Ally pulls me off the shoulder and into the desert. “God, it’s so beautiful.”
I look up and see more stars than I’ve ever seen in my life. “Wow.”
Her breath puffs around her face. “You’d never know how many there are if you lived in the city your whole life. Have you ever seen so many?”
“Yes,” I say. “A long time ago.”
When I was six, my dad took me camping. It was only the two of us. He wanted me to see where he grew up, on a little farm in the middle of nowhere with his brother Dyson. Apparently his parents had had a lot of farm land. His brother had died before I was born, and I don’t remember the stories about his parents or the weathered house. But I do remember my first night out there in the cold and the way the stars had been so big and bright that I thought I could reach up and grab them like sparkly stones on a beach.
I stared at them, dumbfounded while Eric had made me a s’more and told me ridiculous scary stories that weren’t scary at all. If he’d told me the story about how one day he’d die and become a monster that would try to kill me, that would’ve scared the shit out of me.
I turn to see Ally’s eyes wet and shiny in the dark.
“It’s breathtaking,” she says and grabs my hand, pulling me further away from the car. “One day, when this is all over, we should build a house in the middle of nowhere so we can look up and see the stars like this every night. Wouldn’t it be amazing?”
“Only if you’re there,” I say.
She wraps her arms around me and kisses me then. “Is there anything you want to tell me?”
“No,” I say reflexively. But even after a moment of consideration, my answer doesn’t change.
“You’re having bad dreams,” she presses. “Are they about Rachel? It’s perfectly normal to be worried about—”
I shut her up with a kiss. Despite the chilly air around us, icing my cheeks and making my breath billow in front of my face, her lips are hot. When I slip my tongue into her mouth and she opens a little wider to let me in, I find her hotter still. I wrap my arms around her and kiss her like I’m trying to suck all the air out of her body. She goes all soft in my arms, and I know I’m the one holding us up.
She giggles. “Wow. Jess. I should threaten you with talks more often.”
I kiss her ear, then lower on her neck because I know she loves it. She told me more than once how it makes her go all weak in the knees to have her neck kissed. And I can tell by the way she sags heavier in my arms that I’m doing it right.
“Okay, okay,” she laughs, pushing herself away. “I won’t ask you what you’re worried about. I swear. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”
I snort. “I’ll never be okay.”
I talk to angels. I hallucinate. I’m unstable and temperamental. I tell Ally that I adore her one second, and then I’m horribly mean to her the next. I’m as likely to kiss her breathless as I am to scream at her. What the hell is wrong with me?
You can’t bear the thought of losing her.
Gabriel’s voice is like a caress up the back of my spine.
Promise me I won’t. I demand. Promise me I’ll never see her die and I swear I’ll do whatever shitty world saving thing you want.
He says nothing.
Promise me.
Would you have me lie?
I hug Ally tighter.
“If this works, it’ll be over soon, baby,” Ally coos, sensing the shift in my mood. “We only have to be tough for a little longer.”
“I’m tired.”
“One day at a time. Tomorrow will be different.”
“We’re not promised tomorrow,” I say, trying to remember who I’m quoting.
“Then let’s enjoy this.” She tugs me to the ground.
I sit, knees splayed open, and she snuggles between them, leaning back against me like I’m a chair. I wrap my arms around her, smelling her hair, kissing her ear. She sighs and goes soft in my arms.
The stars are breathtaking. A black ocean glittering, and thick swirls of stardust. I try to relax but I can’t. The night is beautiful. There’s a gorgeous girl who loves me in my arms, but I’m wound tight. I can’t forget what’s coming.
“It was worth it,” she says, kissing the arm draped over her.
“What?”
“All of it. All the waiting. All the missing you. It was worth it just to have this one perfect moment.”
I squeeze her against me for a long time. Her breath evens out in the crook of my shoulder and I know she’s dozing. We haven’t been out here for more than twenty or thirty minutes and I’ve never known Gloria to sketch for less than an hour. So I don’t wake her. I feel her chest rise and fall against mine, and I try to appreciate the moment despite the crushing waves of sadness and loneliness washing over me.
It was worth it to have this one perfect moment.
I hope that’s true—for her at least. I want her to have some part of me, even if it is a teeny tiny part, when I’m gone.
For me, there will never be enough.
Chapter 31
Rachel
I come awake and Gideon isn’t in the hotel room. I sit up, listening for any sounds that might signal he’s in the bathroom.
“He’s outside talking to Gloria,” Uriel says, materializing in his stately manner at my bedside. “He’s not saying nice things.”
I throw back the covers and go to the door. I crack it open and see that Gideon is in the parking lot, leaning against a red Jetta and talking on his cell phone. He’s looking at the hotel and I think for a moment he’s seen me. But his eyes slide away as he switches the phone to the other ear. With the gauze still wrapped around my head, I remember that I can’t talk to Uriel with my words.
What’s he saying?
“That you’re unstable and can’t be trusted. He’s asking if he should even bring you to the compound for your assault against Caldwell. He thinks perhaps the girls will fare better without you.”
That’s not possible, I say, in my mind at least. Our attack against Caldwell must be coordinated. And Maisie doesn’t have an active power. In fact, she’s only going to get in the way.
Uriel shrugs. “You do not need any of them. Desert Gideon here and go on your own. You’ll make it to the facility ahead of the others and take hold of the place. You will make it your stronghold.”
I like the sound of that. I shut the door and creep into the bathroom. I lean over the sink and begin to peel the thick, scratchy gauze off of my face. I unravel it again and again and again and notice that each layer is a little pinker than the last, until it’s clear I’m seeing blood soaked through the material.
When the last strip falls away, I turn on the light to get a better look at my face.
It’s an ugly scar. A crooked line starts from the middle of my chin and juts upward jaggedly toward my ear before disappearing beneath my hairline. It looks like a child scrawled on my face with a sharpie. Gideon’s stitches are methodical but lack finesse. Either he has never had to stitch someone up, which I find hard to believe, or he found it difficult to stitch me up.
I imagine him getting sick at the sight of my face. Maybe stopping once or twice to vomit in the toilet before returning to the task with shaking hands. And his hands must’ve been shaky given how uneven the line across my face is.
I open my mouth wide, wider, until a sharp pain jolts up the side of my face, dissolving to an intense burn.
I open and close my jaw to inspect how bad the damage might be beneath the flesh. It aches with each move. Not unlike the time Chaplain punched me hard across the jaw. The muscles are tense and it clicks as I open and close it. It appears to have grown back into place as least. But the poorly stitched flesh looks red with infection.
“That’s going to be hideous,” I rasp. I regret my lighthearted jabs about sexy women with mysterious scars. This isn’t the right kind of scar for conversation. An eyepatch I can utilize as a conversational piece. But this? This is the kind of scar people will po
litely not notice.
Maybe with time it will grow faint and then I’ll draw curiosity from those who get close enough to see it.
Now I really can’t be an actress.
I can’t blame that on Gideon’s hands, however. The death of my dreams are solely Chaplain’s fault.
“What’s a beautiful girl like you doing in a place like this?”
It was dinner time at the Blue Flamingo, a 5-diamond restaurant in one of St. Louis’s richest neighborhoods. I’d started my shift three hours ago and was itching for my first break when I was assigned Chaplain’s table. I stood there with a silver pitcher in one hand, his water glass in the other.
“I won’t be here forever. I’ll be in LA by the end of summer, and I’ll probably have my big break by the end of next year.”
I filled his glass and put the water on the table.
“An actress waiting tables?” Chaplain had laughed. “Imagine that!”
I was furious. I’d made Gretchen finish his order and I took my break. But when my break ended, he was still there.
At the end of the meal, he approached me. “I’m sorry I laughed earlier. But you will too once you hear me out.”
I closed my fist around a pen in my apron and arched an eyebrow.
“I’m actually a director. Not for Hollywood, mind you. But I do run a very successful online channel. I was about to offer you a part in my new series I’m starting when you stormed off.”
It sounded too good to be true.
“I only laughed because I couldn’t believe I’d actually discovered a bona fide actress in a restaurant of all places.”
“No offense, but I want to star in movies. Not YouTube.”
Chaplain grinned. “I know. But this is a very popular program. And women are discovered on the internet all the time. Won’t you at least come by and see my studio?”
Renewed anger consumes me. The soap, sample shampoo bottles, and mirror behind the sink begin to tremble.
I can make all your dreams come true.
It doesn’t matter that Hispanic women like me rarely gain recognition in Hollywood. It doesn’t matter that even if I did succeed, someone would say it was because I was raised white. It’s the fact that Chaplain took my dream and used it against me. What he did to me changed the entire course of my life and for that, he didn’t deserve to live.
Yet some small part of him is out there, walking around. Existing. And that is unacceptable. If any part of him must survive, I will own it.
A crack shoots up the center of the mirror, dividing the glass. I take a breath and the toiletries grow still on the countertop.
“We’re going to Arizona now. I’m going to kill Caldwell myself.”
“He’s leaving,” Uriel says. “He will not stray far. He’s kept a very close eye on you while you slept.”
“How sweet,” I murmur. I search the room for something I can change into. Surely Gideon bought me more than these cotton pajamas. He didn’t think I’d wear this cupcake shirt into battle against Caldwell, did he?
I find a pile of women’s clothing in a plastic shopping bag. None of it is particularly glamourous. But I’ll settle for the black jeans and black turtleneck. There’s no cash though. No cards.
I can’t find the heels.
I look under the bed, in all the drawers. I search every inch of the room but my leopard print heels are nowhere to be found.
I scream and the bathroom mirror explodes into a hundred shards.
I throw open the hotel room door with the intention of searching the car but Gideon is gone, taking the car with him. I have no choice but to walk barefoot from the motel.
Oh well. I’ll take what I need, when I need it.
I’ve never had a problem getting what I wanted before.
Chapter 32
Jesse
My head slams against the glass and I jolt awake, clutching my head. “Oww.”
Ally stirs in my lap where she’s slept the rest of the night as we passed through the desert toward the Mexican border. “What’s happening?”
“Bumps in the road,” Maisie says, snickering from the front seat.
“It’s not nice to laugh at your sister,” I chide her. “That hurt.”
“I know.” She snorts. “I hit mine, like, two miles back.”
“Calm down. She will turn up again.” Gloria is speaking through her teeth into the phone. Whoever she’s talking to, they’re taxing her self-control. Actually, now that I think about it, I know exactly who she’s talking to. There’s no one else that grates on Gloria’s nerves that way.
“Who’s she talking to?” Ally asks in my ear, staying cuddled close to my side. Ever since we walked back to the Jeep, she’s been super affectionate. I’m not complaining.
“Gideon, I think,” I say and throw one arm around her. Maisie nods her head to confirm.
“I did look,” Gloria hisses. “I did it the second we hung up. But it’s the same. Nothing has changed.”
A stretch of silence fills the car, each of us watching the back of Gloria’s head like some fascinating television show instead of what it is—the back of her head. Then she hangs up the phone and tosses it into the cup holder without saying goodbye.
“So—” I begin, ready to take a guess at what the hell is going on. “Rachel took off?”
“Yes,” Gloria says. “Gideon returned to the room and she was gone. He’s worried she’s going to draw more attention to herself, especially with her face the way it is.”
“What’s wrong with her face?” I ask. Then the vivid memory returns from the moment I mind-melded with Rach. A jaw shot clean off. That’s what’s wrong with her face. Maisie gives me an oh-my-god-shut-up look. “Right. Never mind.”
“She won’t make it to Cochise before we do.”
“Is that a bad thing?” I ask. Ally must think so. She’s gnawing on her bottom lip.
Gloria meets my eyes in the rearview. “You need to be ready for her.”
“Brinkley says that even if she has totally lost her shit, it doesn’t matter. She’s one of us. We’ll take care of her.”
We’re a team. If we have to, we sacrifice for the team.
That was what Brinkley had said to me the day Rachel went into the hospital. I’d been sitting in the hospital reception area, waiting to hear the news of what had happened. When she’d totally lost her shit the first time and started carving herself up with a kitchen knife and trying to stab me to death, they’d taken her to a hospital first. She’d cut herself pretty badly so they sedated her and cleaned her up.
Then they sent her over to the asylum, pumping her with enough medication that she slept 23 hours a day. But we still visited her for the first few weeks until Brinkley moved me to Nashville.
What’s going to happen to her? I’d asked on our last visit before leaving town. I’d asked not only because I was afraid for Rachel. I asked because even then I somehow understood that whatever was going to happen to her was going to happen to me.
We’ll take care of her.
Gloria reads the green sign aloud. “Cochise 15 miles.”
“That’s where we’re going right?” Maisie asks, craning her neck to look at the sign as we pass it.
“Yes,” Gloria says. “We’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“Are you sure it’s deserted?” I ask. “You said it was the shebang back in the day. Maybe there’s still a secret operation going on there.”
“No,” Gloria insists. “They shut it down in 2010, on Caldwell’s command. He never wanted anyone to set foot inside this place again.”
“But that’s why we’re doing it,” Maisie says. Her voice is low and strained. “Because we want to scare him. And it’ll scare my mom too.” Maisie looks out the window at the passing desert, her voice far away and dreamy. “She told me horrible stories about this place.”
A mixture of sadness, horror, and longing washes over me. My stomach sinks. My mind blanks. My limbs, throat, and face tense. God. So many fe
elings. Maisie’s grief is unbearable.
I watch Maisie stare out of the window, her thoughts taking her far away from us and what we’re going to have to do in order to still be breathing next week. I watch her smooth face and something there unsettles me. I have a horrible feeling that if Georgia gets away from me and kills Ally, there’s only one person I’ll be blaming for that.
Chapter 33
Rachel
The hotel or motel, whatever the hell the difference is, is a good half mile behind me before I find civilization. A grocery store no bigger than a house sits on a gravel parking lot. One gas pump stands out by the road, and there’s an empty car parked beside it. The nozzle is still connected to the side of the beat up pickup, but the gas has stopped pumping, the readout frozen at $43.43.
“Cameras?” I ask Uriel, my eyes falling on the only other car in the lot—a white Camaro near the door.
“One,” Uriel says. “Easy enough to disable, if you so please.”
“I would.”
The gravel parking lot doesn’t feel pleasant to my bare feet. Jagged rocks poke my heel and arch. I manage nonetheless. The door dings when I step over the threshold. Cold tile is a welcome relief, even if it’s obviously as filthy as the ground outside. A squat woman with two chins and a blue apron looks up from behind the register. She sits down a magazine and her eyes widen.
“You’re—” she begins, chins trembling.
I don’t wait for her to finish. I flex my mind and her windpipe is crushed shut. She claws her throat and deep red scratches well up on the delicate skin. Then she collapses behind the counter and hits the floor.
I find her as an unmoving blob on the floor behind the counter. I take off her shoes.
They are too wide, but I find a package of socks in the aisle beside the motor oil and boxes of macaroni and cheese. I put on two layers before lacing her ugly shoes onto my feet. Even though they are scuffed and puffy, at least they are black and go well enough with the rest of me.
Worth Dying for (A Dying for a Living Novel Book 5) Page 19
