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

by Kory M. Shrum

  Maisie gasps again. I, on the other hand, suppress the intense desire to giggle. For a heartbeat anyway. Until Gloria’s expression stiffens. Her eyes fix on something down the hallway and she takes a step back before pivoting on her heels and marching back toward us.

  “This way,” she says, leading us away.

  “I thought we had to go that way?” Ally asks.

  “No,” Gloria says and then as if she realizes how sharp her voice is, she says it again, more softly. “There’s another way.”

  “Fine by me,” Maisie snorts. “I don’t want to see what’s worse than a torn off leg.”

  The next hallway must’ve been used for living quarters. The rooms are stark white and tiny, with barely enough room for a twin-sized bed. No toilet, no sink. Nowhere to sit except for the bed. But sometimes the rooms have a chair in them, as if a visitor might stop by for a chat at any time. Some beds were still rumpled, giving the haunting impression that someone has just woken up and perhaps is wandering around this place. Other beds are perfectly made. Also haunting. After all, it’s terrifying to think that one of these rooms could have been mine if I’d been born twenty or thirty years earlier.

  We turn a corner.

  This place is proving to be a hell of a maze. What we hoped would give us a psychological edge might actually work against us, I think. After all, Caldwell and Georgia know their way around this hellhole better than we do.

  Gloria stops power marching and turns toward a room at the end of the hall.

  It’s a medical room. There’s no label of course that says “We did medical stuff in here.” Or “Infirmary” or even one of those red equal crosses. But there’s a gurney with straps and a metal table with—tools.

  Maisie turns away and Ally wraps her arms around her. Gloria doesn’t seem to notice. She pulls open the door and steps inside. I step into the room with her, leaving Ally and Maisie alone in the hallway. That way if the door locks from the outside they can let us out.

  Gloria looks at the bed, inclined to a sitting position. The metal table at its side holds a tray with freaky looking instruments. One is a giant hook. Another has what looks like a file on one side and a needle on the other. There’s a handsaw that I’ve seen at mortuaries, presumably for cutting open the skulls and looking into the brain. My stomach turns at the thought of someone cutting open my skull and poking my gray matter.

  “This is where they kept her.” Gloria smooths the sheet with one hand.

  “How could you possibly know that?” I ask. Because Gloria can only draw the present and future, not the past. There’s no way she’d be able to view the entire history of this place from the moment they broke ground and built it until Caldwell came back to exact his revenge.

  Gloria pulls the sketchbook out from under her arm and opens it. I expect her to flip it to a particular page, but instead, she flips it to the back and grabs a wad of sketches. These pages are folded in half and a different color paper than the rest of the sketchbook. She opens them up and I can tell by the torn fringe they were from a different kind of notebook all together.

  “When Sullivan disappeared, Brinkley asked me to look into him, to see if we could track him and make sure Maisie was okay.” Gloria fingers the drawings, holding them up so I can’t really see the images. She thumbs through until she finds the one she wants. She pulls it free from the others. “One of the first sketches I drew.”

  She flattens the drawing on the metal table beside the torture instruments as if they were as innocuous as a party tray with little cheese cubes and crackers. In the drawing, Georgia is hanging off this gurney—maybe not this exact gurney—but an identical one in an identical room with identical little instruments beside her. Except those instruments in the drawing are bloody and freshly used.

  Georgia is halfway in Caldwell’s arms as he supports her, his face a twisted confusion of relief and fury. She looks barely conscious, her eyelids half closed. And she’s covered in blood.

  “Jesus Christ,” I say. And try to take the picture from her for closer examination, but she won’t let go.

  “Watch it.”

  Her eyes cut to the door and Ally and Maisie standing in the hallway. Then I realize her back is blocking their view of the image.

  “Fine, fine,” I say and stop trying to pull the drawing from her grip. “But that is fucked up.”

  “He managed to walk out of here with her before we took Maisie’s case, jumping like he does,” she goes on, keeping her voice low. “But when they were told to close their doors, they refused to comply. Furthermore, to punish Sullivan for his exposure, they took Georgia back.”

  “They kidnapped her after he’d already rescued Maisie?”

  Gloria nods.

  “Where the hell was Maisie when he came and tore this place apart?” Because Maisie couldn’t have been more than six or seven and you don’t take six or seven year olds to a massacre.

  Gloria’s eyes slide away from mine.

  I gasp. “You?”

  “Keep your voice down,” Gloria hisses, her nostrils flaring. “She doesn’t remember.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ve tested her. I tried to spark memories. Nothing.”

  “So, what, he dropped her off at your house and you had a Disney princess marathon until he’d slain all the baddies?”

  “He knew I cared and he knew there wasn’t anywhere I could go that he wouldn’t find us. I knew it too.” A deep sadness consumes her face. Her lips pout, her eyes droop and for the first time that I can recall, Gloria looks like an old woman. Wrinkled. Tired. “Brinkley never knew.”

  This shocks me. I thought Brinkley and Gloria had no secrets. Reading the journal put that idea into my head and made me reevaluate every conversation, every exchange between the two of them. I don’t know how I didn’t see their bond earlier. It would’ve been obvious to a dude with only one eye.

  I want to give her a hug because she looks so fucking sad, but I get a distinct vibe of don’t you dare. I settle for a question. “Why are you telling me all this?”

  “You have your favorite. And I have mine.”

  Gloria cuts her eyes to the hallway and I follow her gaze. Ally and Maisie chatter away until turning to look down the hallway with wide eyes.

  “We have to do what’s best for her. She’s a child.”

  I frown. “I know that. Why does everyone act like I’m the crazy murderer?”

  “Protect her,” Gloria says in a low voice. She squeezes my hand like she’s going to break it. “Don’t let anything happen to her. Not now that we’ve finally got her back.”

  My chest aches. I don’t know what to do in the face of Gloria’s feelings. It’s shocking that she has them at all. I mean, of course she has feelings! She’s always so tough. It never occurred to me that I’m not the only one terrified of dying from a broken heart.

  “I’ll do my best, G. I swear.”

  Gloria lets go of my hand and her smooth, unreadable warrior face returns.

  Ally bursts in, throwing the door wide. “Someone’s here.”

  Chapter 37

  Rachel

  I coast the truck through the ghost town. According to the internet, fifty people live in Cochise. I see no one. Where the hell they sleep, eat, buy groceries, or work, I’ve no idea. There isn’t a store, post office, school, factory, or hospital. A few dilapidated buildings worn down by sand stand apart from one another like cacti, but nothing looks habitable.

  But I do see the military base.

  The white compound gleams like an Arabian palace in the distance. I half expect to see men on camels gallop past the truck, or women in full body garb carrying baskets on their head.

  It’s strange being out here in the desert. By the end of the day, I’ll have my revenge in the same place where I began. It’s like coming full circle.

  I often begged my mother to tell me the story of how they became my parents.

  My father had been part of the militia who patrolle
d the border. He usually patrolled every night with a couple of his friends, trying to catch illegal immigrants and their paid “coyotes” crossing the border. One night he was out alone. His two border patrol buddies were sick or busy that night. I’m not sure which because my mother’s story would always change a little with each telling. Her point: that night he was alone.

  As he drove through the desert, windows down to enjoy the summer breeze, he caught sight of something in the distance. At first he thought it was a desert fox with a critter in its mouth, perhaps a large hare by the awkward way it moved. But as he got closer he saw a child.

  He slowed the Jeep and got out. My mother said it was like I knew him. I came right over to him and opened my arms to be picked up. My father liked to tell me that he loved me from that moment, but I know it was really my mother that persuaded him to keep me.

  He put me in the front seat, buckled me in and drove around the area searching for my family. My father couldn’t believe that a child would be dropped off in the desert alone. He was certain that someone had seen his approaching lights and had run. But after several hours, he gave up. He couldn’t find anyone.

  Then he did something he’d never done. Instead of driving me to the police station, where they took all the other immigrants they found, he drove me home to my mother. Two years and a great deal of money and paperwork later, I became Rachel Wright, named after my mother’s mother.

  In another version of the story, when my father put me in the car, he had a candy bar in the cup holder that he’d taken a bite out of and as soon as I saw it, I pumped my little fists desperately. He laughed as I gnawed the chocolate log the way a starving dog might gnaw on a bone.

  And you’ve been eating us out of house and home ever since.

  I don’t remember any of this. I remember only what I’ve been told.

  Then the final version of my origin story came, but not from my parents.

  Bud, my father’s drunken friend, told me this version: My parents were the coyotes. They took outrageous sums of money from desperate Mexicans hoping for a new life far away from the gangs, drugs, and violence back home. And my mother, my birth mother, was a young woman who paid a fortune to come over with her little hija. But she was betrayed by the kindly couple who vowed to help her. She was left to die in the desert. And her hija was raised by the coyote smugglers that betrayed her.

  Bud was a guy with a penchant for slobbery Rottweilers, Coors beer and double barrel shotguns. Not to mention a love of talking about dirty wetback spics. So I didn’t believe him outright. When I confronted my parents, my father denied it after an awkward pause, his face red with anger. My mother burst into tears.

  The day before I heard this version of the story, my friend Cara, a perky blond with dreams of being the next Katie Couric, invited me to move to St. Louis. She needed someone who could pay half the rent.

  St. Louis was the opposite direction of L.A. and my actress dreams, but it was somewhere to go far away from my parents and their lies. I went to St. Louis for five years, working and saving for my relocation to Hollywood. I’d just bought my plane ticket and was set to fly in three weeks when Chaplain came along—and changed everything.

  I wonder what my parents think of me now. They must have seen my face on the news. How did they take it? Would they believe I’m not a terrorist who kidnaps children?

  Or would they assume I’d turned out like my parents after all?

  Their opinions are nothing, Uriel says. They are unworthy.

  I blink away tears and focus on the base ahead.

  The only bad thing about this compound being out in the middle of nowhere is the fact I can’t creep up on it. If anyone is watching, they’ll see me coming from a mile away.

  “Do not waste time,” Uriel instructs. “Wasting time lessens your chance of success. Kill each partis the moment you see them. Then I will return to you and assist you in the ascension.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I say, my eyes desperately scanning the landscape for a car or any evidence that they’re already here. “I can’t wait to see the mothership.”

  I slow the truck the closer I get to the base, until I’m creeping along the wall. I’m moving slower than I would be if I were walking. I circle once around the base, but I don’t see any cars.

  Am I the first one here?

  No.

  There is a big gaping hole in the side of the base’s exterior wall.

  A mound of white stone was blasted away, rubble strewn all over the desert floor. Some pieces were blown out onto the sand.

  Jesse could have done that. Or anyone with explosives. Or has it been that way for years? The destruction just sitting out here, forgotten, a relic of Caldwell’s past?

  The sun sinks lower and I catch the glint of the truck’s hood reflecting the sun. I pull forward, slinking past the hole created by the blast. As I pull around the boulder, a car comes into view.

  I park beside it, trying to see if anyone is inside. Its windows are down, revealing twin empty seats. It’s some kind of black muscle car. I recognize the type but can’t recall the make or model. I don’t think it would belong to Caldwell. We all know how he will arrive. It seems too small to be Gloria’s. I try to imagine it bringing Ally, Jesse, Maisie, Gloria and the pug all the way out here from Louisiana. If there’s enough room in the back seat it’s possible, but it wouldn’t be comfortable.

  Maybe Gloria decided speed over comfort was best? Especially in a getaway car.

  I put the red pickup into reverse and look over my shoulder to make sure I don’t hit anything.

  Caldwell appears, grinning like a psychopath. If I put a chainsaw in his hands right now, it wouldn’t look one bit out of place.

  Without thinking, I slam on the gas pedal. The truck’s tires spin, kicking up sand and obscuring my view. Then the cab lurches backward. At the last minute, I realize I’m going to hit the outer barrier and slam on the brakes.

  The truck slides into the wall. I’m knocked forward. I scream as my breasts bang against the wheel and I’m breathless. My neck doesn’t feel too awesome either. And I’ve got nothing to show for it. There was no satisfying bump of running over Caldwell’s body before hitting the wall. Caldwell reappears in front of the truck, grinning like a fox.

  “You fucker,” I murmur and throw the car into drive. “Having a blast, are we?”

  I mash the gas pedal again and the tires spin until they catch. Caldwell is laughing, growing bigger and bigger until I’m absolutely certain he’s going to let me hit him. I reach out with my power and seize him with my mind. I hold him in place the best I can. I’d like to see you jump now, fucker.

  His eyes go wide. His teeth pull back in a snarl and I howl with glee.

  “Got you! Got you!” I sing.

  He staggers as if ripping himself from my mental grip and disappears as the truck blasts through the space where he stood a moment before and speeds out into the open desert. I stop the truck and turn around in my seat wildly, trying to get a clear look at where he’d gone.

  But despite all my neck craning I don’t see him.

  “Damn!” I ram my fist against the steering wheel. The horn blares.

  “You need more power,” Uriel says. “Kill the girls first.”

  I moan and throw open the driver side door. I hop down onto the sand, lamenting the sweat collecting under my arms and behind my knees. I try to pull the fabric away from my skin and allow air to pass through the cotton.

  I wait, half-expecting Caldwell or his bitch to materialize beside me and try to kill me outright. He doesn’t come.

  “You love to fuck with me, don’t you?” I ask the open desert.

  Something catches my eye and I squint at the distance, bringing my hand up to shield my eyes from the sun.

  Trails of dust rise up to the sky. They swirl and collide with one another, forming a single giant plume that’s hard to distinguish individually. But at least three cars traverse the desert, coming this way. They’ve got to be
heading to the base. It’s not like they’re out here for the Dairy Queen.

  But it can’t be Caldwell and Georgia. And Gideon wouldn’t travel with an entourage.

  So who the hell is coming to crash our party?

  I’m about to find out.

  Chapter 38

  Jesse

  I look to the left and the right but see no one.

  “What do you mean there’s someone here?” I hiss, my heart hammering in my throat. We haven’t had nearly enough time to explore the facility or set the trap that would snare Caldwell. We were supposed to have at least a couple of hours before anyone showed up.

  “They crashed into the wall,” Maisie says. She’s holding Winston a little too tight, his big eyes bulging.

  “He can’t breathe,” I point out and her grip loosens.

  “A car hit the wall and a horn blared,” Ally agrees. “Then we heard footsteps inside the building.”

  “This building?” Gloria and I say in unison.

  I’m still trying to pick my jaw up off the floor and get my heart out of my throat when Gloria springs into action. “Come on.”

  We hurry after her.

  Sliding around corners, we skid to a halt in front of a control room. Or at least that’s what it looks like with all of the knobs and dials and screens.

  Gloria dives under the desk, leaving the three of us to huddle in fear. I peek out into the hallway, looking left and right again for any sign of the enemy. The enemy because I’m not sure who the hell is out there. Caldwell wouldn’t drive into a wall would he? That doesn’t sound like his MO. But then again, he could be trying for surprise?

  “Are you okay down there?” Ally asks as the sounds of destruction are interspersed with swear words.

  “The connection isn’t—yes. Here we go.” The screens hum to life, the buzz of electricity audible in the small space. But it’s all snow.

  “Maybe the cameras aren’t functional anymore,” Ally suggests.

  A small sound catches my ear and I turn just in time to see a hand clasp over my mouth.

  I ignite without thinking. Maisie, and Ally jump back and so does the hand that covered my mouth.