Dying Light (9 page)

I turn to Jesse, but she’s
gone.

It’s only the three of us—me, Nikki,
and Gloria.

“
Where’s Jesse?” I have to
squeeze the words out of my throat over my pounding
heart.

Gloria sits her bag on the bed and
turns to me. “She might be with Caldwell.”

“
What?” Nikki and I yell
in unison.

“
You’re kidding,” Nikki
says, dropping her bag on the floor of the apartment.

“
Gloria!” I exclaim. “You
knew and you just
let
her go?”

Gloria sinks into the
chair. Her eyes are puffy with exhaustion as she scratches the back
of her head. “She chose this and it
is
her choice.”

I turn and run from the room. After
stumbling over my bag on the steps, I take the stairs two at a
time. I fall against the wall as I wind my way down from the fifth
floor to the first. I stumble into the lobby and see Jesse standing
on the sidewalk, her hands in the pockets of her hoodie.

I rush across the lobby,
straight for her.
As I reach the
door
, Caldwell appears on the sidewalk
beside her. He says something, but I can’t hear their voices
clearly through the thick glass.

“
Jesse,
no
!”

She turns toward the sound of my
voice. Stupidly, she turns her back to the one man who wants her
dead more than anyone else in the world.

Our eyes meet, and the shield goes up
around me. This makes me even more furious that at a time like
this, she still chooses to protect me rather than
herself.

I try to squeeze through the turnstile
door but I can’t with the shield around me.

“
It’s a trap,” I yell.
“He’s manipulating you.”

Caldwell reaches up and wraps his arms
around her. Over her shoulder he gives me the most malicious
grin.

Caldwell takes one step back, and then
they’re gone.

Jesse is gone.

Ally

“H
ow could you just let her go?” I whirl on Gloria who comes to
a stop in the middle of the lobby, her cheeks flushed from her
quick descent. Nikki reaches up and presses the earbud on her
intercom.

“
Caldwell has taken
Sullivan. Keep an eye out and report to me if she’s
spotted.”

“
I didn’t
let
her do anything,”
Gloria says, clenching her teeth. “And no matter what I did, we
would still be here because people make choices. I have to work
with what I’m given.”

It’s her self-restraint that gets me.
It encourages me to reel in my anger though it’s hot and fresh,
picking at the sides of my face, throat, and chest. “I’m sorry.”
The words come out of my mouth, hard. I take a breath and try
again. “I’m sorry. I know you would’ve done something if you
could.”

“
Hopefully, they’ll spot
them and we’ll know where to go,” Nikki says.

I reach out and squeeze her hand.
“Thank you.”

“
Is everything all right,
Ms. Delaney?” the man behind the desk asks. It takes me a moment to
realize he’s talking to Gloria.

Delaney, as in her brother
Micah Delaney. Now that I’ve read the journals, I understand
Caldwell’s A.M.P, the one who used his power of sight to trap Jesse
and the rest of us, is—
was
—Gloria’s brother. How hard it
must’ve been for her to accept that her baby brother was working
for the other side. What had it cost her to kill him
herself?

“
We’re fine,” Gloria tells
him. She meets my eyes. “Can we go upstairs and talk?”

“
Of course.” All the fight
leaves me. I’m still angry that Jesse let Caldwell take her. It is
incredibly stupid and dangerous. But I can’t take that anger out on
Gloria. She’s been through too much.

We take the elevator this time and
enter Gloria’s apartment with all the gravity of a funeral
procession. As soon as Gloria shuts the door on her little space, I
speak up.

“
I don’t understand, why
would she
let
him
take her? She could have stopped him if she wanted.”

Gloria takes a seat at her little
two-person table. “Whether or not she will admit it to herself, she
wants to be with him.”

“
Excuse me?” I can’t wrap
my mind around the idea that anyone would want to be alone with a
sadist.

“
She’s changing,” Gloria
says.

I open my eyes wider at
Gloria, and give a sideways glance at Nikki.
She can hear you,
I
think.

Gloria shrugs. “This isn’t anything
Tamsin doesn’t know.”

Nikki gives me an apologetic smile.
“Jeremiah has a theory. The longer the partis are exposed to their
powers, and the more powers they acquire, the less stable they are.
And on some instinctual level, they want to be together. Like a
squirrel’s instinct to bury nuts or a bird’s instinct to fly south.
The power is dictating their actions just as much as their own
thoughts now.”

Gloria flips open the sketchbook.
“Just like the other partis are drawn to Jesse, she’s drawn to him.
It isn’t smart, but it’s instinct. I am not sure she can resist it,
or even fully consider what a bad idea it is.”

“
Maybe he manipulated her
mind,” Nikki says, her fingers still grazing the gun on her
hip.

“
He can confuse her, but
not control her,” Gloria says.

A snippet of Brinkley’s
journal comes back to me.
You can mindfuck
us all day. But you can’t fool her.

“
Or you,” I tell her.
Gloria doesn’t spare me a glance. “I wonder why he hasn’t tried
that trick on me yet. You’d think he’d love the
spectacle.”

“
Maybe you’re different
too.” Gloria looks up from her sketchbook and meets my
eyes.

I laugh. “I’ve no family history of
NRD and I don’t have the AB- blood type. Jesse was able to replace
me, so that negates any remaining chance I have NRD.”

“
I don’t understand why it
was so essential that we left Tate Tower. We are better equipped,
better staffed, better everything. If there was to be a bombing of
some kind—”

Gloria hands Nikki the sketchbook and
then locks herself up in the bathroom.

Nikki stares at the picture. “We need
to evacuate to the South Side building then. Unless she’s sketched
that one too?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. You’ll have to
ask.”

Nikki gives up on trying to interpret
the sketch and pulls me into her arms. She kisses my cheeks and
runs her fingers through my hair. “Jesse is tough. She’ll be
okay.”

“
You’re a saint,” I say,
wrapping my hands around her neck.

She laughs. “Hardly.”

“
Jesse is so mean to you,
and yet you never bad mouth her to me.”

“
Because I know you love
her.” Nikki’s voice constricts around the word
love
. “She’s a smart ass, but she’s
also innocent. She doesn’t deserve to be murdered. Jeremiah
wouldn’t let her be killed any more than he’d let anyone else
be.”

I look into her eyes. “It’s more than
that. Jeremiah’s not protecting some child here. He wants something
from Jesse.”

A pained expression crosses her face.
“I would tell you if I could.”

“
But you do know? At least
admit you know. Don’t try to make me think I’m crazy or imagining
things.”

“
You’re not crazy. But I
can’t tell you.”

“
You should go back to
Tate Tower.”

“
No. Jeremiah gave me
leave to be here, and I want to help you. I do, Al. Please let me
help you. I understand why you don’t trust him, but you can trust
me.”

“
Okay, but let’s make a
deal,” I say, because we do need her help to get Jesse back.
Again
. By filtering
Jeremiah’s assistance through Nikki, maybe we are keeping ourselves
safer and Jeremiah at a distance without giving up resources. Or
maybe that won’t work at all. I don’t know. “When you talk to
Jeremiah, tell him I want to know the real reason for his
generosity. I’ll never be able to trust him unless I understand his
motivation. Tell him that unless he’s willing to tell us why he’s
in this, Jesse and I are never coming back.”

Nikki’s eyebrows shoot up.
“Never?”

“
Never. Tell him
that.”

Nikki frowns, clearly wanting to
object. Then she tries to hide her sad smile by kissing me. “I’ll
tell him.”

Gloria steps out of the bathroom and
turns off the light behind her. “I ordered a pizza. Nicole, can you
go down and wait for it?”

It isn’t a subtle request by anyone’s
standards, but Gloria is trying.

Nikki gives me a sidelong look. “I was
heading down anyway.”

She plants a kiss on my cheek and
slips out of the room. As soon as the door closes, Gloria turns to
me.

“
What’s going on?” I ask
her.

“
We might have to kill
her,” Gloria says, deadpan.

Shock rocks my body. “Oh my god,
why?”

She doesn’t answer me. Instead, she
stares at the back of the door as if waiting for Nikki to pop back
in.

“
I hope you’re
kidding.”

“
Anything is possible.”
Gloria slips back into her seat at the table, her sketches spread
out before her. “Sometimes the only option is to kill the one we
love.”

I sink into a chair at the table.
“Surely you didn’t send her down for a pizza just to let me know
you intend to kill her.”

“
No. I thought you could
use the time to work on the partis. Have you weeded them out
yet?”

Guilt washes over me. Was I that
obvious? I thought I handled the situation back in Tate Tower
pretty well. When we were locked out of the rooms, I was near
frantic. My laptop, papers, and Brinkley’s journal were still
tucked under the bed. What if Nikki had found them while I was
away? Luckily, I was able to scoop everything up while Nikki packed
her own bag.

“
How many do you have
left?” Gloria asks, prompting me again to spill it.

“
I just crossed off two
more. There are still twelve people I’m checking into.”

Gloria nods, pulling her own laptop
out of her bag. “Keep searching. We need to know everything we can
about the others with powers. I think there are eight partis left,
including Jesse and Caldwell.”

I gather up my bag and open it. It’s
relief more than anything that I feel when I pull out the laptop
and power it on. I always hated sneaking around. More often than
not, I wondered who exactly I was protecting and if it was even
worth it.

“
I assume you don’t want
Nikki to know what I’m doing then.”

Gloria flicks her eyes up to meet
mine. “She is loyal to Jeremiah and Jeremiah does not want what we
want.”

My stomach churns. I trust Gloria’s
judgment, but I also hope that Nikki is on my side too, even if she
and Jesse mix about as well as oil and water.

“
Then maybe we shouldn’t
work for him,” I tell her.

The lines between Gloria’s brows
smooth over. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

She has a point. Jeremiah
is serving his purpose, I suppose. He provides support and a home
base here in Chicago so we can be closer to Caldwell. He has
resources we don’t and he is doing some good. And Nikki
is
a good person, if
nothing else.

“
How did you know I was
researching them?” I ask Gloria while waiting for the black screen
to blink to life.

“
I saw you.”

I can only assume she means while
viewing me. “And?”

“
You should keep doing it.
We may need that information very soon.”

“
Why?” I type in my
password and I’m rewarded with the article on Monroe Dupree. His
haunted face bores into mine.

Gloria’s eyes fall on her sketchbook.
Her fingers reach out and trace the edge of the yellow cover.
“We’ve got company coming.”

Jesse

“S
o what’s the plan?” I ask and push myself out of Caldwell’s
arms. “More mind rape? Or would you rather bury me in a box and let
me suffocate repeatedly?
That
was fun.”

“
You have no reason to
trust me,” he says, running his hand through his hair.

“
Nope
.”

“
All that I ask is that
you listen to what I have to say.”

“
Isn’t that what the devil
always says? Then you find yourself getting pitchforked from
behind, 24/7 for eternity.”

I take a turn about the room and
realize I have no idea where we are. No windows and no doors. Shit.
It’s another kind of coffin.