Dying by the Hour (A Jesse Sullivan Novel Book 2)

by Kory M. Shrum

  “Right here,” a voice says from the trees. And if I wasn’t paying attention, I would have thought the large maple in front of me sprung to life. But then a man-shaped shadow detaches from the tree and moves forward.

  At first, I barely recognize Brinkley. It’s only been a month or so since I’ve seen him, when he rolled into town just long enough to insist I do the Lovett replacement. He looked worn then, but now he looks like hell. His last bit of a beer gut is completely gone. His face used to be a full macho man but now it’s more like emaciated supermodel. The right side of his face is a purple color, the hint of an old bruise. And his favorite leather jacket hangs off of him.

  “What the hell happened to you?” I said. “Are you sick?”

  He makes no reply. In one hand he still has the dart gun, something you’d find in the toy section of the store. He points it at me playfully and shoots me in the cheek with a dart that bounces off and falls into the mud.

  “Oh so it’s fine if you know what I’ve been up to, but not the other way around?”

  “I have my reasons,” he replies.

  “What reasons?”

  He points the gun again.

  “Never mind. Forget I asked.” I reach out and push the plastic barrel down. “Before you take my eye out or something. As far as I know I can’t regrow those.”

  Brinkley faked his death so he could investigate his own organization, the FBRD—The Federal Bureau of Regenerative Deaths—and my employer. A couple of other agents double crossed him and tried to kill us. They license me but I’ve been sans handler for almost two weeks since Garrison was reassigned. I’m supposed to be reassigned a new handler, but I haven’t heard anything.

  “So I guess I’m not supposed to ask about your face?”

  Brinkley shrugs but he doesn’t raise the gun. “You should have seen the other guy.”

  “Why do men always say that?”

  “Not all of us heal in a heartbeat.” He rubs a calloused thumb over his bruised cheek, scraping a jagged nail over his scruff.

  “I don’t heal in a heartbeat. I have to be dead for at least a few hours.” I notice his tan. “Where have you been?”

  “Arizona,” he says. “At the old base where Eric Sullivan was last seen.”

  My heart begins its vicious climb up the back of my throat, the way a cat crawls up the drapes to get away from a yappy dog. Eric Sullivan.

  “Not much to connect him to Caldwell,” he continues.

  Because that’s the latest theory—Caldwell and Eric Sullivan are the same man.

  Eric Sullivan, with his newly discovered NRD was swept up in protective custody. For over 17 years, the protocol was to detain those with NRD and those detainees suffered unknown tortures at the hands of their military captors. Eric was unfortunate enough to discover his NRD nine months before the public forced the military to release their prisoners. And Brinkley thought the reason Eric managed to stay hidden so well after his release was because he’d taken on a new identity, emerging eight years to the day of his death as Caldwell—North American leader of the Unified Church—a social climb I can’t even imagine. If Caldwell and Eric Sullivan are the same person, then what he did in the years after his release remain a mystery.

  “I got this,” Brinkley says. He opens his jacket enough to pull out a folded piece of paper.

  I trade him the hard drive and my mush of a banana peel for it. “He’s going to know it’s gone.”

  Brinkley drops the peel in disgust. “Of course he’ll notice. A computer won’t work without a hard drive.”

  “Oh he’ll notice long before that.”

  “Jesse—” my name is a growl in the back of Brinkley’s throat.

  “It was the best I could do just to get the drive into Ally’s hand and jump in front of that tree.”

  Brinkley raises an eyebrow. “Tree attacks child. That must have made headlines.”

  “We might still be in the dark,” I say pointing at the hard drive. “Lovett might not have anything on there.”

  “Even things people think they’ve deleted can be pulled off their hard drives. Maybe we’ll get lucky,” he says. And I hope so. We’ve been keeping our eyes on all the higher Church officials for over a year. About time something works out in our favor.

  I open the sheet of paper Brinkley has given me and swear under my breath. “Is this a medical record?”

  “For Eric Sullivan,” Brinkley says. He has a small device in his hands which he is attaching to the hard drive. Oh Brinkley with his gadgets. It is impressive, actually, seeing as he comes across as very old school, pen, paper, and cell phone, what’s a cell phone?

  “Eric Sullivan, 34,” I say. “But he’s got to be at least 50.”

  “This is from his file in Arizona, back when he was still in custody.”

  “But Caldwell could pass for much younger,” I argue.

  “So he’s been dying,” Brinkley says, referring to the fact that I don’t look a day over seventeen despite that my 25th birthday was last month. It’s true that death-replacing or dying in general, helps us not age. When we die, we get that metabolic boost as our bodies heal the damage. It just so happens this boost doesn’t discriminate between normal cell deterioration and that caused by trauma. Death-replacing is certainly the only explanation I have for Caldwell’s preservation. But the Church believes we are soulless and they use the fact that we don’t go anywhere when we die as proof. I can’t believe they’d follow a leader who openly revealed his NRD. It must be his dirty little secret.

  The machine in Brinkley’s hand whirls and clicks as we stand in the shade of the maple tree, just far enough off the trail that should someone approach, they can’t see us immediately.

  “I just don’t understand why he would infiltrate the Church and secure a high position. And how would he do death replacements without media attention? He’s watched constantly.”

  “He could be working off the radar. And they might not be replacements, just dying—for other reasons.”

  Enough deaths are happening off the radar already. Almost two thousand in the last few years combined. And not just death-replacement agents are being cornered and killed, or even those living openly with their NRD in mainstream society. Many of the victims had not yet made their condition public.

  This meant someone with power and authority is able to discover who has NRD and is turning that information over to the wrong people.

  But who is doing it: the FBRD, the Church, or the military? That’s what I’m trying to help Brinkley figure out. He pulled me out of the barn fire that killed me eight years ago. He gave me a new life and purpose. The least I can do is help him.

  “Did you look at this picture next to a picture of Caldwell?” I say. This is the first picture I’ve seen of Eric.

  Brinkley nods. “It’s close but not exact. My consultant believes Caldwell had slight facial reconstruction. Just enough that his body wouldn’t reject the alterations.”

  “Then Caldwell is my father.”

  “Jesse—”

  “No.” I stop him from patronizing me. “I need to accept the fact that the guy who wants to kill me is also my dad. If I don’t get it through my head he’s going to catch me off guard again.”

  “A father and a dad is not the same thing,” Brinkley argues, looking up from the whirl and click of his device to warn me with fiery eyes.

  I remember being little and lying under a car with him—Eric—Caldwell—my father. He was telling me what different parts of the car were. He had a great smile and his laughter was the laughter of a good-natured rogue in one of those swash-buckling movies. I also remember blaming him for dying and leaving me at the mercy of Eddie, my mother’s pervert of a second husband. I remember crying myself to sleep, wearing his old mechanic shirts for years. Begging him to come back. Begging.

  And all I want to know now is what happened.

  What happened to him when he died? What happened in that internment camp in the desert? What happened
when he escaped? And why didn’t he ever come back for me? If he loved me, he would have come back to his daughter, back to his wife—wouldn’t he? He wouldn’t have run to the Church, run to the monsters and then become one. I want answers, but—

  “This is encrypted,” Brinkley says, breaking my thoughts. “I’ll need to see a guy before we figure out what’s on it.”

  “Suckfest,” I say.

  “In the meantime, I want you to go see Gloria, all right?” he says. “She knows what our next move should be. I’ll check back with you once I get the hard drive open.”

  When I don’t move, he adds: “Go on.”

  Some things never change. We almost die together and he still treats me like that seventeen year old kid he rescued years ago. But maybe I’ve changed. Because instead of arguing, I give a little salute, turn on my heels, and head home.

  Ally

  This particular apartment is only a small unit inside a massive complex. But from what I can tell there are no other businesses in this building and even this space has an artificial name on the bills. Jeremiah opens the back door for us with his key.

  In the apartment’s main room, a large wall of monitors is responsible for recording all of the various angles surrounding the building. It’s Parish who works security today. He’s a round guy, more round than muscle. He has a McDonald’s soda cup in one fist and a crumpled sandwich wrapper in the other. A section of his belly is exposed between his pants and shirt as he stretches back in the swivel chair. He has little flecks of food in his beard. I make a motion with my hand to indicate they’re there.

  “I’m saving those for later,” he says but then he shakes himself like a dog.

  “Eyes on the screen,” Jeremiah says. He’s wearing the same dark clothes and appears as the antithesis to Parish’s sloppiness with his clean fingernails and trimmed goatee.

  Jeremiah leads us in a staccato step toward the back of the apartment. Nikki and I follow past a room with walls covered in corkboard with pictures and strings connecting the images. We call it the storyboard room where we map out our search and rescue strategies.

  I want everyone to come into the digital age but Jeremiah insists we keep everything hard—actual files and photos, written notes and all that. He says these can be controlled and destroyed while digital files can be hacked and accessed from anywhere. It’s why he only allows the computer monitors in one room, if they’re hacked all they will see is Parish lounging.

  The office is completely devoid of any kind of interior design: no rugs, curtains, pictures or certificates to indicate what kind of office this is supposed to be. The hallway is dark except for a plain bulb overhead.

  He stops and looks through a glass window. It takes me a second to realize what I’m looking at. I don’t hide my astonishment. “What the hell happened to her?”

  First of all I didn’t realize we even had a room at the end of this hallway, let alone with one with a large plane of glass allowing us to see the woman inside.

  Her face is swollen, especially blue and puffy on one side. Blood has dried all down her shirt front, and is crusting at the collarbone.

  I grab the door handle intending to go inside and help her. Jeremiah grabs my upper arm in a way that instantly angers me. I shrug hard and he’s forced to let go of me and to regain a step he lost. Nikki, for the briefest of moments, places a hand lightly on my back as if to steady me—or reassure me.

  “She is not a victim,” he says calmly. “We are interrogating her.”

  I look at her again, at the swollen face, the soft heaving of her chest and the red mangled skin of her wrists, irritated by the cuffs chaining her to the metal chair.

  “How long as she been like this?” I ask.

  “We brought her in last night,” he answers.

  After he spoke to me at the hospital.

  “You’ve been hurting her?” I ask. Because I can’t imagine Parish doing so. Not unless someone else is in town. A lot of people come and go.

  Jeremiah doesn’t answer.

  The rage inside me burns and blisters. I shove past both Jeremiah and Nikki and storm toward the front of the building. I have to get out of here before I hurt someone myself.

  Someone grabs my wrist and I turn. I yank my wrist away. She is hardly deterred. She grabs me again and pulls me into the storyboard room.

  “Just wait!” Nikki yells in growing desperation as I resist. She puts herself between me and the door. “Wait, wait! You don’t know the situation. I don’t know the situation. We have to at least find out what’s happening.”

  I shrug her off again and she gives me the distance. “She’s a woman, Nick. A woman tied to a goddam chair with her face bashed in. In no world is that right.”

  “Women strap bombs to their chests and blow up marketplaces full of children.”

  I blink. My mouth opens and closes. “What is your point?”

  “I’m saying it doesn’t matter that she is a woman. You don’t know what she did.”

  “What did she do?” I ask. I’m clutching the side of my head with my fists to keep them from hurting her. I might just end up tearing my own hair out.

  “I don’t know,” Nikki admits.

  “Then why the hell are you defending him?” I ask.

  “Because I trust him,” she says. “And I think we should at least ask him what is going on.”

  “She is responsible for kidnapping,” a deep voice says. Jeremiah stands in the doorway. He leans heavily against the frame and I see his hands for the first time. They are red across the bone.

  “So that makes it okay?”

  “You happen to know one of the children,” Jeremiah says. He doesn’t waver his voice or gaze. “Her name was Nessa Hildebrand.”

  Nessa.

  “I believe her mother attacked Jesse because the Church told her if she didn’t, then she would never see her daughter again.”

  And she’d almost completely decapitated Jesse. I’d never seen so much blood in my life.

  “And she never did see her daughter again, did she?” he continues, when I fail to say anything. “Because this woman you’re so quick to protect, never returned what she took.”

  The world is rushing back. I lean against the nearest piece of furniture. A desk, chair, cabinet—whatever it is, it’s cold, even through the wool fabric of my coat.

  “I am not proud of what I am doing,” Jeremiah says. He removes his glasses and cleans them with the end of his shirt before replacing them on his nose. “But that woman is part of this. She receives her orders from somewhere. She takes the people, the children somewhere. We need to know so we can get them back.”

  I look at Nikki. Her face is stricken with grief. Tears threaten to spill from the corners of her eyes and the bridge of her nose and cheeks are flushed red.

  “I wouldn’t have joined if I thought this was how you gathered your information,” I say.

  “Our methods escalate as the threat escalates,” he says.

  He’s watching me over the rim of his glasses. He looks like an English professor not an interrogator.

  “And that is why war is so devastating,” I say. I’m dizzy with anger. I try to think of my breath. To slow all of this down but I can’t focus. “Because no one knows when to quit.”

  “If she knew where Jesse had been taken, wouldn’t you do anything to find out?” he asks.

  “Don’t bring Jesse into this,” I say.

  “She is already in this.”

  Jesse—Jesse, it always comes back to her. Jesse dying. Jesse dead. My years of walking in a death-like dream myself. Would I do anything to that woman if it meant saving Jesse?

  “We are supposed to be saving people,” I say. I just want to end this so she’ll be safe. “Is that what we are doing?”

  “Follow me.” He doesn’t wait for me to follow or to refuse.

  He’s already looking through the window at the woman.

  One breath turns into another. Then three, stretching in a long s
ilence. It feels like we’re waiting for something, so I don’t speak.

  “It was my sister,” he says finally. “She wasn’t a death-replacement agent like Jesse. She was just a kid. Thirteen years old.”

  My heart sinks. I don’t like where this is going.

  “When the drunk driver hit us the summer before, she died on impact. My parents and I had multiple injuries but nothing fatal. We were completely devastated to lose Ruth. Then we discovered her NRD. She was returned to us and even though my parents were God-fearing folk, we considered this a blessing. By some miracle, God had restored her. Like Lazarus, she was alive.”

  I look at the woman in the chair. Her swollen face, her sobs. I look at the floor again and brace myself for what I know is coming.

  “One day she was riding her bike home from school and a group of boys surrounded her. They were classmates, five boys she’d known her whole life. It wasn’t a big town, you see, and somehow word had gotten around from parent to parent back to the children about her condition. These boys, probably because their parents spouted their own condemnation at the dinner table, saw fit to punish Ruth just for being what she was.”

  “Stop,” I whisper. The ache in my chest threatens to stop my heart and collapse my chest.

  “They beat her first,” he says in the same slow and even tone as if I had never spoken. “One of the boys cut her hair. They carved the word whore on her forehead, as if they even knew what the word meant.”

  “Stop.” I am crying. I’m holding my chest and trying to breathe. Nikki comes toward me but I wave her back.

  “They hung her from the tree at the edge of our property with her own jump rope. My father was the one to find her that way when he came home from work. She died from strangulation and a broken neck.”

  “That wouldn’t have killed her,” Nikki says. Her voice is far away. The world under me tilts and vibrates. I reach and hold the wall.

  “No,” Jeremiah admits. “It was my father’s shotgun that eventually did it. But when she awoke that second time, she wasn’t the same. And it only got worse with the torment at school, at church, the threat they might find her again and do worse things to her. She shot herself in the head before she turned fourteen. But not before enduring months of threats, isolation and condemnation from people who’d known and loved her all her life—people who no longer welcomed her into their homes, at their dinner tables, or into their yards to play with their own children.”