Worth Dying for (A Dying for a Living Novel Book 5) (16 page)

“Now we must focus on making the best decisions,” she says.

“I make good decisions,” I say, defensively. “Okay, maybe I shouldn’t have bought that sixty-dollar blender from the infomercial, but that was
one
time. Well, okay, yes, I guess there was also the hundred-dollar Puppy Plush Palace, but Winston loved that thing!” Before I burned the whole house down that is.

“Here.” Gloria looks up from the sketchbook, glancing around her to make sure everyone else is far enough away.

I scoot a little closer so I can look at the picture. It’s so dim in here that the detail isn’t great. Yet even in the low light, a couple of things stick out.

First of all, the dead bodies. Caldwell. Ally. Gideon.

Ally.

Ally.

“Don’t panic.” Gloria’s voice is perfectly even.

I blink at her, sucking in a sharp breath.

“Don’t,” she says with slightly more inflection. “There are people in here.”

I’m not panicking. I want whoever is making that horrible noise to shut up. Oh wait, that’s me. The low guttural moan that actually sounds a lot like panic grows louder.

“Say something.”

“She’s dead!” I shout. Immediately, several people
shhhh
me. My head snaps up to see an obese woman in socks and sandals pressing one finger over her lips. Gloria’s fingers dig into my arm.

“She’s dead,” I hiss through clenched teeth.

“So is Caldwell,” Gloria says.

“Fuck Caldwell,
Ally
is dead.”

“I
know
,” she says, the first sign of impatience showing in her face and tone.

“What do you mean you
know
, Gloria. What the hell does that mean?”

“Keep your voice down,” she whispers. “I don’t want to be kicked out. This is one of the few places in the whole city where I can show my drawings and they won’t end up on satellites or someone’s MyPage.”

I bite my tongue so hard I see stars. It swells instantly, which shuts me up more than anything. Pain in the mouth has a way of deflating my rage unlike anything else. It’s totally different than stubbing a toe. Stub a toe and I want to murder someone.

“The way I see it,” Gloria goes on, emboldened by my self-imposed silence. “We manage to kill Caldwell in the desert as planned. That’s what we want.”

“I want Ally alive.” I want it way more than I want Caldwell dead. In fact, I would probably let Caldwell go be a douche to someone else if it meant that Ally and I could live in peace for the rest of our lives. But I know I’m not that lucky and Ally would never turn a blind eye to injustice.

“Here is the alternative,” Gloria says. She flips to the next page and the body count is much higher. In this picture, Gloria is dead. Maisie is dead. Georgia is dead. Gideon is dead. Rachel is dead. Their bodies strewn like litter across the desert floor. Basically everyone but Ally is dead.

“We don’t actually fight him in the desert, do we?” I say, a glimmer of hope welling up in my chest. “We’re in the facility. So maybe this is wrong. You’ve been wrong before.”

Gloria gives me a hateful look. “If you focus only on saving Ally, we all die and Caldwell gets away. That’s the bottom line. I want you to know that before we go in.”

“What kind of ultimatum is that?”

“You are free to do what you want,” Gloria says.

“It’s not like I want you to die,” I say, guilt hardening in my stomach.

“I don’t care if I live or die,” she says in a perfectly even tone. I have to believe her. “It’s about the mission. If Caldwell gets away, we do not fulfill the mission. And I haven’t chased this man for ten years only to let him go.”

She closes the sketchbook and looks up at the angel statue in front of us.

I search for an idea. Anything.
Anything
that will keep Ally alive and take out Georgia and Caldwell as planned. But my mind blanks. Instead of brilliant useful ideas, all I feel is blind panic. The image of Ally dead flashes over and over and over again.

“I have an alternative idea,” Gloria says.

“I’m listening.”

“We use Maisie as bait, have her draw Georgia into the room so we can get her in the device and have the upper hand. It will be better if Maisie is with Ally, in the shield, and we are exposed.”

“They may not come,” I say.

“They will if the prize is appealing enough.”

I frown.

“If I wound you, you’ll seem like easy prey. Caldwell will target you.”

I blink at her. “You want to incapacitate
me,
your fire-bombing cannon girl, the moment before the most important fight?”

“Yes.”

I’m trying to piece together her ideas. Lie down and play dead. Caldwell comes. We all die. And then what? Maisie brings us back to life. “I don’t know. The last time you tried to out-plan the bad guys, Lane and Ally were stabbed to death in a basement. Brinkley and I didn’t fare too well either.”

Brinkley.

Brinkley and the weird dream—vision—whatever the hell it is, comes back to me.

“And I think Brinkley wants us to save Rachel more than kill Caldwell,” I say. Gloria pivots in the pew so she can see my face. She frowns and then arches her eyebrows, encouraging me to spill it.

I tell her about the beach house. I tell her about Brinkley’s visit and his message. She smiles once or twice—when I mention the leather jacket and the beer cans. But by the time I finish the story she isn’t smiling anymore.

“You don’t know it’s him,” Gloria says.

“It was him,” I insist. “I don’t know how, but it was him. It—it…it
felt
like him, if that makes sense. It even smelled like him. That cologne—”

“Drakkar Noir,” she says without hesitation.

“O-
kay
.” I grin. “Don’t know how you know that, but sure. Anyway, it was him. He wants us to help her, not kill her.”

I realize what I’m saying. How did this happen? How did I go from believing Rachel would never betray me to accepting she’s a homicidal maniac?

“Rachel’s actions are influencing this outcome as much as yours. That’s why the vision is unclear.”

“Can I see it again?” I ask, nodding toward the sketchbook.

Gloria opens it up to the page.
If you only focus on Ally, we all die.
That’s what she’d said. Yet, when I see her body, Ally is all I can think about.

Could I really let us all die and rely on Maisie to bring us back? What if Maisie is taken before she can? Or is killed? It seems too messy, reckless, and unclear. But keeping Maisie away from Georgia does seem like an inherently better plan. The more I realize what a struggle this is for Maisie, the more I think she should be far away from Georgia during the fight, lest her instincts to protect her mother take over.

In the picture, Ally is lying there so peacefully. Her face perfectly serene and smooth. She could be sleeping. In this version of some possible future, did Caldwell kill her? But how? Her neck isn’t twisted. There’s no gaping wound from a bullet or assault. No blood even. The only other time I’ve seen a body just fall dead was because of Georgia. When she uses her death ribbons, the serpentine black smoke makes her victims fall dead without an apparent mark on them.

But I’ll be damned if I let Georgia kill Ally. I’ll have to be sure
I’m
the one that strikes first.

Rachel

“
W
hat the fuck is this?” I pull myself up tall from where I slump in the passenger seat. We’ve been in Illinois for a long time and all I’ve seen is a whole lot of nothing. Empty fields lay barren as far as the eye can see. The monotony is occasionally broken up by a tree here or there, but overall, it’s dead, flat land. Jessup was born somewhere out here and it’s truly hard to imagine given how urbanized she seems now with her mismatched sneakers and black hoodies and Starbucks coffee.

“There’s a roadblock,” Gideon says, downshifting. “So much for taking back roads to stay out of sight.”

Officers swarm the pavement. Several stand with their boot heels in the gravel shoulder and backs to wide open fields. More are in the road, leaning against the few cars that have clotted at this particular section of blacktop. Three state trooper vehicles block the way with a wooden barricade covering the gap between. If the officer approves a car, then the barricade is lifted and the driver is allowed to pass through to the other side.

“If they aren’t looking for us, then they should let us pass.” I’m trying to count how many officers there are.

Uriel,
I think, hoping to prick the angel’s ears.
Do you see something I don’t?

Everything,
a haughty voice retorts.

Can I kill them all?

You’ll likely die,
he says.

“What are the chances they aren’t looking for us?” Gideon asks with a derisive sneer, unaware of the internal conversation. “Oh god, why are you smiling like that?”

I giggle. “This will be fun.”

“Rach—be reasonable,” Gideon says. “You can’t squeeze all their hearts or throw their cars without taking at least one bullet to the head and then where will we be? Dare I even mention how vulnerable
I
am?”

“Don’t whine, Gideon.” I bend down and rub the soft fur on my leopard print heels. “It’s not sexy.”

The car in front of us inches forward to take its turn as the one in front of it creeps toward the lifted barrier.

“Do as I say, pretty boy, and we will both get out of this alive.”

Uriel’s laughter rings deep through my ears and I squirm in my seat, at the ready. Gideon must be right, of course. Already, several officers on the side of the road have turned their neutral gazes on us. One points at the large scrape along the side of the Mercedes and I wonder if I should have let Gideon ditch the car in Pennsylvania as he wanted.

A cop with his rifle starts walking toward us as the car in front is given the go ahead to depart.

“Ready,” I whisper and Gideon’s fingers tense on the gearshift. As the car in front of us is halfway through the barrier, I act. “Go!”

Gideon punches the gas, lurching past two officers. He barely clips one, sending him tumbling to the pavement. The cops in front raise their rifles, but I was expecting that. I shove them back over their vehicles, their guns shooting worthlessly up into the air. The officer trying to get the barrier back into place gets a nice hard shove too.

I don’t stop at the barrier, of course. With my mind, I shove hard against all the cars in front of us. Rubber wheels squeal against the pavement as they slide toward the shoulder. By the time Gideon reaches the barrier, there’s a nice big hole for him to fly through.

He’s laughing like a school boy.

I turn back to see the officers climbing into their cars.

“Here comes your daily dose of excitement, Cariño.”

“Can’t. Wait.” He shifts and the Mercedes accelerates again, easily overtaking the vehicle that’d passed through the barrier ahead of us.

The troopers gain on us, passing the car that pulled over at the sight of flashing lights.

I turn around in my seat and focus on the car closest to ours.

Uriel
, I ask.
Your vision is better than mine. Tell me when they are lined up.

One trooper moves over to the left trying to pass Gideon but he moves to the center of the road. A car approaches in the opposite lane, but I concentrate on the steering wheel, yanking it hard toward the ditch.

Uriel?

Now.

I don’t make the mistake of shoving the cars themselves. To push them back would take a great deal of force. I’d have to override their forward momentum enough to stop them and then use more force to knock them back.

I choose an easier target.

In one swift jerk, I yank up large slabs of concrete stretching behind the Mercedes and the pack of officers gaining on us. It comes up in giant sheets rising up like a great black wave before folding over onto the cars. The underside facing me was clotted with mud and earth, bits of grass sticking to the axle.

The dust cloud is tremendous. When it clears, I see two cop cars have managed to maneuver around this. The car that was closest to us only had its back end lifted. The other must have been near the back of the pack and had more time to escape the danger than his colleagues in the front.

“I’m not sure the taxpayers will appreciate that,” Gideon says, but he’s smiling. He couldn’t care less about taxpayer money.

“Stop the car,” I say.

“Love, I don’t—”

“Stop the car!” I command and the Mercedes comes to a squealing stop. The front right wheel slides off the road onto the shoulder. Now further from the wreckage of the pile-up and destroyed road, I see three cars still in pursuit. Two from the pack and the one tailing us closely from the start. Five officers in all.

I throw the car door open and hear Gideon groan.

“Stay in the car,” I tell him. “You could get shot.”

“You aren’t bulletproof either,” he argues but keeps his head down.

I walk toward the police with my arms up as if in surrender. The man in the closest car lifts his gun and I break his neck. I barely twitch my pinkie and the vertebrae crack like eggs on the side of a frying pan.

A ripple of pleasure rolls through me. Uriel’s laughter rumbles from deep in my mind.

“Freeze! On the ground!”

I turn my head to see the three officers approaching in a triangle formation, guns up and pointed. They look like some strange boy band about to break into song and dance.

I reach out with my mind and grab their hearts. All three and squeeze. Their arms falter in front of them, as they lurch forward, clutching their chests. They drop to their knees. Their guns clatter against the road like plastic toys.

They stop moving.

Rachel!
Uriel booms and I jump at the sound of his voice.

A gunshot goes off and a shell strikes me in the chin. It’s as if a giant fist has punched me across the jaw. I stumble back as white fire explodes up the side of my face. Hot blood pours down the front of my beautiful dress, making the satin cling to my breasts.

The world is already losing focus as I turn on the fifth officer. No
freeze
. No
hands up.
He sees four officers fall dead and decides not to waste a word on me.

My body weakens from the massive blood loss, and my mind dulls at the edges, either from the pain or blood loss of having my jaw blasted off.

I do see him though and I flex that muscle in my mind bringing him to his knees. I don’t know if I kill him quickly or cleanly, but I don’t take any more shots to the face.

I sink to my knees and place my palms on the cold pavement.

Gideon’s boots pound the pavement as he runs up behind me. He places a hand on my back and tries to gently roll me over. I’m moving in that direction anyway, as my elbows buckle and I collapse completely to the road.

“Holy shit,” he says, his eyes wide. “Your face—”

He grimaces, wrinkling his nose and looking away. He doesn’t finish the sentence.

What
? I want to say.
Aren’t I still pretty?

But I can’t use my mouth to make words. I can’t even get my throat to swallow the blood I’m choking on until Gideon rolls me onto my side. It probably isn’t a coincidence that he points at my fragmented jaw on the pavement.

“Hold on,” he tells me.

I want to laugh. Hold on? Hold on to what? What is there to hold on to when the entire world falls away?