Dying for Her: A Companion Novel (Dying for a Living Book 3) (17 page)

Thursday, April 3, 2003

I
woke in my own bed, but could not remember how I got there. The first thing I saw after the ceiling came into focus and stopped spinning long enough for me to turn on my side was the brown envelope on the bedside table. I pinched the corner between my fingers as if I wanted to be sure it was real. Bits of memory from the night before came back to me.

I remembered being drunk and stumbling out of the bar. Reeves came up behind me and offered to help. Then when falling into my bed without ceremony, Reeves had been here. I remembered him saying something but couldn’t recall his words with any kind of clarity now. Had he given me this? Were there instructions?

I considered the envelope for a moment longer. I knew that if I opened it, there was no going back.

I sat up and placed the brown envelope on the bed in front of me. I stared at the chicken scratch of my name and the way it stretched from one corner to the other across the brown paper. I flipped it over and inched a dirty fingernail under the flap.

The sound of paper ripping and the contents rubbing against the inside of the paper came before a soft thump on the bed. Photographs slipped against one another spreading out over the coverlet. I realized then that I still wore my boots and had smeared mud against the end of the bed.

“Fuck,” I grumbled and my headache intensified with the rumble of my voice. I hated to do laundry.

I lifted one photograph and then another, noting the timestamp in the upper corner of each. I wasn’t sure by looking at it, as I’m no photography expert, if the timestamp indicated a digital camera was used or if these were taken from a security camera.

The outside of a brick military facility was framed in several photos. I recognized the building, having seen it long before the high fence and razor wire had been erected to enclose the place.

There was also a copy of a document which read:
42 U.S. Code 13724, conversion of military installations into federal prison facility
.

That was how they did it then. False arrests.

You could still actively recruit for your science experiment if you pulled “criminals” off the street. And if only we had a dollar for every time someone was wrongly accused and locked away. So this is what Reeves wanted me to expose? The entire operation: the false imprisonments, the hidden in plain sight facilities, the wrongful detainments, the torture.

I let out a long, laborious exhale. “Fuck.” This was no small order.

But it could lead to Sullivan. Not that I’d cared much for finding the man until now. I was more worried about Maisie and Rachel, I knew, but Sullivan was still a problem that had to be solved. After all, either Charlie was right, or Charlie was misinformed.

If he was right then Sullivan had escaped his detainment and might strike out against us sooner or later. Exposing the torture could placate him or even slow him down. If he felt he’d received even a drop of revenge, it could take the wind out of his sails. That would save innocent lives caught in the crossfire of his retribution and buy me more time to find him and decide if he was really a threat, or just a victim on the run.

Because that was the other side of this coin. If they were hiding the fact that they were running internment camps in the open, they could also be lying about Sullivan. He may not be a terrorist at all, but instead, simply a threat of exposure.

I thumbed through the photographs and my headache grew worse. I recognized the facility because I had trained there. Could Reeves had possibly known that? It was unlikely. If he had, perhaps he was counting on nostalgia or my intimate knowledge of the facility. But I hadn’t been there in decades.

According to someone’s meticulous notes enclosed along with the photographs, in 1992 Fort Diq was sold to the government, but conversion was delayed beyond the original 1994 projection date. The funding for the project didn’t come through until 1996. It would have definitely been up and operational by January 1998 when the under-the-radar detainees were transferred there—and that was what these pictures suggested.
4500 souls inside
, the note said.
At least
.

It was a huge sprawling campus and the level of security around Fort Diq was intimidating. There would be no ridiculous or covert operation to infiltrate the place and march the prisoners to freedom. I wasn’t fucking Moses. But maybe there was another way to save them.

I lifted my cell phone from the bedside table and called the number I retrieved from the internet.

A perky woman answered on the second ring.

“The Daily Gazette. How can I direct your call?”

12 Days

I
use a favor to get what I need from the hard drive.

Most of it is junk: church records, finances, and the like. I have to read every document to be sure. I’m in my bed, resting. Today I woke up tired and sore. Old injuries were stiff and my head just wasn’t as clear as it could be. What could I say? The machine doesn’t work as well as it used to. With the covers pulled over my legs and laptop on, I read the data until my eyes are raw with the effort.

Then I see it.

A list of names nearly 44 pages long. I hit print and the machine on the desk across the room clicks to life, spitting out one page after another.

The list is almost printed when I find a file on a man named Jeremiah. It pops up alongside Alice’s name. A growing suspicion in my chest, I throw back the covers and go to the printer. There on the first page is her name,
Alice Gallagher
.

My phone rings and I answer.

“I think I’ve identified Caldwell’s next target,” Jackson says. “If we get her first, maybe it will trip him up or slow him down. I’ve been getting some pictures, but nothing definitive yet.”

“Good work,” I say, searching the list for more names I recognize. Jesse is there, and Rachel. Jackson is not far down. “Let me know what you need and then you and the kid can go pick her up.”

Jackson is quiet.

“Is there a problem?” I ask.

“Why not you?” she asks.

Because all the people I care about, save Gideon, are on this hit list. If Caldwell is hunting them, I have to kill him first.

“I’ll tell you when I see you,” I say and hang up. Then I call Gideon.

He answers. “You are right. He is hard to kill.”

“Gideon,” I growl.

“I am being careful,” he says. “I am a ghost.”

I grit my teeth and let it go. For now. Mostly because I know that no matter what I tell him, he will do as he pleases anyway. “Alice Gallagher. She is Jesse’s assistant, best friend, lover, whatever the hell she is. Find out what she is doing. She’s done something to piss off Caldwell and I want to know what it is.”

“Alice Gallagher,” Gideon repeats then he is quiet. I think he’s hung up. “You only have twelve days.”

“Don’t rub it in.”

Friday, April 4, 2003

W
hen I arrived at the bar, it was up in flames. I’d seen the black smoke billowing up into the sky blocks before and it had set me off into a jog. My SIG Sauer slapped against my ribs beneath my leather jacket. A firefighter tried to stop me from coming closer as I rounded the large truck blocking off the road. Pedestrians crowded in on the place despite the men trying to push them back to a safer distance.

“Sir, please, you have to move back,” the young man said through the visor of his helmet.

“I’m an agent.” I flashed my badge even though the FBRD had no jurisdiction over something like this. Why should he know that? “What the hell happened here?”

“Some wacko firebombed the place. The barkeep said a regular patron came in and—”

“That’s him. I’m telling you that’s him.” I heard Peaches’ voice over the din—the sound of water splashing against the bricks and flooding through the broken street-front window. I turned toward the sound of his voice and saw him jabbing a finger my way.

“Brinkley,” he screamed. “Brinkley.”

Thinking that he needed my help to navigate this circus, I started to approach him. But when he took a step back as if afraid, I stopped. Several patrons I recognized and others I didn’t, they stepped back too.

“Are you all right?” I asked him.

“That’s him!” Peaches yelled again, his paunch jiggling with the ferocity of his words. “Agent Brinkley, right there. He’s the crazy motherfucker who burned down my place.”

It was as if someone had punched me in the chest. “What?”

“Arrest him,” someone said. A roar of assenting murmurs grew louder. I felt the firefighter beside me grab onto my arm and I shook him off.

All of the faces I saw were trained on me with a mix of horror and anger etched into their features. “I just got here.”

“Sir, you’ll have to come with us,” said two uniforms as they pressed in on me. I knocked one back before I had the good sense not to do anything stupid and damning.

With the uniformed officer out of my way, I got a clear look at the sidewalk behind him. There stood Chaplain. A smug grin lit up his face as firelight danced across his dark features.

Run
, I thought.
You should run away before they can catch you
.
Run. Run. Run
.

That was exactly what I did.

Friday, April 4, 2003

I
made it all the way to the office before I realized what a moron I was. Fleeing a crime scene was the exact opposite of what I should have done. There was no way I was going to convince the authorities that I’d simply panicked, not a man with my background and training.

“You fucking idiot,” I said to myself, busting through the front doors of the FBRD building. Charlie’s door was closed and he was on the phone with someone. I slipped past his window without being seen. I’d almost made it to my chair before I realized someone already occupied it.

“Jackson,” I said.

She looked relieved. “Good. I’m glad I don’t have to hunt you down.”

“You’re the only one,” I said.

Confusion furrowed her brow. “What?”

I told her about the bar, the firebombing, and being accused by Peaches himself. “Not just Peaches,” I added. “They all seemed to think I’d done it. Everyone on the street.”

“Shit,” she said. “We have less time than I thought.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Look,” she said. She pulled up some videos and showed them too me. Gruesome snuff films. But it was the third one that struck a chord with me.

“I’ve seen this,” I said.

“I know.” She pulled from sketches from her bag. “I think you went there looking for Rachel. Right?”

My mind warped around itself. “It’s all a show. The girls are paid and they like it there.”

Jackson swore. “No. They are taken and forced into this. Listen, I know this is going to sound crazy to you, but hear me out. Even if your brain tries to reject what I say, just hear me out, OK?”

“It can’t be weirder than what I’ve fucking seen tonight.”

“I think you followed your contact Fitzgerald to Chaplain’s safe house. You saw this—show—and before you could do anything, your mind was changed.”

“Changed?”

“Yeah, smudged, rubbed out, altered, whatever you want to call it.”

“You’re saying I saw an innocent girl get raped and murdered for profit and I did nothing?” My anger rushed to the surface. “Fuck you.”

She shook her head. “It’s got to be hard for you to see the truth, given what he must’ve done in there, but think about it. Think about Fizz’s death and when you saw him last. Think about tonight and what you know happened and whatever everyone else believes happened.”

I saw Chaplain grinning and smug on the sidewalk. “Run,” I said. “He told me to run. In my head.”

“Exactly,” Jackson said. “You would have never fled the scene of a crime. Not in your right mind anyway.”

“Shit,” I said, the horrible plausibility of it all weighing on me.

“He’s moving in on you,” she continued. “He must think discrediting you and getting you out of the picture will be neater than killing you himself. We’re going to have to bring him down before you get arrested.”

“How the hell can we bring someone down who can use mind control?” I asked. “How the hell is he even using mind control?”

“When I entered the remote viewing program, I saw some unbelievable things,” Jackson said.

I arched an eyebrow expecting an explanation.

“Another time,” she said. “Right now, we have to go. We need to hit Chaplain tonight before he can come up with any more ways to ruin your life.”

“We can’t take a big team in there. He’ll have us all shooting each other.”

“No, we’ve got to keep it small. Me and you.”

“How the hell are we going to pull that off?”

“I have a plan,” she said. “Just meet me in Beckett Park at 10 P.M.”

“I’ll be there,” I said. When she looked doubtful I added. “If I can I’ll be there. I promise.”

She gathered up her stuff and left me. I was about to follow her, head back myself and suit up for the night ahead. But I never made it that far, and I never found out what fantastic plan Jackson had for bringing down some kind of psychopathic mutant.

“Jim,” Charlie said and I turned to find him standing in his office doorway, his face had lost all its color. “What the hell is going on?”