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

by Kory M. Shrum

  “Oh hell!” I exclaim, slapping a frustrated hand against the steering wheel.

  “What?”

  “I forgot to walk Winston,” I say. “Again.”

  We hit a pothole that I fail to swerve around and Lane pops up and hits his head on the ceiling. I can’t stop myself from smiling.

  “Do you really hate me that much?” he asks.

  “I don’t hate anyone. I don’t have it in me,” I say. “Unfortunately.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?” I demand. I hate it when people don’t know what they’re apologizing for.

  The orange street lights fill then fade, fill then fade as I cut through the streets to Gloria’s.

  “For letting, Jesse die the other day,” he says. “I don’t want you to think I wanted her to do it for me. I really tried but for some reason it wasn’t working.”

  “It happens.”

  “Not to Jesse,” he says. “She can do it every time. No matter what.”

  My chest tightens at the sound of her name. Not just the name but the way he says it.

  “Yeah, she’s something else,” I say and I mean the words to be sarcastic and almost funny but they come out tight and strained.

  “I’m sorry I blamed you,” he says. His pale eyes are round in the dark of the car as he looks across the seats at me, one hand bracing on the dashboard and the other on the ceiling above, just in case I hit another hole.

  “I wasn’t even there,” I say, defensively.

  “No, last year,” he says. “I was so pissed that she chose to save you in the basement.”

  I look away from the road long enough to scowl at him. “What are you talking about?”

  We hit another hole and Lane hits his head on the ceiling despite his efforts to brace himself. He grimaces. “Can you slow down?”

  “No.”

  He adjusts his position, slouching down and bracing his legs against the dash. “In the attack, Jesse chose to save you.”

  “What’s your point?” I ask. “If she’d chosen you or Brinkley, I’d be dead!”

  “No,” Lane groans. “I’m not saying I wish it were different. I’m glad that it worked out, but the fact is she didn’t know I had NRD. So she chose you believing I’d probably die.”

  “You could’ve survived.”

  “I was stabbed in the chest!” he exclaims.

  I take a deep breath and try to calm my nerves. I’m going to explode if I don’t take this down a notch. Hold on, Gloria. “I still don’t get your point.”

  “I’m just saying that it was hard watching her choose you. She left me for dead. We’re all bleeding to death and the girl I love saves someone else. It was harsh.”

  My chest tightens and I don’t think it’s because I just whipped a 90 degree turn onto Harding Place. “It looks like she chose you from where I sit.”

  “Yeah, it’s a matter of perspective, I guess. I just wanted to say I was sorry for blaming you for that. I’m glad she chose you and that you aren’t dead. You take good care of her. You’re a great friend.”

  “Let’s be clear,” I say as I make the final turn into Gloria’s neighborhood. “I think we both know that I don’t want to be just her friend. And if you hadn’t given her the damn ultimatum, I wouldn’t be just her friend.”

  His mouth opens and closes. Finally the words have stopped coming out. Thank God.

  “I’m glad that you don’t despise me for living, but you’ll just have to forgive me for not being more appreciative of your magnanimity.”

  The gravel spins under my tires as I slam on the brakes. Whatever Lane is about to say goes unheard because I’m already out of the car and running up the stairs to Gloria’s dark house.

  Jesse

  Liza screams. I don’t know what I can do, why I should even care to save her after what she did to me and Gloria, but I still have to try because no one deserves to have someone in their head like that. No one. I stumble toward the large door but I don’t make it. A warning shot cracks open the great room.

  “Stand down,” a disembodied voice says. It’s male and it is somewhere up near the ceiling. Only then do I remember the red beams of light and Caldwell’s last threat.

  No point in storming through the door for her then. They’ll fire a bullet or sedation dart quicker than I can get through the heavy door and then I won’t be of help to anyone, including myself. And who knows what horrors lie beyond the door itself. I have to be smart about this.

  Liza screams again and it sounds as if someone is peeling the flesh off her bones. And maybe that is exactly what’s happening.

  My breathing starts to go again. It’s always the first thing to go. I feel faint and stumble.

  You must be calm. Gather strength. They are looking for weakness.

  Gabriel’s voice again and I start to feel him like a presence behind me but when I turn no one is there.

  “He wants me to hear her screaming.” My lip quivers and I hate myself for being so weak and pathetic.

  A Gabriel-shaped shadow becomes a solid dark silhouette at the edge of a column, a thick line pulling away and forming. But it doesn’t quite become alive. I can help you, Jesse. I am here to keep you safe. You need only let me in.

  “I don’t want anyone else inside my head,” I say. Even though it’s pretty clear my head is a total waste.

  The screams come again, more agonizing. I have to get out of this room. Pulsing will get me squat. I’m pretty sure guns will still shoot even without laser pointers after all. And my luck I’d get shot and wake up somewhere worse than this creepy ass ballroom.

  I shout up at the rafters. “I need to pee.”

  A pause.

  “I’m going to pee on the floor if you don’t tell me where the bathroom is,” I yell. As long as I’m yelling I can’t hear Liza dying in the other room.

  Still no answer. So I do what I know I have to, prove I’m not bluffing. I undo the belt on my pants, yank them down as if I am about to squat. Of course, I’m forced to show my bare ass before I get an answer.

  “Stop! Do not urinate on the floor.”

  “Then tell me where to go.” I try not to look super relieved. I don’t even pull my pants up until a door on the side of the room opens.

  A woman, as sleek and well-polished as Caldwell emerges with two armed guards. She has warm brown hair and glasses and looks more like a librarian than someone who should be escorted by guards. The closer she clicks those little black pumps toward me I realize she looks familiar. I’ve seen her somewhere. And it isn’t until she stops in front of me and says, “Ms. Sullivan, if you would follow me please,” that I realize I’ve seen her on TV behind Caldwell.

  She’s Caldwell’s assistant. She is his Ally.

  But according to the horrific memory Caldwell mind-raped me with, she was also in the detainment camps. I have a very strong visual of her arm being sawed off by a man in a surgeon’s apron while she screams. Her eyes wide and rolling back in her head, it’s clear she isn’t under any kind of anesthesia. Worse she screamed for my father, her panicked bleating as clear in my mind as if I’d heard it myself: Eric! Eric!

  But she has both arms here. And we aren’t lizards. Either she had it reattached and it healed or Caldwell’s memories are fabricated. They didn’t feel fabricated.

  “Can I see your arm?” I ask.

  Her face flushes.

  I hear a rustle of cloth up above me and know someone has moved up there.

  “Stand down,” she shouts. And I think she’s screaming at me until she tilts her eyes upward. “I can handle a child.”

  She extends her left arm toward me as if she knows exactly what I was looking for and which arm to provide. And I do see it. A faint white scar, jagged and running around the entire circumference of her bicep.

  They aren’t fabricated. Those horrible things I saw happened. I’ve started to tear up again when she turns on those respectable pumps and motions for me to follow. I fall into step behind her
and two guards fall into step behind me. I’m looking at the back of her neck as she walks away.

  “Is he as big of an asshole when the two of you are alone?” I ask. “Or is that just his public persona?”

  Something slams into my ribs. A sharp, jarring pain on my right side drops me to my knees in the long stretch of hallway.

  The woman yells at the guard behind me. “His orders were clear.”

  The guard knows better than to do any whiny “she started it” or “but she’s the one…” Instead he stands at attention.

  She sighs. “Can you stand?”

  I spit a mouthful of blood onto the floor and a questionable chunk of something solid onto the floor. “I think that’s my tongue. There, that meaty bit.”

  “Eric did not want you harmed.”

  And it’s that use of his first name that makes me look up at her. Her eyes are incredibly blue behind her glasses. Her sleek ponytail and the polish on her pretty nails are quite different than the image of her in my mind. The one being cut and carved like turkey while men in lab coats take notes. That woman was terrified, dirty and nearly broken.

  “Why hasn’t he killed you?” I ask. “He’s killing the rest of us.”

  “Can you stand?” she asks again. An edge of impatience singes her words.

  I try and manage it by relying heavily on the wall for support.

  “Now,” she says in a very schoolmarm voice. “Can you walk?”

  I take one step and then another. Each time I bring my leg down, a sharp shooting pain makes my whole torso burn as if a knife is being slipped in between each of my ribs.

  “Good,” she says. “We will take it slow.”

  I don’t know what I expected. Of course she has no sympathy for my broken ribs. She knows I’ll heal. And as someone who has endured unbearable pain, she knows what our bodies can handle. But living with pain is different than just dying. Living with the pain is a whole lot harder.

  It seems like forever before I make it to the bathroom. The bathroom is more like a closet with a toilet in it. It has no doors except the one where the woman and two guards stand.

  “I will stand here while you go,” she says. When I don’t immediately move she grows impatient. “Go on.”

  I enter the bathroom and close the door behind me. What do I have? Nothing. A window in the high upper corner is the size of a small child. With much difficulty I climb up on the sink and manage to look outside of it, only to realize I am several stories from the ground. If I climb out, I’ll likely break my neck and Caldwell will just collect me from the pavement below. Or he’ll just go ahead and kill me while I’m unconscious. After all, compared to Liza, I don’t have much of a power.

  But what else do I have? Nothing.

  I open the bathroom door and before they can speak, I slap the guard. Immediately, the other guard grabs my arms and shoves me against the wall. The shooting pain in my ribs makes my vision go spotty. It takes me a second to realize I’m the one screaming before I can bite back the agony and hit him with my other hand.

  “That was for my ribs, asshole,” I say. It isn’t nearly as fierce as I’d have liked considering I’m whimpering, but it pisses him off.

  “Do not injure. Only sedate,” Caldwell’s lady friend commands.

  He will kill me. He will kill me. Come on, Jesse—isn’t this enough to terrify you?

  The one who hit me, pulls back the chamber on his gun and fishes out a dart by hand. I’m too close to shoot. He’ll have to stab me with it.

  I press against the cramped wall between the three of them. I feel squished. Claustrophobic.

  Think of Liza. That will be you, Jesse. You’ll wish you just had your arm sawed off a couple of times by the time Caldwell gets done with you. It’ll be worse than—

  Out of nowhere the image of my mother’s barn burning pops into my mind.

  The guard holding me twitches and goes down. Before the next guard can realize what’s happening and get the dart ready, I put my hands on him and send him into convulsions. His eyes roll up in his head and I catch a whiff of sweat and burning hair. The woman isn’t that stupid. She goes into the bathroom and shuts the door. No need for me to wonder where she got her self-preservation skills.

  And I couldn’t care less if she wants to save herself. Hell. I don’t blame her. I climb over the mound of muscle and get the hell out of there. I can’t move very fast because of my ribs, but I am moving.

  Holding myself together literally, I limp the length of the hallway. I have an option of going right back toward the ballroom or left into a dark corridor that forks right at the end. I go left and embrace the approaching darkness.

  Ally

  Please be okay. Just let her be okay.

  The door is still unlocked from when Lane left in his rage. I tear through the house, straight to the basement where the dull light of a single overhead lamp dangles from a string, illuminating her collapsed body like a macabre stage finale, the hero displayed for the audience to mourn.

  “Gloria?”

  I barrel down the stairs and slip off the last step. I don’t crack my head open but I bang my knees on the cool cement floor just beside her body. I roll her over and see the small stream of spit from the side of her mouth and the way her eyes are rolled up in her head.

  “Shit, shit, shit.” I place her head gently back down and I run up the stairs, pushing past Lane who has finally caught up.

  In her bathroom, I pull open the medicine cabinet and find what I’m looking for. Two orange pill bottles and a syringe. There is also water from the tap in a glass and I carry these four items down the stairs with me. I take the few extra seconds here to pay attention to what I’m doing. A second slip with a huge needle and a glass in my hand is more dangerous—in addition to cracking my head open.

  Lane is beside Gloria, giving her CPR.

  “Move,” I say. “That isn’t what she needs.”

  I set the water and drugs down long enough to stretch her out on her back. When she is flat, I uncap the syringe with my teeth.

  “Damn. That’s a big needle—what are you doing?”

  I lifted Gloria’s T-shirt, exposing her breasts. Lane has enough decency to look away as I insert the long needle carefully as Dr. York showed me how to do it. More to the center than the left, to make sure I get the heart and not the lungs, and when I feel the soft resistance of the heart muscle tugging at the needle, I push my thumb down injecting the medicine. And as soon as it’s administered, I slip the needle out quickly, hoping to get it away from Gloria before she jolts upright.

  I barely miss her.

  She comes up screaming, her mouth still foamy with spit.

  “Shhh, shh,” I say. Touching her arm lightly. She shrinks away from me as if my hand is on fire. I manage to get her to drink some of the water and I wipe her mouth. Then I give her the pills.

  “You haven’t been taking your meds, Gloria,” I say. “You’ve got to take your meds, honey.”

  And holding the water glass while she swallows four large pills, two of each prescription, she looks like a bewildered child. She begins to shake violently, like someone suffering from hypothermia and I witness Lane do a surprisingly decent thing. He removes his jacket and throws it around her shoulders. I get her to sit all the way up and finish the water.

  What they did to Gloria in the military was torture—mental and physical. Gloria is special now, talented, but I don’t see her as the unstoppable machine, an all-seeing eye, like Brinkley does. Just look at her.

  “I have to find her,” Gloria says.

  “Find who?” Lane says.

  Gloria reaches up and grabs a fistful of drawings off her work bench. She offers me the crumpled drawings trembling in her grip. One hand goes over my mouth as if to hold in the horror and Lane snatches the pictures from me. But it’s too late for me to unsee them—the images of Jesse—

  —somewhere in the continuum stretching between the present and the future—Jesse tortured to death,
over and over and over again.

  We call Brinkley using Gloria’s phone. Lane is beyond furious by the time he shows up.

  As soon as Brinkley steps into the Gloria’s dank basement, it’s as if the bell is rung. Brinkley and Lane are at each other’s throats. I learn a lot more from this screaming match between them than I had expected. And I learn a great deal more from what isn’t said: that Brinkley trusts Jesse’s abilities more than he trusts the rest of us. And I get the distinct impression this has to do with the electric thing—and Regina’s comments about the electronics in her husband’s office all being dead come back to me. And there’s her house to consider. And the bizarre situation with Gabriel that I’ve yet to process.

  Worse, I can see how dreadfully tired Brinkley is. Taking a solo mission against the world is taking its toll on him.

  They don’t stop until Gloria speaks. “They were in Chicago, but he has moved her.” She begins to cry, crumpling a sheet of paper in her hand. “She isn’t in Chicago anymore.”

  I place a hand on her knee and pull the drawing away. I smooth the pencil sketch out and the soft graphite smears a bit under my moist palm, turning my hand silver.

  This one is Jesse under a bed, in a room filling with gas. She is screaming, horrified. I have to look away, the world gone blurry with my own tears. “You don’t know if it’s happened yet.”

  Lane kicks Gloria’s desk and the whole thing rattles with his fury. “We have to go now. Pack up your sketches and let’s go.”

  “We can’t rush in,” Brinkley says, grabbing Lane’s arm and pulling him off the steps. “We have to be smart, tactical—”

  Lane wrenches his arm away, knocking Brinkley back a pace before he shoves the picture at Brinkley. “That’s gas like from the Holocaust chambers. You have military training. You know what that shit feels like in the lungs. We can’t do nothing while she’s being gassed, man.”

  Brinkley’s head hangs and he takes a breath. His voice is smoother when he speaks again. “We aren’t leaving her anywhere. But we can’t just run in and get ourselves killed.”