Dying for Her: A Companion Novel (Dying for a Living Book 3) (19 page)

5 Days

“
I
don’t understand,” Jackson says again. “Why aren’t you coming?”

“I can’t come,” I say. I spell it out for her. “First of all, I might spook the girl. If Liza has been running from Caldwell and who knows what else, a big guy with a gun is not what she’s going to want to see right now. Second, you and Jesse can move better without me. It’s pretty clear that Micah is watching my every move. He’s thwarted every assassination attempt I’ve made this year, and if I go with you guys, he’s going to see that. I’m hoping that I’ll serve as a distraction so that you and Jesse can slip in, get the girl, and get back here before Caldwell has any idea what’s happened.”

Jackson looks down at the sketchpad which lays open on her desk. It’s Liza, another death replacement agent, and the girl Caldwell wants most to kill—number 1 on his hit list.

“You only have five days,” she says. She begins tapping her pencil against the spiral rings that bind the notebook together.

“Don’t worry about me,” I tell her. I push the drawing Caldwell gave me into her face again. “Keep your eyes open for this. Anything suspicious at all and you get Jesse out of there. Forget Liza if you have to.”

Jackson takes the drawing and looks for details I probably can’t see. Then she peers over the page. “Liza could be a trap, a way to get Jesse out of our reach.”

I have my suspicions it isn’t my reach Caldwell is worried about, but until I hear back from Gideon, I can’t be sure. “We can’t let him kill Liza like he did Chaplain. You know that.”

Jackson nods, resigned to what I’m saying.

“Hello?” the kid calls from upstairs.

“Get down here,” I tell her, and Jackson quickly folds and tucks the drawing out of sight.

Friday, April 4, 2003

I
’d fallen asleep and when I woke up it was dark in the cell. The silence was deafening and I wondered if I was the only one in the whole building. I’d heard nothing from Charlie or Jackson about what was going on. Jackson. The realization jolted me upright. I remembered our agreement to meet that night and pulled my watch from the secret inner pocket of my leather jacket where I’d hidden it.

10:23 P.M. I was late. If Jackson was still waiting in the cold, dark Beckett Park, I’d be damned. From what I knew about her in the brief time we’d worked together, she’d try to go in on Chaplain alone, maybe even catch him off guard and put a bullet in him before he could fuck with her head.

Nowhere was safe until Chaplain was dead. That was the problem, right? Chaplain could have whatever he wanted from anyone if he was alive. He needed to be dead. As a sniper, I was comfortable with the idea of killing a bad guy. As a man, I wanted revenge against the bastard who was trying to fuck with my life.

11:23

12:02

12:12

Each time I checked my watch my heart sank. Not knowing what had happened to Jackson was rubbing me raw. I imagined the worst. I imagined Chaplain dumping her body off the MLK Bridge into the river with my name carved on her chest. I considered dismantling the bed for screws and shavings that could be used to pop the lock, even if breaking out of jail would make my guilt undeniable.

I heard something in the cell. A strange whoosh sound and then two footsteps. “Brinkley?”

I looked up and saw a man standing in my jail cell. Reeves. Goddamn Reeves.

“What the fuck?”

“We have to go,” he said. “You’re going to have a bunch of questions, I know, but I’ll have to answer them on the way. Chaplain brainwashed your people and you can’t stay here.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Just hang on to me,” he said and stepped toward me, arms open as if to embrace me.

Before I could question this, he wrapped his arms around my shoulders and the jail disappeared. There was just a heartbeat in the darkness, and then we were in my bedroom.

“Shit,” I said and fell away from him. The back of my knees hit the nightstand and the lamp fell forward. Reeves caught it with both hands.

“Grab your guns or whatever you need and let’s go,” he said. His voice was barely above a whisper and urgent as he righted the lamp. “We can’t stay here. There are cops everywhere.”

“They’re looking for Jackson,” I said and he nodded. “Then they don’t have her. Good.”

“She’s with Chaplain,” he said.

“What?” I croaked. He clasped a moist palm over my mouth and shushed me with a finger to his own lips. He must’ve thought I was an idiot.

Furious, I moved back the bed and lifted the trapdoor there. Inside was my packed duffle, undisturbed. It was stuffed with money, weapons and all the other shit I thought I might need for any kind of situation like this. They would have swept the apartment and taken everything else for testing. I checked inside the bag to make sure it was all there and when I was satisfied, I zipped it up.

“How did he get ahold of Jackson?” I asked.

“She went to his house and he found her lurking outside.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Do you have what you need?”

“From here, yes, but—”

Reeves grabbed onto me and another heartbeat of darkness followed. When we stepped into the world again, we were in Beckett Park, adjacent to Chaplain’s house.

“I could never get used to that,” I said and tried to quell that dropped feeling in my stomach. I looked around the dark park, the moonlight and shadows shifting across empty benches. The eerie orange glow of streetlamps along the walk were as menacing as any apathetic eye.

“You won’t have to,” he said. I didn’t move. I fixed him with my heavy gaze trying to figure out where the hell to start.

“Why didn’t we just pop into Chaplain’s house?” I asked.

“I have to be able to see where I am going,” he said. “I haven’t gotten a good look inside his house yet.”

“How did you—”

“We don’t really have time for questions.” He turned away from me and began to march toward the house. I followed.

If we didn’t have time for questions, I’d just accuse him then. “You’re Eric Sullivan.”

He froze. “How did you know?”

I knew because they’d asked me about him, interrogated me about him and swore I was helping him. But the only person I’d agreed to help was Reeves when I delivered the information to the reporter.

“You used your—whatever the hell you do—to escape a camp that is still open?”

“Yes,” he said. “But I can only carry out one person at a time. Sometimes two. I used to be able to only take myself places. I can’t just carry everyone out of the camps. I need you to be my whistleblower. Everyone will disregard my testimony. They’ll put a bullet in my brain and be done with it. People will take you seriously.”

“The wrong people took me seriously,” I said.

“You’re a decorated soldier. If you uncover a conspiracy, people will believe you.”

“When did it start?”

“I don’t know,” he said. When I looked doubtful, his voice rose. “I wished I could get out of that place every minute of every day for years. One day, that’s exactly what happened.”

We cut around a tall hedge at the edge of the park and Chaplain’s House loomed into view. It looked bigger. The lights coming from the windows illuminated like demonic eyes, daring me to come inside and find out just what kind of horrors Chaplain had in store for me.

“So why are you helping me now?” I asked. “The Wright case has nothing to do with your plan.”

“You can’t help me if you’re dead,” he said. “I can’t get justice if you’re floating face down in a river or behind bars.”

“Justice,” a voice said from the darkness. “Don’t you mean revenge?”

We both whirled and I raised my gun to meet the barrel already pointed at me.

Saturday, April 5, 2003

D
etective Smith stood there wearing black from head to toe, his 9MM pointed at my head. This was a smart idea, given the fact that Sullivan stood there unarmed.

“Whatever you believe or heard about me,” I said to Smith. “It isn’t true. This will sound crazy but Chaplain—”

“I know,” Smith interrupted.

I blinked. “You think you know but—”

“I know what Chaplain can do. The mind shit. He’s done it to me.”

I took a chance and lowered my gun a few inches from his head to his chest. When he slid his gun down completely, so did I.

“What did he do to you?” I asked.

“We were hunting him in Boston for the same shit he is doing here. My partner got too close and he killed him, after making everyone believe that he’d lost his mind and killed himself, of course.”

“How do you know the truth?” I asked.

“That’s what he does,” he said. “He likes to keep one person in the loop. Seeing their anguish and isolation is part of the hard-on for him. The real bitch of it is he doesn’t have to do it. He has plenty of money and power all on his own. It’s like his snuff films. He just enjoys watching the pain. That’s what he cares about.”

I look back toward the house. “They have my partner in there. We can’t stay out here talking.”

“She’s probably dead,” he said.

“Until I see her body go into the ground with my own eyes, I won’t believe it,” I said and adjusted the ammo in my pockets and made sure I was ready for what would come next.

“Maybe you shouldn’t believe it even then,” Smith said.

“Good point,” I replied and turned to Sullivan. “If you feel him in your head at all, you should just
go
.”

“What about you?”

“As soon as you see Jackson, I want you to get her out,” I commanded. “Do it or our deal is off.”

“I wasn’t aware we made a deal,” he stiffened.

“Sure we did,” I said. “Get Jackson out alive, and I’ll be your poster child for the detainee cause.”

He disappeared.

“Shit,” I said. “I didn’t mean
now
.”

“Where did he go?” the detective asked.

I jabbed a gun at the house and hoped Smith got the idea. By the way his eyes spread wide, those liquid whites bright with moonlight, I think he did. Without wasting another second, I rushed forward, descending on the dark house that waited.

4 Days

I
’ve paced the floor of my apartment until I’ve worn a path in the carpet. I obsess about what could be happening to my girls. At one point, I even wish that Caldwell would come and talk shit. That would mean he wasn’t hurting anyone at least.

My phone goes off and it’s Jackson.

“You’re late. Talk to me,” I demand.

There is a moment of silence before a tentative voice comes through the line. “Brinkley?”

“Alice?” My mind whirls with the possibilities of what has happened and why she could be calling me from Jackson’s number. “What’s happened?”

“Gloria has been hurt pretty bad and Jesse has been taken.”

Fuck. I cover my face with a hand and try to think.

“What’s going on?” she asks, angry.

“I’ll explain,” I tell her. “Can we meet?”

She suggests a donut shop about eight minutes away from my apartment.

“I’ll meet you there,” I tell her and terminate the call.

I take the highway, knowing it will be less congested this time of night and get off at the 21st Avenue exit.

She is already there when I park and get out of the car. She’s standing beside her Prius, fiddling with the buttons on her red coat. I do my best to stay out of sight, and I must’ve done all right because she jumps when she hears me.

“Why do you have Winston in your car?” I ask, pointing at Jesse’s fat pug resting in the front seat.

“It’s been a long night,” she says. It must have been, because she looks tired and irritable.

“Where is she?” I ask. I mean Jackson.

“We don’t know,” Alice says, and I can tell she is holding back tears. She recounts what she knows for me. Jackson and Jesse found Liza, but Liza is a traitor. Apparently, she was working with Micah Delaney all along.

“You sent her out-of-state to chase down a girl with NRD. Surely it occurred to you that they might cross paths with Caldwell.”

“But—” I begin. Alice doesn’t stop.

“After what happened last year, you didn’t think this was a trap? Of course it was a trap. Everything to do with Caldwell is a trap. How could you be so predictable and reckless?”

I snort. It’s a bitter and offended response. Predictable, me? Really?

“I sent Jackson to protect Jesse,” I tell her, trying to recover my wounded pride.

“Gloria almost
died
.”

The words strike me as forcibly as any blow.
Gloria almost died. Gloria almost died.

Jackson cannot view herself. She can’t predict her own death. She’s told me this. Christ, why didn’t it occur to me that her reckless pursuit of Caldwell could get her killed?

Of course it could.

And the more desperate she becomes, the more she pushes herself, the more reckless she’ll be.

“You look terrible,” Alice says.

“You’re more charming than I remember. Has Jesse worn off on you?”

“I am angry and I am tired.”

You and me both
, I think. Instead, I say: “We need somewhere safe to talk.”
Because I need to know what you’re doing that is pissing Caldwell off.
Because I need to check your story against what Gideon knows, and because I need to know if you can be trusted with the truth.

“Follow me,” she says.

I do.