Dying by the Hour (A Jesse Sullivan Novel Book 2) (27 page)

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

P
lease 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
un
see 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.”

“So you’ll let her suffer,” Lane hisses.

“This is why I didn’t tell you,” Brinkley counters and his composure is gone again. It’s the exhaustion talking. We are at the end of our wits. I’m running on fumes, emotionally. Gloria is running on drugs, and who knows what the hell these two are running on.

“You always think before you act and look where it’s gotten her!”

“Stop,” I say. I look up from the place on the ground where I crouch beside Gloria. “Please just stop. We have to take Gloria to see Dr. York. We have to
sleep
. We can’t leave tonight, none of us can. Chicago is a big place and not-Chicago is even bigger. Gloria can’t draw maps with an X marks the spot. And Jesse is smart and resourceful. She’ll be looking for an out, if there is one.”

I know it’s the truth, but it is easier to say than to accept.
We are a mess without you, Jess. Please come home safely.

“I refuse to just sit here,” Lane says and he storms up the stairs. Brinkley runs up after him.

I turn to Gloria, who looks completely and totally defeated, her shoulders slumped. Her eyes blood-shot and puffy. I see the fear, the terror and worse—the
disappointment
.

I place one hand on her shoulder. She doesn’t shrink away this time. “Thank you, Gloria. For all that you did. We know more now than we knew hours ago and that means a lot. I know you’ll find her.”

She clasps one sweaty hand over mine, before covering her eyes with the other.

Jesse

T
his place is a maze. The corridors grow darker and darker with each footstep and I must have made half a dozen lefts and rights but I keep hitting dead-ends. I don’t understand how it is so pitch black dark in here. Unlike in the great room where Caldwell left me, there are no windows in this ceiling and I smell sawdust. The sound of rustling plastic terrifies me and I freeze, listening for approaching footsteps.

It’s hard to breathe through the pain in my ribs. Each inhale twists the invisible knife more deeply. I hit another dead-end and fall against it.

I’m never going to get out of here.

They’re going to figure out where I went. They were just behind me. They’ll find me and drag me back to Caldwell to await my execution.

I start to breathe heavy as the cold fingers of panic slide around my spine.

You’ve got to keep moving. Left, go on.

But left is where I came from.

Left,
the voice says again and for a moment I mistake the sound of flapping plastic for wings.

I tentatively walk forward unsure if I am hearing Gabriel or if Caldwell is inside my head. Then the building shakes. Tremors rattle the sawdust and the walls. And I realize I must be hearing Gabriel if Caldwell is still locked in battle. Surely he can’t fight and mind-rape at the same time, right? Or maybe he is just that good of a multi-tasker. I hope Liza is putting up a good fight.
Keep him busy
I think, until I can get out of here.

A flood of shame washes over me.

Am I really going to leave her to die? Yes. Abandon Liza when she clearly needs to be saved? Yes. Can you save someone who doesn’t want to be saved? No.

Nothing can be gained by going back, I know this. So why do I feel shitty, shuffling through the darkness desperately searching for a way to save myself? I swallow against the tightness in my throat but I don’t stop.

The next hallway lightens with scaffolding high above me opening its mouth to let the light in. Then I hear something familiar—air, a cold draft. And cars, the whoosh of sleek metallic bodies in passing.

I touch this new wall and realize it’s fabric, not plaster. My fingers search the heavy drapery, pulling it apart as a thicker draft wafts through. Then the curtain parts and I see—a huge
beautiful
EXIT sign, glowing red in the darkness.

I shove against the door and fall into bright light. The explosion of noise and light after that dark expanse of endless hallways is unbearable. The world blurs and shifts around me until the sound of a blaring horn brings back my focus. A yellow taxi whips around me and then several more cars swerve and blare their horns. I had stepped out into the middle of a busy street not realizing. I dash to the sidewalk opposite the building I just erupted from and steady myself against a brick wall.

I cradle my ribs and breathe as the world comes into view.

With a wide street between myself and the building I’ve just fallen out of, I am able to get a better view. It’s a huge chapel, some old church squat in the middle of a huge city. It’s a city identifiable by its packed streets, sky rise buildings and abundance of bumblebee-colored taxis. Most of the building is covered in flapping plastics and scaffolding with small signs posted on every few feet which read
Closed for Renovations.
I’m not surprised Caldwell has chosen a church as his fortress, but I can’t be sure what city I’m in. It’s cold here. Colder than I am used to, but the hair rising on my arms and the chill to my cheeks doesn’t tell me anything specific. Lots of cities are bigger and colder than Nashville. I could be anywhere. I’ve never been to most of the north, north-east cities so it could be any of them. But I’ve seen enough movies to know how this works.

I step up to the curb and start to wave for a taxi. One is just pulling over when I see the back door on the church open. The woman, Caldwell’s companion and a couple of men muscle their way through the door. I duck into the cab and lay flat in the back seat unsure if they saw me.

“Where to?” he asks as if he doesn’t notice me crouching bizarrely in the back.

And I have no idea what to tell him because I don’t know where I am. And I don’t have any money on me. My pockets are horribly, pitifully empty.

“I would like to go to—” I draw it out and try to buy time to think.

“Tell me where you want to go or get out.”

I search the map and ID information on the back of the seat for a hint.
Where am I?

The angry cabbie whirls and yells at me. “You’re filthy. Street trash! Get out! Get out, street trash!”

“I’m not street trash,” I wail. “I’ve just been—mugged, okay?”

Stuck to the back of the plastic divider hanging off his seat, I find what I’m looking for. The map is for Chicago. Chicago. Of course I’m in Chicago. The North American division for the Unified Church is in Chicago. I just didn’t think Caldwell would bring me so close to home.

“I just want to go home,” I continue. “Take me to Union station.”

He gives me a credulous look.

“And we’ll need to stop at my bank if you want to get paid,” I add. “Please.”

He eyes me for another minute then sighs. “I’ll have to run the meter.”

“Do what you got to do,” I say. “Just get me the hell out of here.”

And he does, but it’s hard to get cash from the bank without ID. Despite the large open lobby and comforting music, the clean atmosphere and helpful teller, I feel a horribly exposed. I have to give them my password, my social security information and basically my life history. Apparently, covered in dirt makes people less interested in helping you.