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

by Kory M. Shrum

“I thought I could do this but I can’t. I can’t,” I hear myself saying. He hasn’t spoken once and I just keep talking. “I’ll never be as ruthless as Caldwell and ruthless wins. It wins.”

  “There is nothing wrong with you,” Lane says. He squeezes me tighter as if threatening me to contradict him.

  “Jeremiah is right,” I say. “I can’t say I’ll do anything to save her and then hold back. Look what happened! I should never have let her go.”

  “I sure as hell won’t let Brinkley lead her by the leash anymore,” Lane says. His chest vibrates with his anger.

  “God,” I say, feeling my mind circle back. “I should have questioned the hell out of the woman the second we got her. We should have found out whatever there was to find out before the shit hit the fan. Now look at us, scrambling like cockroaches when the light comes on.”

  Lane pulls back from me and I think he is ejecting me from his lap but he isn’t. He grabs ahold of my face and forces me to look at him. “You did nothing wrong. You can’t be blamed for the actions of a homicidal maniac.”

  I am looking into Lane’s eyes and I remember who he is to Jesse. The comfort leaks away, leaving me cold. I stand and put distance between us.

  “I’m sorry,” Lane says. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  I flash him a weak smile but I don’t meet his eyes. “I know.”

  When I turn back and look at him, his head is hung low. He is the little boy in trouble again as he leans against the edge of Jesse’s desk.

  “I’m sorry that I’ve hurt you,” he says.

  I look up and meet his gaze.

  “I know that it isn’t easy for you to see us together,” Lane says. “It wasn’t easy for me when I knew she was seeing you.”

  My cheeks burn. I open my mouth to warn him, tell him I have no interest in going down this road with him in the middle of all the other shit I’m dealing with, but he keeps going.

  He must sense my unwillingness to have this conversation.

  “Please, just hear me out,” he pleads.

  “I’d rather not,” I say.

  “I know but I don’t know if we’ll have another chance,” he says. And without my permission he continues. “I know you hate that I gave her the ultimatum, but I love her.”

  He might as well have slapped me across the face, as much as the words sting.

  “Ever since she chose to save you rather than me in the basement, I’ve wondered if I made a mistake.”

  “Please don’t tell me you wish I was dead again.”

  He shakes his head. “No, but think about it. In moments like that, a person is pure instinct. She was watching the three of us die and had to decide who she couldn’t live without. And it wasn’t me. It wasn’t me. And it’s more than that,” he says. “You love her too.”

  I can’t hide my anger or my embarrassment of this conversation. “Of course I do.”

  “I thought you just wanted her. That she was just a friend with benefits,” he says.

  “Yes, because lesbians are incapable of loving, committed relationships. My love could never compare to what you give her, because I have to purchase my dick from the store.”

  He flinches. “That’s not what I’m saying.”

  I shift my weight on the border of fury. “Then be clear.”

  He takes a breath. “I can tell you love her and I’m sorry I drove you apart.”

  My heart clenches. It burns just to breathe. “You’re not as in control of this as you think you are. Jesse is a big girl. She is capable of doing whatever the hell she wants. You didn’t drive us apart.” I did. By keeping secrets, by going off and joining Jeremiah and not telling her. Because she kept secrets, because somehow we got to this point by hiding from each other. She’s going to die thinking things weren’t good between us and that is my fault.

  “Stop trying to make this right,” I say. “You have nothing to do with it.”

  Jesse

  The hand relaxes on the back of my neck. He doesn’t shove his fist into my skull or shoot me or whatever it is he needs to do to remove what he wants from me and close the door behind him.

  Rough hands roll me over so that I am forced to face him. I take this first chance to yank my jeans up but I don’t get them buttoned.

  “That’s it?” he says. He grabs me roughly by the arms. “That’s it!”

  He shakes me, lifting and slamming. Lifting and slamming me into the mattress.

  Isn’t that what you wanted? I can’t speak aloud. He is still shaking me so hard that I feel as though my brain will dislodge.

  “No,” he says. He slaps me hard across the face once. And when that doesn’t satisfy him, he does it a second time.

  My ears ring. My body throbs and I can’t focus on anything in the room.

  He climbs off the bed and paces like a wild animal. He screams a long, frustrated roar.

  I pull myself up to a sitting position and crawl back into the corner. He stops pacing and whirls on me. I can’t hide the fact I’m shaking.

  “The door is open,” he says. He makes a jabbing motion with his hands for emphasis. His hair is disheveled, his shirt untucked and collar askew. And he couldn’t care less. “And power is coming through.”

  He paces angrily back and forth, still gesturing wildly.

  “The door is open and the power is coming through but he isn’t there! He isn’t there! But I know he is. I know it!”

  At that he kicks the bed again and again. It rattles and shakes me, shivering beneath me like a cornered animal. I squeeze my eyes closed and wait for him to turn that fury on me. But he doesn’t.

  The strike never comes, the punch, the slap or the hair pulling. When I open my eyes he isn’t even looking at me. He is staring at the floor with his hands on his hip.

  “You haven’t accepted him,” he says. He is so furious spit is forming in the corners of his mouth. “That’s it. We need to force you to come together. Every death separates you from your humanity, so—so if you won’t embrace him willingly, we’ll have to force you.”

  He turns and storms out of the room. The heavy door locks behind me.

  My mind races, blurs with fear and confusion. What did he just say?

  I know I asked him to kill me—because I wanted it to just be over and done.

  But I don’t want to die a hundred or more times in whatever creative ways Caldwell can think up.

  What he did to me—what just happened—has left me feeling as cold and sick as anything that Eddie ever did to me even though he didn’t actually touch me or violate me. I begin to cry. I can’t help it and it’s all I can do just to curl into a ball on the thin cot and weep. How will he do it? 100 shots to the heart? Maybe a good old beat-to-death? Fire? He knows my fears now. Maybe he will try to terrorize me at every chance so I’ll lose my mind more quickly.

  Something happens—

  —a hissing sound, almost like turning on a water faucet. Except it isn’t water pouring from the vents above my head into my little room. It’s white gas, billowing down around me.

  A gas chamber. This whole time I’ve been sitting in a gas chamber.

  Shaking uncontrollably, my legs so wobbly I can barely stand, I slip under the bed. Underneath, I shove myself up into the corner and bury my face in Lane’s jacket. I take shallow breaths through the cotton fabric and try to focus on the scent of him.

  Lane. Ally.

  It stretches on forever and I contemplate whether it is better to suffocate myself with the jacket and close my lungs off to the gas before it can reach me, or just accept that it is coming.

  I cry more.

  I won’t lie. I am terrified and that’s what I do when I’m really, really scared. I cry. It isn’t brave or charismatic, but it’s what happens. And I’m screaming when the smoke reaches its bony white fingers under the bed for me.

  As the darkness takes me, my lungs burn and I choke. I gag and try to push myself deeper into the corner away from the smoke burning my eyes and throat. />
  I hear his voice.

  I’m here, Gabriel whispers through the darkness. I’ve always been right here.

  Ally

  A loud bang rattles my door and makes Winston bark and leap from my bed. I throw back the covers muttering. “What I wouldn’t give for one night in my bed that isn’t interrupted with a crisis.”

  I press my eye to the peep hole again, wondering who the hell was able to get into the building without being buzzed up. Cindy? But is isn’t Cindy.

  I open the door just a crack. “Jeremiah?”

  Jeremiah stands there in a pristine white dress shirt beneath a sweater vest and in freshly pressed dress pants. Apparently he can keep his hair trimmed and clothes clean in times of need, unlike the rest of us who look more and more like hell as time wears on.

  He steps through my doorway, widening it as he goes and I notice the roll of papers jutting from under his arm. I don’t bother to ask how he got in. I’ve accepted that my locked entrance isn’t so locked after all.

  “What’s happened?” I move back to give him room. “Where’s Nikki?”

  “I sent Parish on errands so she is at the monitoring station. You can thank her later.”

  “For what?” I pull a throw blanket down off the back of the couch and wrap myself up inside it. I’m not sure if it is because I’m a little chilly or because I feel uncomfortable in just boxers and a T-shirt in front of Jeremiah.

  “I believe we have found Jesse.”

  My mouth falls open full of questions but he doesn’t wait for me to recover. “Have you heard about the blackouts in Chicago?”

  “No.”

  “No one else has either,” he responds. “Except for those experiencing it. Delaney is the one that sent us the information and Nikki was the one who decrypted it.”

  Delaney. “There is an AMP working for Caldwell. Micah Delaney. Is he related to our Delaney?”

  Jeremiah’s eyes narrow. “Not that I’m aware of but I will find out.”

  I backtrack. “If Chicago blacked out, it would have been on the news.”

  “The blackouts haven’t reached Chicago yet. They’re originating outside of the city.”

  He pulls the papers from under his arms and makes liberal use of my coffee table. Because he is much bigger than me, he pushes my armchair back trying to fit into the small space between the coffee table and furniture.

  The bunch of paper is actually a single large map rolled several times. “Why do you have a map?” It seems so old-fashioned.

  “There isn’t satellite in this area. We’re having a hard time getting detailed images. It’s just a small town in Illinois called Minooka.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask, still wrapped and lowering myself beside him. “Satellites can see everything.”

  He glances at me over the rim of his glasses. “No, not everything.”

  I look at where his thick finger points. It’s a series of circles inside of each other. A small one surrounded by a larger, then a larger and a larger circle, like ripples frozen mid-quake on the surface of a pond. On the edge of each penciled circle is a time, ranging from four to six hours apart.

  “The blackouts occur in timed intervals.”

  “Maybe the city is testing something?” I ask.

  “No.”

  “What makes you think this is Jesse? In Minooka?”

  His expression softens as he looks away from the map to meet my gaze. “Can you think of any reason why Jesse could be at the center of these blackouts?”

  I think of Regina Lovett’s accusation that Jesse ruined her husband’s office. I think of the number of light bulbs I’ve replaced in her house in the past year alone and the latest power outage caused by a serious surge.

  “Maybe.”

  He frowns. “Minooka has less than 12,000 people. The surrounding areas are rural. The blast radius is just now reaching the outskirts of Chicago. This morning, power was lost to half of LaGrange. If it continues to grow, people will notice. If people notice, it will bring unwanted attention.”

  I tuck my hair behind my ears. “You think he’ll finish her off, if she starts to draw attention.”

  “So you do think she is causing this,” he says.

  I look away.

  “Alice,” Jeremiah says. “I know you haven’t worked with me for very long and I know you only joined because you were looking for the tools and means to protect Jesse. But you are going to have to trust me. Or at least, trust that we want the same thing.”

  “But we don’t want the same thing, do we?” I ask. “You want to throw her in front of Caldwell. I want to keep her as far away from him as possible.”

  He sits back on his heels. “You aren’t doing a great job of that, are you?”

  “That wasn’t my fault!”

  “I just think that if we collaborated with each other we would be more effective and ultimately, Jesse would be safer,” he says.

  “Okay, tell me what you want with her. Tell me the real reason why you’ve been pushing so hard to recruit her. If you don’t need her as a cure-all, then what do you want her for.”

  “It will take everything we have to defeat him,” Jeremiah says. The lines around his mouth deepen and I notice the faint purple under his eyes for the first time. “And even that might not be enough.”

  My brow furrows. “But you seem so confident, so sure that it’s only a matter of time before he’s dead.”

  He gives me with a brief smile. “Have you never heard of the importance of morale?”

  “But you do want her to fight,” I say.

  “I know you want to protect her,” he says. His eyes soften, sympathetically. “I understand that, but I won’t deny that we need her. I think he is like her. Special. Am I right?”

  “What makes you think Caldwell is special?” I’ve barely accepted the possibility that Jesse is something else. I never considered the possibility that Caldwell is too.

  Jeremiah removes his glasses and pinches his eyebrows. “Just this Saturday he gave a speech at 10:00 A.M. in New York. Then at 11:00 A.M. he had a breakfast in San Diego.”

  “The speech could have been recorded ahead of time and there are the time zones.”

  “It wasn’t recorded, which leaves us wondering how a man can give an hour long lecture in New York and then turn around and walk into Buca di Beppo in Mira Mesa. That’s less than a minute from when he walked off the stage and into the restaurant, Alice. It was actually 8:00 A.M. there.”

  I don’t know what to say. Caldwell is already scary as hell. I don’t want to consider him with more at his disposal than an extremist fan base, trained killers, and a lot of money.

  “We need her,” Jeremiah says again. “It increases our odds of winning.”

  I consider this for several heartbeats. Caldwell marked Jesse as a target, not the other way around. And he will keep coming after her until one of them is dead. What if I cannot prevent it? Caldwell and Jesse. She is different. It’s more than the NRD, it’s the other things. Gabriel. What if all I can do is stay by her? Can I accept that?

  Jeremiah senses my hesitation. “You can’t be her human shield forever.”

  “As long as I’m breathing I will be,” I reply, irritated.

  “Do not be angry with me,” he counters. “I don’t want her to get hurt, but she is an integral part of this and this is bigger than just Jesse.”

  I want to test him, with something small. He’s been spying enough to know Jesse is different. What else does he know? “Caldwell is her father. Did you know that?”

  His brow furrows. “No, I didn’t and that is important information, which is just further proof we need to stop dividing our resources. We’ll never win that way.”

  He’s right. I know he is. Divided we won’t get anywhere. It’s better to pool our resources and present a united front to Caldwell. And if I’m going to protect her, I’ve got to be willing to go all in.

  “I have some people you should meet,” I say. “If we really a
re going to do this, then we need to put everything on the table. It should all be out in the open.”

  “I agree,” he says, his palm still open and waiting.

  “Come with me.”

  Brinkley is already at Gloria’s when we arrive. I’m not surprised to find Gloria packing a small duffel bag, with clothes and toiletries spread across her bed. She has her sketchbook open on the floral quilt with several sheets jutting out from the neat square edge. I briefly touch her shoulder before returning to the kitchen.

  Brinkley leans against the counter eating a fast food burger. The sound of ketchup splatters the plastic wrapper, the condiments escaping out the back as he bites into it. “She’s been packing for an hour but she won’t tell me where we are going.”

  I ignore this statement and move ahead as planned. “I want you to meet someone.”

  This is Jeremiah’s cue to step from the dark hallway where he’s been waiting silently into the lighted kitchen. When Brinkley sees Jeremiah he straightens his back and makes himself taller.

  “Who the hell is this?” Brinkley says, but it’s hardly a threat with ketchup on the side of his mouth.

  “You asked me what I’ve been doing to piss Caldwell off enough to make his list,” I say. I gesture toward Jeremiah. “This is what I’ve been doing.”

  “You’ve been doing this guy?” Brinkley asks. His tone is playful, joking, but there is something in his face I can’t quite place. Relief? Curiosity? Expectation?

  I blush. “Don’t be idiotic. This is Jeremiah. He is leading a resistance against Caldwell. And I can see your face, Brinkley, so before you say anything insulting, let me warn you that it isn’t a small operation. He has more connections than you do. Play nice.”

  Wiping ketchup from the corner of his lips, Brinkley flashes his best James Dean give-me-what-I-want-grin. “James T. Brinkley.”

  “Yes, I know,” Jeremiah says, extending his hand. “You were Jesse’s handler and liaison for the FBRD, before she became a freelancer.”

  Another strange expression crosses Brinkley’s face. He looks as if he has more to say, some retort to Jeremiah’s assessment, but he says nothing. And when he catches me watching him, he forces a smile.