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.”
Chapter 21
30 Weeks
Jackson 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.
Chapter 22
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.”
Chapter 23
Friday, March 28, 2003
Jackson and I pulled up outside the address and found the house still smoking. A fire of this magnitude would burn for a while, smoldering long after the last of the flames were gone. Jackson and I took the Impala, parking it on the curb opposite the house. I crossed the street to find Charlie with his back to the flames. He spoke as soon as he saw me.
“The firefighters recovered three bodies, burnt beyond recognition with only dental fragments available for identification. Just teeth were found for the little girl,” Swanson said as the three of us stood outside the smoking house.
I felt like I’d been kicked in the balls. My stomach ached deep inside and it was pretty damn hard to suck air into my lungs.
“How many teeth?” I asked as a memory surfaced.
“Three,” he confirmed.
“Why three?” I pressed. “Did they knock the rest out of her head?”
“No head,” Swanson said.
“Excuse me?”
Heat rolled off the house and the air smelled like a campfire, all that burned wood wafting into the breeze.
“The little girl was decapitated. The coroner thinks it was done post-mortem, probably by her kidnappers.”
“So where is the head?”
“We don’t know.”
“So you identified Maisie Michaelson with no head, just three teeth?”
“It’s enough to extract DNA.”
I rubbed my brow. “You can extract DNA from a baby tooth but not from the bones of a corpse?”
Charlie raised his voice. “I’m not a forensic fucking scientist. I’m just telling you what I was told. Do you want to know the rest of the story or not?”
I waved him on.
“This house belonged to George and Carolyn Kilns. They recently lost their daughter in an accident. She was about Maisie’s age, died from an undiagnosed allergy. Their daughter also went to Maisie’s school. We don’t know all the details yet, but we suspect they kidnapped the Michaelson girl and tried to keep her for themselves.”
Jackson’s face said she was just as pissed as I was. “Why would they do that?”
Charlie looked at her as if for the first time. “A child who cannot die sounds like a dream come true to a couple of grieving parents.”
“Then why cut off the kid’s head?” I asked. “Why dispose of a head?”
“Who fucking knows? Maybe they were insane. Maybe they decided to murder her and kill themselves, but knew they had to fuck up her brain to do it.”
“Pretty extreme. Nothing a shot to the head wouldn’t have accomplished.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Charlie said and threw his hands up. “Case closed. The girl is dead. Are you going to lose your shit on this? Carry her headless corpse out into the desert?”
The world warped as if the fire were melting it away. Charlie looked like he might apologize, but closed his mouth and walked toward the uniform officer on the other side of the tape. Jackson took a step closer and I braced myself for her questions about Aziz.
“She isn’t dead,” she said.
I exhaled the breath I was holding. My gut didn’t think the girl was dead either, but I’d been wrong once or twice before, especially when I really didn’t want to be wrong.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I viewed her last night,” she said. “She’s alive and she isn’t here.”
I tried to remember what Charlie had said about the remote viewing process. Something about seeing images or hearing sounds in their minds and then sketching down the clues. I could only remember the history. I knew it was a technique developed by the military, to see if ESP espionage was possible. When they failed to replicate NRD—particularly the ability to resurrect—someone got the idea to teach their volunteer soldiers remote-viewing instead. I couldn’t remember how they’d made the connection between remote-viewing and the failed NRD experiment.
“Would your ‘viewing’ show her dead though?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. She sounded pretty damn confident. “She isn’t dead.”
Chapter 24
28 Weeks
My eyes shoot open and I grab my neck. My head buzzes from the sudden lack of oxygen and my throat muscles flex as if trying to shake off whatever is crushing my windpipe. I only swipe at the air around me unable to connect with anything. There is no hand, no assailant. I see spots in front of my eyes, those dancing black and white blips that I know are the precursor to passing out. In the dark of my bedroom, I start to wonder if this is a dream.
The sensation disappears. As suddenly as it came, the pressure around my throat vanishes and sweet relief washes over me. I lean forward in my bed and draw in deep lungfuls of air. My head still buzzes, but the blackout dots clear. Caldwell sits by the window in the white armchair placed there by whomever decorated this apartment.
“That felt good,” he says, folding his fingers back to inspect his nails. “Was it good for you? I hear asphyxiation to the point of unconsciousness can be euphoric.”
I reach for the gun under my pillow. It isn’t there. Caldwell lifts it up so I can see it in the pale light coming through the windows. “Too slow. You see, if I pop in while you’re sleeping, I can deepen your dream state. I can bring a marching band through here and you’ll be none the wiser. It’s a fantastic trick, don’t you think? I have you to thank for it.”
“Stay out of my head,” I tell him. My voice is gravelly at best. I’m not sure if it is from being choked or from sleep itself.
“No, you see I didn’t choke you,” he says and sits forward in his seat still holding my gun. “I just told your mind that you were choking. Then your obedient muscles constricted and t
he lungs closed.”
“You can’t control Jackson. And you can’t control Jesse.”
He looks up. “I’d love to test that theory.”
I lean against the headboard and pull up my knee to rest my elbow on it.
“You’re right about Jackson though. Her brain damage protects her. If you only had a little magnetite in your brain, you’d be all right. But you are 100% meat up there, so we can have all the fun in the world.” He leans back in his chair. “You know you were dreaming about the boy again?”
Aziz’s soft face surfaces, still a baby face that wouldn’t see a razor for years. The sound of goats crying and his mother’s screams rise up from the darkness.
“Stop,” I tell him, believing these visions are his doing. “I’m not in the mood.”
“That’s not me,” he says. “You don’t need me to torture you. You do a great job of that all on your own.”
“To what do I owe this honor?” I say and meet his eyes. “This is the second time you’ve come over just to play. Do you have it that bad for me?”
He sneers. “Practice makes perfect. Do you know there was a study where basketball players were asked to supplement their drills with visualization? The control group who didn’t practice in their heads as well as on the court showed less improvement. So you see, I’m getting better and better at killing you every time I imagine doing it. If I’m going to snap your neck in a couple of months, I might as well get good at it. Otherwise, I might botch the job and you’ll have to choke to death on your own blood. Would you like that?”
“Just tell me what you want.” I don’t like being trapped in my own bed, weaponless.
“I want to kill you and get this over with,” he says, pressing an index finger to the side of his skull.
I open my arms. “What’s stopping you?”
He laughs. “The fact that if I kill you now, I’ll change the future. And right now the future looks pretty good, so why risk it?”
He stands from the chair and comes toward me. My whole body tenses, but instead of launching an assault, he pulls something from his pocket and hands it to me. It is a sheet of paper folded into a small neat square.
Dying for Her: A Companion Novel (Dying for a Living Book 3) Page 9
