helped us one bit. Worse, it turned into this thing that Jesse played with. It was gross watching her shift it under the skin in her neck.

  I release the anger I’ve been holding like a breath under water. “How could you be so stupid?”

  He opens his mouth to speak and usually I’m very good about not interrupting. Unlike Jesse who prefers to get her point across before anyone has had a chance to speak.

  “You sent her out-of-state to chase down a girl with NRD. Surely it occurred to you they might cross paths with Caldwell.”

  “But—”

  I barreled on. “After what happened last year, you didn’t hesitate to think that perhaps this was another trap? No, forget that. Of course it was a trap! Everything to do with Caldwell is trap. How could you be so predictable and reckless? How do you know Micah wasn’t counting on Liza and Jesse convening in Ohio and him capitalizing on the two-for-one special!”

  “I sent Gloria to protect her.”

  “Gloria almost died!” The neon orange OPEN sign flashes on and Brinkley takes a step deeper into the parking lot shadows. But dawn is almost here. Soon there won’t be any shadows. “Where were you?”

  “I had affairs to tend to in Memphis,” he replies and I can tell he didn’t mean to say this. “Unfortunately, it couldn’t wait. I needed them to handle this alone.”

  “I hope those affairs were worth it,” I hiss. “If Jesse dies it better be for a good reason.”

  He can’t look at me. “I told Gloria to look for Caldwell.”

  My anger erupts. What began as a slow irritated boil, a collected heat around my face lashes out. The heat grows from warm to flaming. I’m seeing red. “I know it’s incomprehensible to you, but Micah is the better AMP. There I said it and I’ll keep saying it if it means we quit making stupid mistakes. We cannot just rush in because Gloria gives the clear anymore. She can be wrong and she might be wrong again. I don’t know what it is about this guy but he gets her every time.”

  Brinkley runs his hands through his hair and it is this small gesture more than anything that makes me realize he is real. This isn’t some bizarre dream I’m having out of exhaustion or panic over Jesse. Brinkley is alive and standing before me, not just someone Jesse spoke about like a ghost. I was in on the secret that he’d faked his death, supposedly perishing in the basement though the rest of us survived. And though I’d known he was alive, this is the first time I’ve seen him.

  He looks like shit, no longer the slightly plump guy I knew as Jesse’s FBRD handler. He’s lost at least 20 pounds, maybe more though it’s always difficult to tell with men. He’s quit shaving for sure. His dark features are further exaggerated by deep circles of exhaustion. He has more gray around his temples than I remember.

  “You look terrible.”

  “You’re more charming than I remember,” he says. “Has Jesse worn off on you?”

  “I am angry and I am tired.”

  “We need somewhere safe to talk,” he says.

  “Follow me.” I climb into my car and back out of the parking spot. He climbs into his car and follows me.

  I have a few reasons for bringing Brinkley to Jesse’s versus back to my place. First, I don’t know if Nikki is there. Secondly, it’s the only other place I have a key for besides my own apartment and the office. We couldn’t go to the office because it was too public and because Lane might be there. I was pretty sure Lane knew he was alive, but I knew he was unaware that Jesse had gone missing. Lane has a savior complex an
d is a guns-blazing kind of guy. He would probably be brash and irrational in his method of retrieving Jesse. If he could retrieve her at all. And I have zero interest in dealing with anyone’s hysterical boyfriend right now.

  Besides, I want to return Winston to his environment. Poor guy has had a long night.

  But I didn’t expect it to hurt to walk into Jesse’s place without her. This is a surprise.

  The house smells like her, something sweet, floral with a hint of citrus clean beneath. It’s hard to describe her scent, but it is something like fresh laundry and jasmine until she started dating Lane. Now it’s clean laundry and boy.

  Brinkley insists on checking the house before we speak. I let him, doing my best to assure him that the broken glass will be repaired by Friday. I’m almost asleep on the couch when he finally joins me.

  We set up at the kitchen table. Beneath the light of a Coleman lantern, Brinkley spreads his papers over the smooth table top. Isn’t as much paper work as what Nikki and I have been working with, and nowhere near as orderly. Nikki and I have been working from crisp printouts kept pristine in organized folders. Brinkley’s notes are a hodgepodge of scraps: gas receipts with scribbling on the back, motel stationary, half-sheets of ripped paper in a variety of ink colors. Very few sheets of paper look like they came from a computer at all—and even these have been folded so much that deep creases mar the pages.

  I’m struck by how bizarrely quiet this place is without electricity or Jesse. I’ve long been aware she was a bit of a force. The way she moves about is loud and noticeable, but it’s a noise I’ve grown accustomed to.

  “I’ve put out a bulletin. If she appears anywhere public: video cameras, financial transactions, we’ll know,” Brinkley says.

  “Good idea,” I say. “Unless he’s got her in a hole somewhere.”

  “We’ll have to rely on Gloria for that,” Brinkley says.

  “But Micah—”

  “Stop doubting her!” His voice is a sharp slap against my ear. It makes me shut up if nothing else. It takes me a moment to recover and he is already talking again. “Yes, Micah is working against us. Yes, he is the better AMP—technically.” He shrugs his shoulders inside his leather jacket as if trying to relax a cramp. “But you can’t lose faith in Gloria just because she got her teeth kicked in. She will never forgive herself if something happens to Jesse. Do not make her feel worse.”