Dying by the Hour (A Jesse Sullivan Novel Book 2) (9 page)

“You broke your house?” She asks, flatly.

“Yeah, like all the electrical stuff.”

She pushes away from her desk and starts to ascend the stairs. “A headache is coming. I need a drink.”

I scoop up Winston, happy for an excuse to get out of that dark dank basement. By the time we reach the top of the stairs, Gloria is chugging a 2-liter of Coke like a beer at a frat party.

I remember why I came. “Brinkley said you’d know what was next.”

“Liza Miller is next.”

“Is she a zombie?”

Gloria gives me a warning glare. No one but Lane appreciates the z-word.

“I don’t know what she is,” Gloria admits. The plastic coke bottle, which partially deflated in her ravenous sucking, pops back into place. Winston lets out a startled grunt from the floor and I give him a reassuring nudge with my foot.

Her cheeks redden. “Brinkley should have planned this better. The three of us are not enough.”

“Don’t Black Ops operate in small tactical units?”

“You, Brinkley and I do not make a tactical unit. I’m surprised Lane and Ally aren’t doing more.”

“Lane would help but he’s trying to get his certification and Ally—” I say. “I think she needs a vacation, not more work.”

Gloria’s gaze narrows. “She still loves you.”

I shrug and force a tight laugh. “Yeah, she’s just tired of my shit.”

“She just has her own way of doing things,” Gloria says, twisting open a new 2-liter of Coke.

Yeah, without me
, I think. And then,
it’s your own damn fault. Did you think she’d be happy you got all monogamous with Lane? Would you be happy?

“No,” I murmur to myself because
Gloria has stopped listening to my girl problems. Something else has darkened her features.

“Any signs of the other player?” I ask, taking a guess.

The other player is what we’ve taken to calling the mystery A.M.P. up Caldwell’s sleeve. He—or she—has already managed to outsmart Gloria a couple of times. That can’t be easy on the ego.

“I want to be sure,” she says.

“You’re the
best
at what you do, G,” I say. “You were just caught off guard. We all were.

How they hell were we supposed to know someone was viewing
you
? We couldn’t have.”

I try to reassure her, but she still looks so defeated, standing in her yellow kitchen with its aged yellow counter tops and yellow-brown floor. Even the fridge is the color of spicy mustard and the cabinets—you guessed it—yellow metal matching her card table turned dining set. Only the white sheer curtain covering the small window above the kitchen sink looks like it’s been bought in this decade.

My phone goes off and Lane’s picture appears in the screen. It hits me like a thump in the chest that Ally hasn’t called me all day. She used to call multiple times a day to check on me, and that was only when she couldn’t be with me.

Maybe she really is, slowly and painfully, untangling herself from my life.

Ally

I
’m exhausted. My limbs are little more than wet bags of sand.

The stairwell to my apartment building is dim and quiet as I trudge my grocery bags up the stairs and then down the narrow hallway to my door. My keys are impossibly loud as they jingle and clank against the wooden frame and metal lock.

As soon as I close the door behind me, I fall against it.
Home
.

I feel like I haven’t seen it for years.

Immediately, I dig through the bags for the chocolate and cleave a giant truffle in half with my teeth. I put on the kettle for a cup of tea and while it builds steam, I put away my groceries.

Only then do I settle into my fluffy chaise by the balcony. The heat of the tea warms the cup and my hands. There are no windows because my apartment is an interior room, but the balcony lets in the light of orange streetlamps framing the parking lot and the high half-moon above.

Jesse may not have a choice.

I remember the night of her suicide. I’ve played it over and over in my head many times. I said
go to sleep. We’ll talk at school
. Because it was in the middle of the night and my mom had yelled at me because she’d called so late. But I should have known something was wrong. I should have known that slur in her voice wasn’t sleepiness. But how could I have known she was calling to tell me goodbye.

And then there were the dreams. Jesse is always in this white night gown. The blaze of the pole barn her father built before we met, before he died, lit up the whole night. In the dream, she is always walking toward it, slowly, deliberately, as if entranced.

I’m always behind, screaming and
screaming
her name. I beg her to stop, beg her not to go into the fire but she does anyway.

Every time.

And I can only watch her nightgown catch first and burn.

I wake up to the sound of a ringing phone. I’ve slept the whole night away in the chaise, the tea cup long empty and cold on the side table. I rub at my sticky eyes again as the phone trills urgently. I fumble for it with groggy hands and cradle it against my ear.

“Hello?”

“Is this Alice Gallagher?” a man asks.

“This is she.”

“This is Davis, a meter inspector with the state department. Are you still the contact person for 1321 Greenbrook Drive?”

I cough and clear my throat, trying to sound more professional than unconscious. “Yes, I’m Ms. Sullivan’s assistant. How can I help you?”

“We received reports of an electrical disturbance in the neighborhood, so they sent me out to check. It appears a power line is down outside the residence. Were you aware of this?”

“No.”

“And the damage to the outside box suggests a power surge. I just checked the meter and it has stopped completely. There’s no reading whatsoever coming from the residence but you have not reported a power outage.”

“The house has no electricity?” I ask.
What happened?
“Is Jesse home now?”

“I knocked on the door but there was no answer. Also, there’s a pane of broken glass by the front door.”

“I’m on my way,” I say. I am already pushing myself out of the deep arm chair and falling into my shoes and coat. “Can you wait there for me?”

“Sure,” he says.

I try to call Jesse’s house phone but no one answers. Nor does she pick up her cell or answer the office phone. I remind myself Jesse is really bad about answering her phone, or remembering to bring it at all. That it doesn’t mean she’s been kidnapped and decapitated.

But I don’t feel any better by the time I pull into the driveway behind the
Concept Energy
truck. A tall man with a yellow hat and thick gloves gets out of his truck as I do.

“Ms. Gallagher?” he asks coming toward me, a utility belt jolting against his hips as he walks.

“Yes,” I say. “I’ll let you in.” I don’t know what else to say so I just focus on the problem at hand. My heart beats harder when I see the broken glass beside the door. It’s been covered with a small piece of cardboard from the inside. I try not to stare at it too obviously as I let him into the house. I tell him the fuse box is downstairs and he disappears through the door leading to the unfinished basement.

When another attempt to reach Jesse fails, I call Gloria.

“Jesse’s window is busted out and she has no power,” I say.

“She’s fine,” Gloria says.

I suck air, unaware I’d been holding my breath at all. My relief turns to anger. “What happened?”

“Someone threw a brick through the window. It just scared her.”

“Why didn’t she call me?” I ask.

Gloria says nothing as if waiting for me to say more. But the technician reappears.

“I have to go,” I say.

Gloria hangs up without saying goodbye. But then again, she’s not known for her phone etiquette.

“A power surge destroyed the wiring. We can repair the conduit to the home and the busted wire outside, but the house itself may have to be rewired by a good electrician. Many of the components have been damaged.”

“What would it cost to replace it?” I ask. When he looks hesitant I ask. “What is your best estimate?”

“15-20 grand. But depending on the cause, your house insurance may cover it.”

I try not to look crestfallen. “Thank you.”

The technician taps his hat and leaves. He pauses just before getting into his truck, gives the house one more look. I sigh and feel the last of the adrenaline leave me.

And because it’s like uncurling a fist that’s been clenched for a long time—painful and slow—I keep repeating it.
You can’t be everywhere at once. You can’t do everything.

“But watch me try,” I say.

Someone pounds on the front door and I can see through the glass it isn’t the electricity guy having forgotten something.

Regina Lovett, mother of the little girl Jesse saved, pushes past me and enters the darkening house without permission. It’s a wonder why she even bothered to knock.

“Where
is
she? Jessica Sullivan! Come here right this minute.”

It’s the voice a mother uses.

“It’s just Jesse actually. With an “e” and she isn’t here,” I manage to say. Regina’s wild movements shake the last bit of calm from me and despite the fact that we’re past the part in the day when lamps are no longer needed, the house comes into sharp focus. Regina comes into sharp focus. The white light of the damp overcast day stretching the shadows around her.

Her skirt is torn and muddy and she’s only wearing one shoe. Her hair is wild, tangled and the cut on her right cheek, a tiny thing, has bled quite a bit.

“Jesse!” Regina screams.

“I told you she isn’t here,” I say again. I’m looking for weapons stashed under the remains of her clothes. That’d be my luck. “What happened?”

“What happened? Don’t you know what they did?”

I shake my head no. I realize she can’t hide a gun or knife under the tattered remains of her clothes. But that doesn’t mean she won’t try to harm me using her bare hands. So I keep a distance from her. Enough that I can move if she lunges.

“They came to my house. They called him into his office for a
chat,
”
she pauses for exaggerated air quotes. “I thought it was important Church business. But then he calls me into the office. He starts screaming at me for the replacement, saying I betrayed him. How did they know? How did they know?”

I shake my head again. “I don’t know, Regina.”

“He threw me out! My own husband!” She laughs. It’s manic and frightening. Before the words are completely out of her lips, she starts barreling on again. “I was furious but fine. He was angry but he would forgive me. He covered up the theft, whatever Jesse took. He said it would be best just to pretend it didn’t happen rather than report it. But when I tried to take our baby and leave, he wouldn’t let me go. He told me she was dead. He told me she was dead!”

She screams this at me and the hair on my arms rises. Spit flies from her mouth like a rabid dog. Her eyes are wide, dark and crazed. I take another step back.

“But she isn’t dead,” I say, disbelieving. Unless he hurt her. “Did he hurt her?”

“I don’t know,” she answers. “I managed to get her into the car, but they followed us and hit us. They
hit
us. They pulled my baby from the car and took her. They took her! And all because that
thing
came into my home and stole something.”

“You need to go to the police, Regina. If someone has your daughter.”

“No. No, Gerard doesn’t want me go to the police.”

“Who cares what your husband wants. Your little girl—”

“They’ll kill her,” Regina says. She comes toward me and grabs my coat. Her blood caked fingers bunch the red felt into her fists. “They’ll kill her for being an abomination.”

And all over again I’m looking in Eve Hildebrand’s eyes through the plexiglass of the Davidson county jail. The same glossy crazed look of a mother begging for her child’s life.

They’ll kill Nessa. Please. Please.

“Regina,” I say. I can’t pull away from her even if I want to. She has a death grip.

“I just wanted her to live,” she says. Her eyes well up with tears and her lip quivers. The first ream of sobs rakes her body. Her back bows with the pain of it and she pulls me down into the floor with her, sobbing. “I just want my baby to live.”

“I know,” I say and put one hand in her hair. Something sharp rubs against my fingers and I realize it’s little shards of glass. Regina’s hair is full of little bits of glass as if she’d pulled herself from the wreckage of her car and walked to Jesse’s.

Once her sobs begin to quiet, her grip loosening, I dare to speak. “Listen, Regina. Just listen, okay? We can find your daughter, but we need help. We need to call someone.”