Dying by the Hour (A Jesse Sullivan Novel Book 2) (30 page)

Go on,
I tell him.
Take it all
.

Ally

L
imbs quaking, I cross the downtown office carpet to the tall filing cabinet against the wall. This metal box holds all the records we are required to keep on our replacements for the FBRD should they ever come calling. But hidden in the mass is another file folder. It isn’t under the appropriate letter. It’s tucked away in the back, easily overlooked in the shadows of the drawer unless you know it is there.

I pull out the folder with trembling hands because I haven’t stopped shaking since I left the safe house. I don’t even bother to close the drawer as I sink into Jesse’s desk chair.

The folder contains everything I’ve ever uncovered about Caldwell. His public image as well as tidbits gleaned through private investigation. I am determined to read this file fifty times if I have to. I can’t just sit by and wait for Jesse to turn up dead.

But after looking through the photographs and the news clippings, the public records of properties purchased by the Church, it all begins to blur. It looks like a big pile of nothing. My fingers begin to move faster and faster, turning over each page as if expecting some key bit of information to fall from an invisible pocket. But nothing. I let out a frustrated scream, flipping page after page and I’ve devolved completely into crying when I hear someone say my name.

“Ally?”

My head snaps up from the strewn pages and it’s Lane. He stands in the middle of the office, the door separating the comic book store and our work space stands open.

“Go away.” I knock pages off the desk. “I’m busy.”

He comes closer. “Are you okay?”

I spit my derision at him. “Do I look okay?”

I turn page after page but still find nothing of use. I knock the whole folder off the desk and it flies up in a cloud of white squares, warping and falling to the maroon carpet. I collapse on the desk and put my head on my hands.

A heavy warm hand comes to rest on my back. It doesn’t make the mistake of giving me a patronizing pat or a
thatagirl
.
It just rests, certain and steadfast on my left shoulder blade. I lift my head and find Lane crouching beside me, eye-level.

He needs a shave. And a weekend of good sleep to erase those deep purple bags under his eyes. But these are the reasons I forgive him. His eyes are wide and wet like mine. He opens his arms just a little—the subtlest of invitations and I accept. I fall out of the chair into his arms and he holds me.

He isn’t stupid about it. He doesn’t tell me it will be all right or sexualize it. He just holds me and lets me know that I’m not alone. I’m not the only one sick with fear for Jesse.

I am not sure the exact moment I start talking but once I do, I can’t stop. I confess everything as if I am in the arms of a priest and not my best friend’s boyfriend. My
ex’s
boyfriend.

I tell him about our captive. I tell him how we’ve been working so hard to erase Caldwell from the face of the Earth because I know she will never be safe until he is dead, cut up in a million pieces and fed to the hogs just to be sure.

“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

T
he 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.”