Dying for Her: A Companion Novel (Dying for a Living Book 3) (9 page)

She takes a minute to breathe, slowing down her exhalations, no doubt a mechanism she learned these past few years in the asylum.

“Uriel says we are special. NRD and death replacement, all of that is just a symptom of what’s happening.”

“What’s happening?” I try to sound encouraging rather than skeptical.

“The world is changing, like it always does.” She shrugs. “But because we’ve developed consciousness as a species, we now have a choice as to what it will change into. We have that power now, to make it whatever we want.”

“How is your angel or power supposed to change the world?”

“
I’m
not going to change the world,” she blurts. Laughter comes high and nervous from her constricted throat. “I just move stuff.”

“Move stuff?”

“I can move things. People, objects, or myself. You know,
stuff
.”

“Show me,” I say.

“No,” she says. “If I use it I’m open and vulnerable.”

“Why?”

“Caldwell will know,” she says. “I don’t want him to know what I can do. I’m not ready to face him.”

My heart sinks when I hear this. I really need her to accept the favor I’m about to ask, even if it scares the shit out of her.

“So Caldwell has an angel too, that he can use to change the world?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says. “But I don’t know which one. I just know that he has been going around stealing other people’s powers.”

You made me what I am
, he’d said. He’s right, because I am the reason he discovered how to take power from someone else. My chest constricts around the truth.

“We can talk all damn day if you want, but you said you need two things from me. Two. What’s the other favor? Information and—?”

“I want you to promise that you’ll take care of Jesse. If I die, you have to go to her. Caldwell will try to kill you both. You’re safer together. You can combine your gifts and keep each other safe.”

Her mouth falls open but I say what I need to.

“Jesse still thinks of him as her father. There may be a time when you have to face Caldwell
for
Jesse. Do you understand?”

“We agreed this was the safest place for me,” she says.

“I know,” I say and squeeze her knees. “I’m asking you to take a big risk. You’ll have to break out of here and get to Jesse on your own. You’ll have to use your resources.”

“You’re asking me to kill him for her.”

I say nothing.

“If Caldwell even finds out about me—” she begins. “I’ll never get the chance to do what you’re asking.”

He’s going to know anyway
, I think.
The next time he sees me
. “I know I’m asking a lot.”

“You’re going to die trying to kill him,” she says, tears in her eyes. “And you want me to do the same.”

“So if I die, you’re going to stay here and leave Jesse unprotected?”

She throws up her hands in frustration. “No, of course not.”

“Then tell me you’ll do it,” I demand. “Promise me that if anything happens to me, that if you don’t get a call from me on October 4th, your bags will be packed and you’re out of here.”

“Promise me you’re going to at least
try
not to die,” she says. Her jaw works furiously as she clenches and unclenches her teeth. I wonder if she still has the mouth guard I gave her to mitigate all the grinding she does in her sleep.

I exhale. “If it comes to me or Jesse, you know what I’m going to choose.”

She looks down at her lap.

“Promise me, Rachel. If I’m gone, you two have to stick together. I want my girls to survive. That’s my last request. I want you both to live long and happy lives.”

When she looks up again the collected tears are spilling over. “Okay, fine,” she spits. “I promise. I promise, you asshole.”

A giant weight is lifted from my chest.
They can do this
, I think.
They can do this without me—if it comes to that.
“Thank you.”

She smacks my arm. “You’re a moron. Just stop talking already. I can’t bear to listen to any more of this martyr nonsense.”

“I’ll stop talking,” I say and stand from the bed. I cross to the door and close it, giving us a bit of privacy. “If you’ll show me what you can do.”

30 Weeks

J
ackson is sitting in the dark of her living room when I come in and she has a gun in her hand.

I drop my bag on the floor and pull my own gun. In situations like this, it is suicide to ask
what’s going on? What’s going on
could be a bullet to your brain.

“He’s not here anymore,” Jackson says and sits forward, resting each of her elbows on a knee. The gun hangs loosely between her legs.

“Caldwell?” I ask.

“He had a message for me, from Micah.”

I step out of the small living room and go into the kitchen. I don’t turn on any lights, but I do take a moment between opening and closing the fridge to listen for that buzz in my head, that telltale sign that Caldwell is here, lurking, even if I can’t see the bastard.

I hear nothing.

I go back to where Jackson waits on the couch and offer her the beer in my hand. When she shakes her head no, I pop the cap off with my keychain bottle opener, put it in my front pocket with the plan to add it to my growing tabletop collection. Then I sit down beside her.

I wait. If she doesn’t want me to know the message, she doesn’t have to tell me. When I am pretty sure she isn’t going to say anything, I start. “Are you going to tell Jesse he’s your brother?”

“No,” she says. “Why should I?”

I shrug. “You’re right. Why would she need to know that? I guess I’m wrapped up in my confessional. Writing down all of your sins, all the things you blame yourself for, it just gets into your head, you know?”

“How’s Rachel?” she asks.

“Good,” I say. “Tough as nails, and still just as much of a smart ass as Jesse. God only knows how they ever got along.”

“I believe they appreciate each other’s humor.”

“Yeah, that’s probably it. Anyway, she’s good. She seems healthy and in control of herself.”

“Does she still see angels?” Jackson asks as she thumbs the safety back on and rests the gun against her knee.

“One, named Uriel apparently,” I say. “But it’s more than that. She can move shit around. Like Carrie White or something, but hopefully it won’t end in a bloodbath.”

“Unless it’s Caldwell’s blood,” she says.

“That would simplify things. Was he able to get in?” I tap the side of my skull.

She shakes her head no. “I’ve been expecting him for a while. It’s why I’ve been sitting and sleeping on the couch. There’s only one way in and out.” She points to the living room in front of her.

Her sofa has an uninterrupted view of the room. Unless Caldwell developed the ability to hang through walls, he couldn’t creep up behind her here. “If he can’t bounce around me like a goddamn lemur, he’s got just the mind games.”

“But that doesn’t work with you, right?” It was true a long time ago, but I’ve learned never to assume that because your ass got lucky once you could play that card until the end of time. Most luck has an expiration date.

“No,” she says. “He couldn’t get into my head. But he can still play with my emotions.”

“You don’t have emotions,” I say, faking cheerfulness. “You’re a warrior.”

She grunts. “He said my brother asked for the pleasure of killing me himself.”

My fingers tighten on the cold glass. “He was lying.”

“No,” she says and taps the gun against her leg. “I know my baby brother. He never forgave me for what happened.”

“You were kids,” I say.

“It doesn’t matter. Not to him.”

I don’t say anything to that. If it were me, she’d say the same thing. I think of Aziz, lying motionless in the dirt, blood coming out of the corner of his mouth.
You were only doing your job. How could you know? You are a good soldier, protecting our boys, our home, and democracy. You did the right thing.

No matter how many times I’d heard this crap, I never believed it.

And I know the other side of the coin too. Charlie. Once we’d been so close I would’ve died for him. Then he betrayed me.

No, there was nothing I could say to Jackson that she would accept.

So I let the silence grow thick between us. I lay back against the couch and balance the bottle on one of my knees. I try to relax the muscles in my back which are tense from all the miles I’ve put on the odometer today. I open myself up to the peaceful feeling of exhaustion trying to grab ahold of me. The cushions beside me soften as Jackson sits back herself. Then I feel a hand on my beer, pulling the bottle from my grip.

With my eyes closed, I listen to her gulp it down and wonder just how many moments, dark quiet moments like this one, did I have left with her.

“Do you ever just feel like an old computer?” I ask her, thinking of that clunker I gave Jesse to disassemble. “There are all these tablets and iPhones and apps where you can turn the heat down at home while you’re taking a shit at the office.”

She laughs.

“That’s how I feel with all this dying but waking up, and angels and
oh-I-can-climb-in-your-head-and-make-you-think-you’re-a-beautiful-pony
shit. I miss the days when all I had to worry about was someone with a gun.”

My eyes open and I turn to look at her. She’s smiling down at the beer as if it’s told her a joke.

“What?” I ask.

“They shoved magnetite in my brain to try and make me a better soldier,” she says. She twists the neck between two fingers and just smiles at me. “If you think about it, it’s like an upgrade. I’ve been upgraded.”

Before I know it we are both laughing, deep and desperate sounds spilling from our throats.

Friday, March 28, 2003

I
spent the morning doing paperwork. I know some guys hate to write up their reports, but I find it soothing. I still do. Something about dotting the ‘i’s and crossing the ‘t’s gives me a sense of completion and closure that I rarely achieve with a gun in my hand.

It helped that Charlie was out again instead of pacing his office like a caged animal, gnawing at the furniture and breathing down my neck. I felt pretty damn good until Jackson ruined it by slamming a stack of file folders on my desk.

“Jesus, Jackson,” I said and erased the spastic nonsense I’d typed into the word document. “God forbid a man enjoy a peaceful morning.”

“This is bullshit,” she said.

I saved the report I’d been working on and turned away from the computer. “If this is about the fact that Detective Swanson ordered a physical for you, I—”

Her face scrunched up with irritation. “I am often undermined because I am a woman and black, why should I care if I’m also undermined because of my health and disabilities?”

I thought it best to keep my mouth shut.

“I’m talking about the files on Sullivan. Look,” she said.

I didn’t ask how she got the files before me. I opened the folder she offered from the top of the stack. It was very thin. I’d seen detainee files before from previous missing person cases I’d worked since joining the FBRD. This wasn’t even the full four-page admittance form. Basic information like his DOB was present. Other parts of the processing record were deleted.

“What the hell is this?” I asked. “Where’s the rest?”

“Exactly,” she said. “Did you notice anything?”

I looked down at the first page again, searching for anything out of place. Then I saw it. The processing number was missing. The number I needed to find more information on Sullivan had been removed from the document.

“Where’s the PNC?” I asked, unwilling to believe they’d scrub off the very code I needed to continue my investigation.

“Good question,” she said.

“It doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Charlie has been losing his mind over trying to find this guy, but then we’re given doctored files? Do they want him found or not?”

“Maybe they want him found,” she said, sitting back in her seat and rubbing her forehead. “But they don’t want us to know why he must be found.”

My guts clenched. It took me a second to realize I was expecting another seizure, like the last time she sat in this chair.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she said. “I’m fine.”

“Are you? I heard they’re still trying to figure out what to give you.”

She shrugged. “Some drugs work. Others work but cause problems. I’m alive, aren’t I?”

I let it go. “You’d know better than I would.”

She fell into a pensive silence. When she spoke there was a weight to her gaze. “I’ve seen something like this before.”

I looked up so she knew I was listening.

“He was an operative. Deadly guy. But he went MIA on a mission and they wanted to bring him back, but didn’t want anyone to really know why they were looking for him or who he really was.”

“So do you think Sullivan works for someone and that someone is unhappy with his job performance?” I’d heard worse theories.

“He has a lot of mechanical knowledge,” she said. “And he’s hard to kill. He would make a decent operative, especially if they trained him up during the years they had him detained.”

Before we could brainstorm this theory longer, my phone rang and I answered.

“Get down here,” Charlie said. He gave me an address.

“What’s happened?” I stood and pulled my leather jacket off the back of my chair. Jackson did the same.

“I found the Michaelson girl,” Charlie said, but his voice wasn’t reassuring. Whatever he had for me wasn’t good news.

“That bad?” I asked.

“That bad.”