Dying by the Hour (A Jesse Sullivan Novel Book 2) (29 page)

I crumple into Nikki’s arms crying. And I let her tell him the story for me.

When she is finished Jeremiah says my name. When I don’t look up he says it more firmly as if dealing with a petulant child. “Alice,
look
at me.”

I meet his eyes, seeing only a blurry outline of a man until I blink back the tears.

“We will find her,” he says. His voice is so soft, so kind I can’t stand it. My chest contracts as if to protect myself. He reaches out and places one gentle hand on the top of my head. “We won’t stop until we do.”

Jesse

I
’m naked.

And disoriented because one minute I was in the alleyway and now I’m naked in this tiny room on a tiny bed with a creepy-ass man in the corner watching me with a sadistic smile on his face. He has an absurd amount of muscle stretched under a black T-shirt. His beach bum hair is pulled back in a half-ponytail and his beefy fists are clasped behind his back. His pants are also black and baggy. His face is blank, expressionless except for that frightening hint of a smile.

The small twin-sized cot beneath me, white and squeaky with unoiled springs is tucked into the corner opposite the man. The last time I woke up on a cot, terrible things happened. I had a suck ass feeling that this would be even worse.

I press myself into the corner where the bed and wall meet and cover my body as much as possible. There are no pillows or sheets so I am forced to cover myself by strategically folding my arms and legs in front of my body. The wall is cold against my bare back, but it’s more inviting than this staring weirdo. One small favor: the unbearable throb of my broken ribs has been replaced with the stiff hint of rigor mortis.

A loud voice comes from one of the speakers in the ceiling, a circular device that could be mistaken for a fancy showerhead. The voice is garbled and doesn’t sound quite human. “Give her the clothes, Hanson.”

Hanson removes a meaty fist from behind his back and holds out the clothes for me. When I won’t move closer to take them the voice speaks again in a low warning.

“Hanson.”

Hanson tosses the clothes toward me and I slowly, with one eye still on MmmBop there, pull on my clothes. They fit me because they are mine. Someone washed my clothes and all the dirt that Liza tried to bury me under is gone. The exception is my T-shirt ruined from a shot to the heart, has been replaced with a black one much too big for me. There is no graceful or dignified way to put my clothes on and Hanson shamelessly watches me angle and twist my body into the fabric.

“Is this your shirt? It looks like the one you have on.”

He isn’t humored, but I feel infinitely better now that most of my skin is covered. I do pause when I realize the underwear isn’t mine either. But hell, I’d take a pair of underwear off a chimp right now, if it meant an extra layer.

I pull on Lane’s coat and search the front for damage. They washed the dirt off but the quarter-sized smudge of blood on the left inside pocket is still there. And part of the zipper has been blasted away.

A hard knock comes at the door and somehow I know it is Caldwell. Maybe it’s the knock itself that alerts me or this strange hum in my head.

“You can leave,” Caldwell says. He passes beneath the staunch metal frame and enters the small room. Hanson doesn’t so much as bat an eyelash, but Caldwell issues assurances all the same. “She cannot hurt me. God protects me.”

I arch an eyebrow wondering if Caldwell really believes God favors him or if he is just so used to saying that religious propaganda in the presence of his followers that he just churns that shit out like butter.

Hanson favors me with a final unfriendly smile. If I have to translate, it is probably a look that says
hurt him and I will tear you limb from limb
. He holds this expression on his face until the heavy metal door closes between us and locks him out.

I pull myself up into a tighter ball, knees snug against my chest, my back tucked back into the corner. It’s more comfortable with a stretch of fabric between my skin and the wall. Caldwell sits on the edge of the bed despite the groaning protest of the springs.

“When you were a little girl—”

“Don’t.” I cut him off. I shove Caldwell’s picture out of my mind. I don’t know if it is a real memory of him or if he took it from my head and fed it back to me. I don’t know what’s real with this guy. “You’re here to kill me. Let’s not pretend.”

“You’re in such a hurry to die. What are you running from?”

I don’t answer because his question has chilled me.

“And I thought this is what you wanted?” he asks. “Answers. A reunion with your father.”

“
Don’t
screw with me,” I say. “Liza is dead. Now there’s just me. We both know what you want to happen next.”

“I do not want it actually,” he says. He runs his palms along the front of his suit jacket. “I lack the motivation.”

“You shot me at the train station,” I say. “You seemed pretty motivated.”

His jaw flexes and it makes me think of Lane when he’s trying to control his anger.

“I shot you so you would heal,” he says.

“Yes, why bother with the hassle of medical treatment? Is that how you stay looking so young?” I ask. “What do you do? Shoot yourself every time you stub a toe?”

A sinister smile stretches his lips. “Ribs take a long time to heal. And we don’t have a lot of time.”

That horrid gleam in his eye.
Eagerness
. He’s as excited as a shark scenting blood. So why waste time? I don’t understand. “Why heal me only to kill me?”

“But what about your questions?” he says and his face is a mask of seriousness. He even manages to mimic concern. “I thought you were dying for answers.”

No, I’m dying for a new life. One where I can understand and put all this behind me. But that seems impossible from where I’m sitting. This has to be a game, some kind of new twisted game.

“For example,” he begins as if he can’t read my thoughts. And it wouldn’t take a mind reader to know I’m suspicious anyway. “You want to know why I sent Martin to kill you.”

He gives a small nod as if I’ve said something. “It was a mistake to send him. I didn’t know what you were. Of course I had a protocol for that sort of situation. Should someone show a sign that the power was already present, the channel already active if you will, he was to simply bring that person to me. It was how we found Henry Chaplain, after all.”

I hug my knees tighter against the wave of nausea.

It is too much to be this close to him. A warm buzz in my skull makes it hard to think. My thoughts feel damp and undefined. And my stomach twists as if I’m dizzy.

“So you see,” he continues. “He would not have killed you. He would have brought you to me, had the FBRD not intercepted your body, of course.”

His eyes narrow and I swear I can feel him in my head, the buzz intensifying.

“You want to know why I am killing so many people. Thousands upon thousands—and that’s a modest estimate on your part, by the way. I’ve killed over 45,000.”

My cheeks catch fire but I control my exhale.
Genocide
.

If Caldwell hears the disbelief and disgust in my head, he shows no sign. He pushes on. “I want to close the extra doors. By minimizing the channels, it controls the power flow.”

It isn’t hard to see where this is going. “You want to be the only one with power.”

“Can’t you feel the teeth he has in you?” Caldwell asks.

Who has his teeth in me?

“Gabriel,” he whispers and a dark shifting shadow moves behind his eyes. “I can see his claws in your back.”

This is another mind game. He probably only knows about Gabriel because he saw it in my head. If I am crazy delusional he’ll see what I see.

“What do you think you are?” he asks.

“A girl with a neurological disorder, working for a system that exploits her disorder for profit,” I say. “And perhaps a little insane.”

“So scientific,” he says. He turns his head and smiles, but his back is still straight and hands still folded in his lap. So prim and proper. Not a hint of the good ol’ boy mechanic I knew and loved. “I
am
the angel now. There is no separation between the ego who knows himself as Eric and the power I possess. They are one and the same.”

He slams into my mind. I’m reeling with the shock of the wave, so when he puts his hands on me and shoves me flat against the cot, I put up little resistance.

“What are you afraid of?” he asks me. And I don’t know if he has spoken aloud or if the question is in my mind. He isn’t shoving pictures into my head like he was before. He is opening me up, riffling through me with eager, hungry hands. If my mind was an orange, then he has torn open the thick rind protecting it. With greedy fingers he begins to pry off each sliver of delicate, juicy flesh. Pulling and sucking. Searching.

“Stop,” I beg.

It’s like slick palms against my skin. My memories are pulled up and examined one by one. Every private and personal thought his for the taking.

My mother. Her cotton dresses and white laces gloves, in a tiny church that smelled of old books. The tilt of her wide-brimmed Sunday hat. Her perfume, something like lilacs.

“Let go of me.”

Caldwell throws these memories aside and digs deeper.

My little brother’s birth. How my mother put him in my arms for the first time and called him Daniel. Danny, three-years-old, climbing into my bed because he didn’t want to sleep alone. Me pulling him in and wrapping him tight and telling him stories.

“Stop,” I beg.
What are you looking for?

Ally, younger Ally, my best friend even in high school, promising to run away with me. She promised to take me away from all of this. Away from—me waiting all night with a bag packed under my bed, my ear straining to hear beyond my window for her voice or a tapping against the glass.

Then I wake the next morning to the sound of his voice in the kitchen, my bag still packed at my feet.

His voice.

I could almost feel Caldwell’s excitement rise.
Who is he?
Show me his face.

“No,” I whisper aloud. “
No
.”

These are my secrets. I don’t want you to know. I don’t want anyone to know.

The smell of burning flesh. The sounds of a man screaming and cursing me as flames lick his bones clean.

“Show me his face,” Caldwell says.

“No,” I scream. “Get out of my fucking head!”

I shove against his arms but Caldwell grabs ahold of me and shoves me down into the mattress again.

He shoves me down into the mattress and pins me on my stomach. I am suffocating in the pillow, in the smell of cotton and fabric softener. I am crying for my mother but she doesn’t come. Why doesn’t she come? A thousand nights and she never comes.

“No,” I scream, trying to fight out of his grip.

“Show me his face,” Caldwell commands. He is so much bigger than I am and he uses his weight to shove me deeper and deeper into the mattress, just as he forces himself deeper and deeper into my mind—as the springs groan and creak their protest.

He is turning me over, shoving my face into the mattress by the back of my neck. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. Mother—

Caldwell mimics the memory as I see it, and the motions are enough to fuel the fire. The terror. Despite my fury he rolls me onto my stomach, shoving my face into mattress and pins me there by the back of my neck. The springs crush my nose and I try to turn my head but I can’t because he won’t let go, won’t even give me an inch.

I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe but he lifts my night gown anyway. He uses his disgusting fat fingers to yank aside my underwear and—Mom!—

But it can’t be heard around the mattress and I haven’t enough air to force out the sound.

“His face,” Caldwell warns for the last time. He places a threatening hand on the back of my jeans. He slides the hand over my hip, reaching around for the button holding the barrier in place. He pops the button on the front and my hips feel the cold air brush against bare skin.

The face.

Caldwell pulls at my underwear, pulling them down over one hip.

His face melting in fire. Eyes boiling in their sockets. The
moment I see it clear, can feel the fire against my face,
Caldwell reaches around and his fingers brush the hair there.

The barn engulfed in flames, a man twisting and burning in agony while I do nothing to save him, nothing. As the sting of smoke clogs the back of my throat. The heat searing against my face. The whole world burning down around me. Eddie’s burning hand clamps onto mine.

“I’m not holding you back anymore. Show me what you’ve got.” Caldwell says with his mind or his mouth, I don’t know. But as soon as he says it, I know it is true. Somehow he has been in my head, suppressing my ability to protect myself until the moment it would serve him best.

At this image of Eddie, the power rises and rolls through me. I feel it lash out at him the way he must have made Liza lash out—and I know this is what he needs to kill me and take whatever it is he thinks I have left to give.