Dying for Her: A Companion Novel (Dying for a Living Book 3) (18 page)

10 Days

I
want to test the kid first. So I lure her out in the middle of the night, knowing she sleeps about as consistently as I do. Part of it is her job. Shadowing replacement clients is a 24-hour affair. After this many years, she’s learned how to stay awake.

Also, I know she won’t turn down free pancakes. It’s after midnight when I see her push through the diner doors. She’s wearing a zip-up black hoodie under her boyfriend’s jacket. I’m amused by the mismatched shoes peeking out from beneath her dark blue jeans, but when her dog tag catches the harsh fluorescent light above, I stop smiling.

Beneath the canvas green jacket, it looks too military. They are standard FBRD issue now, a way to keep the death replacement agents out of the morgue in the event of a death, but I don’t see an agent. I just see the kid looking too much like a soldier.

She plops down across from me.

“What the hell are you wearing?” she asks.

I glance down at my disguise. One of my favorites actually, strawberry-blond beard and mustache, dark shades, and a Rasta beanie hat are assembled to give me the look of one of my favorite musicians. I’d kept the leather jacket of course and my favorite boots, but the rest of the ensemble was enough to hide the fact I was supposed to be dead to anyone who asked.

I don’t answer and she yammers on about her replacements, work and how difficult it can be working with people. It’s just good to hear her voice.

The waitress comes to bring our food and I wait until she is out of earshot before I get to business.

“Caldwell’s hit list,” I say and slide it across the table.

“You want me to read this? It’s a million pages long,” she groans around the oversized bite of pancakes stuffed into her chipmunk cheeks.

“Look up the word hyperbole,” I say.

She squints down at the page and I think of the first time I showed her the FBRD manual, shortly after recruiting her, a scrawny kid who talked too much even then. “Look at how tiny the font is. It must be a hundred names per page.”

“Just look at the first page.”

She finally quits trying to devour food and accepts the list.

Her cheeks redden. “Why am I the second name?”

“I think it’s ranked in order of importance. I would consider anyone on the first couple of pages top priority.”

“Is Lane—” she begins, but I’d anticipated her asking about her boyfriend.

“Page 44,” I say.

She is visibly relieved. “At least he isn’t a priority.”

“He isn’t the only one,” I say and watch her face carefully.

She looks down at the page again, running her finger along the list. I know the minute she sees it. Her finger stops and her mouth comes open slightly.

“She’s number eight,” she says. “If I’m number two, how the hell is Ally number eight? She’s not even a zombie.”

She’s referring to the fact that Caldwell has been hunting down and murdering Necronites, people with NRD just like him, and killing them off one by one.

“Keep your voice down,” I say, but there is no point in trying to keep her quiet.

“They only know about Ally because of me and I’m not even the most important person.”

“Cindy is on page 2,” I test her, seeing if her surprise is genuine, or if she’ll welcome a diversion. “Rachel is on page 14 and I couldn’t find my name anywhere.”

“Because you’re supposed to be dead,” she says.

Maybe I think, or maybe Caldwell already has me penciled in for my very own appointment.

Her face pinches again. “I don’t understand. How is Ally on this list?”

She is as surprised as I am that Alice is Caldwell’s target. Alice is as average as they come. She has no abilities. No power, money, or contacts and from the outside, no means to threaten Caldwell. So what has she done?

And there was the kid herself to consider. I remember Jesse lying in Caldwell’s arms. “I want you to take a good long look at your name. Number
two
, Jesse.”

Her eyes are fixed on the page but I don’t think she is listening to me. She can get as single-minded as I can when working a job. Ally is her job. Lane is her side interest. She might publically declare the opposite to either of them and herself, but this old dog has a good nose.

Why should I care? Because if Alice gets herself killed, I can’t count on the kid to keep her head clear. No doubt she would make one stupid mistake after another. I have proof from last year, when Alice was kidnapped. Jesse got herself killed almost instantly.

“I can’t save her twice,” she says and looks as if she is going to be sick. She is thinking of the basement, where Charlie delivered me to die a year ago. “If they try to hurt her again—”

“We won’t let them get that far,” I say. “You’re losing color. Look at me.”

“Tell me about Liza or something,” she says. “And get this freaking plate out of my face before I barf on it.”

I reach forward and pull her plate away from her. I see the kid I recruited eight years ago for selfish reasons. I said then,
Give me ten years, and no one will know you burned down the barn and killed a man.
Looks like she was going to get off early for good behavior.

I sigh. “When Jackson finds Liza, the first name on the list, I need you to go get her. She’s safer with you and Jackson than alone.” By finding the girl, maybe we can disrupt his plans. Maybe we can change something.

“OK, so he is a murderous lunatic who wants to hack up more death replacement agents. Fine,” she says, as if I hadn’t spoken. “But why Ally? What the hell does Caldwell want with Ally?”

“I don’t know,” I say. But I intend to find out.

Friday, April 4, 2003

C
harlie shut the door behind us as I came into the office. Then he locked it with the turn of his deadbolt.

“What the fuck?” Charlie asked.

“I have something to tell you,” I said. Already my mind raced with my options, none of which were ideal. “And it’s going to sound crazy.”

“Even if it is the truth,” Charlie said, letting go of the lock. “This is a fucking mess. Because of what happened in the desert, they’ll never believe me, even if I defend you.”

His hands went up to his hips, exposing the twin Berettas tucked into his shoulder holster.

I knew he was right, but I decided to tell him the truth anyway. What did I have to lose? “Wright has been recruited—or kidnapped, it isn’t clear—by a local drug lord,” I began. “Henry Chaplain. He uses NRD-positive girls to make snuff films. Afraid of exposure, he has killed my informant and is now trying to defame me.”

Charlie snorted. “The bar?”

“I saw him there,” I said. “He was fucking grinning at me from the sidewalk while the building burned.”

He exhaled and ran a hand through his hair.

“You don’t believe me.”

His mouth fell open. “Of course, I believe you, Jim. Why wouldn’t I believe you?”

I had expected him to doubt me. Why wouldn’t he? All of it sounded insane to me. But here was my friend, telling me that he believed me despite the odds. Something deep in my chest released.

“Sometimes,” Charlie said. “When we try to make things right, we make a big fucking mess. Or we piss off the wrong lunatic. In this case, you’ve done both.”

“No kidding,” I said and laughed.

“But you shouldn’t have run, Jim. The witness testimony—”

“I know,” I said, biting off my own nervous energy. “Chaplain is good at—persuading people. We aren’t going to convince anyone I’m innocent.”

Charlie considered this. “You need to get out of town.”

“You just said I shouldn’t run.”

“They’ve called some people in,” he said. “I just spoke to them on the phone and they don’t sound interested in the truth. I think with the whole Sullivan fuck up—the fact we haven’t found him, and the missing girl and now this—they aren’t happy. I think it best you become hard to find until I can clear your name.”

Charlie’s eyes widened then and I looked over my shoulder to see what he saw. There were four men, big guys in dark suits, coming through the front door. I didn’t need to ask who they were or what they were here for. It was obvious, wasn’t it?

“Sorry, Charlie,” I said as several pairs of eyes clamped onto mine through the office window. “But I think it’s too late for that.”

Friday, April 4, 2003

I
’d been sitting in a cold gray room for hours. They hadn’t taken my watch because I said I didn’t have one. Of course I lied. A common interrogation technique involved removing all clocks and watches so that a person would lose track of time. But I couldn’t lose track of time, because I had a 10 P.M. appointment with Jackson and I had every intention of keeping it. No way I was going to let her go to Chaplain’s alone.

“We have over twelve witnesses putting you at the—?”

“Why am I being interrogated in a jail cell?” I interrupted. My elbows were on my knees as I sat on the edge of the cot. A toilet and wash basin sat off to my left, and in front of me were two of the suits that had burst into the FBRD office. I let them take me, despite Charlie’s insistence that I disappear. I was starting to regret it.

“We are familiar with your service record,” the first said. He’d removed his shades and put them in a breast pocket where they bulged. The room had a draft to it, but I had no idea where it was coming from. My view was limited to the cell itself and the partial stretch of hallway that cut across the sliding door to the cell on my right. “You are too dangerous to hold somewhere unsecure.”

“Is that so?” I said. “So don’t you think that if I wanted to escape, I could have done it at any time?”

“Maybe you thought it best to come quietly?” he offered with a shrug and a thrust of his bottom lip. “Trying to make up for the fact that you ran from the scene of a crime?”

I think Chaplain made me run
, I wanted to say, but I’d reached the point where keeping my mouth shut was the better idea.

“If you really think I’m a firebombing maniac, does that make you smart or stupid for sitting this close to me?”

He smirked, but I saw the slightest flicker of concern cross his face. I wondered how long he could refrain from scooting his chair back. It was about a minute before he found an excuse to get up. Wobbly leg, my ass.

“You may have lost control when you burned the bar.”

“Do I look like a man incapable of control?” I asked. I hunched my shoulders, enhancing my predatory look and hardened my gaze. It was bullshit posturing, I knew, but it worked on idiots like this, especially when you stared into their eyes without blinking. “You’ve asked me the same dumb shit over and over, yet your larynx is still in your throat, isn’t it?”

“Threatening your investigative officers will not reflect well in your trial,” the other one said. He’d been quiet this whole time, leaning against the bars, watching this charade.

“Neither will eyewitness testimony,” I said. “It’s consistently unreliable. After all, I bet even the eyewitnesses themselves have inconsistent recollections.” I was hoping this to be true.

“Actually the testimony was uniformly consistent,” the smug one replied. He’d given up sitting altogether and had his hands on the back of the chair, gripping the upper rim, holding it between us like a shield.

“Because the memories were planted,” I said. I was speaking to myself. I started laughing. “Of course they were.”

Both men looked unnerved. I realized they really did believe I’d lost my mind. And I had access to too many things that go
BOOM
. That’d make me nervous too.

“Where’s your partner?” he asked.

“I work alone,” I said.

“Not on the Eric Sullivan case,” the smug one said.

“Captain Jackson?” I asked. Then I lied. “I have no idea.”

“I’m sure you don’t,” he said.

“What does she have to do with anything?”

“She must be your accomplice,” he said.

My anger spiked. “She wasn’t even at the bar.”

“Then why did we dig your bullet out of her shoulder?”

I froze. “What?”

“It was a bullet from your missing Beretta that was removed from Captain Jackson’s shoulder.”

I rubbed my face with both hands. I wanted to laugh at the pure lunacy of the situation but I knew this was the wrong time to do so. I was also in the horrible position that if I did not confess Chaplain’s involvement, I would likely be indicted myself. On the other hand, if I sent men to Chaplain’s door, they might die, or worse, come back even more convinced of my guilt.

“Is she alive?” the quiet one by the bars asked.

“Who?”
Maisie? Rachel?
God I hoped so.

“Captain Jackson,” he replied.

“As far as I know,” I said. But not for much longer if I didn’t get out of this place.

“Because she’s your accomplice in the Sullivan case,” he said. “You’re both working to hide Sullivan.”

“I’ve never seen Sullivan,” I said. I was pissed beyond measure. If it wouldn’t have damned me, I would have ripped this bed off the wall and beat them with it.

They looked afraid, which was a small pleasure. “Sergeant James Brinkley, you are suspended until further notice. Your badge and gun will be kept until we see fit to reinstate you,
if
we reinstate you.”

I flipped them the bird as they left the cell, closing the door after them.

Their conversation had filled me with doubts. Was this shitshow all Chaplain? He didn’t like me in his territory, trying to take his property—as he surely thought of the girls—or fuck with his revenue and so he decided to take me down? Sure, that was one theory. But given the pressure and attention Charlie had fielded over the Sullivan case, I had a feeling otherwise. They’d accused me of working with Sullivan and of putting the bullet in Jackson myself, the day we
claimed
to see Maisie alive.

How big was this?
I’d asked Charlie.

I’d gotten my answer.
Big
.