Dying for a Living (A Jesse Sullivan Novel) (22 page)

They clearly didn’t agree nor did they indulge me in little chatter until we arrived at the station—which was noisy. I didn’t know how anyone got any work done with all that racket. A couple of officers glared my way as we passed. I hoped they didn’t think I was some hooker—excuse me, sex worker—with day-old eyeliner and the slutty schoolgirl-gone-bad look. Given the fact I looked young, they probably would peg me as some juvenile delinquent caught doing something equally juvenile. Aside from these few glances, most of the officers were too busy to even spare a look.

Garrison looked through my bag and held my toothbrush up in the overhead lights as if it was evidence.

“Haven’t you ever been clubbing?” I asked. “Girls always pack a toothbrush and their underwear just in case we go home with someone else. No crime there.”

The partner snorted as Garrison returned my bag to me. He couldn’t prove I left town. Especially since the directions were still in Kyra’s car and I’d given Danny my chunk of cash.

Agent Garrison sat in the seat opposite mine with a large metal desk stretched between us.

He opened a file and clicked his pen once so the little ballpoint extended itself. The folder was terribly thick. I leaned over to see whose it was, and he slid it away.

“Is that whole file on me?” I asked.

He didn’t answer. But unless I needed new eyes, I was pretty sure that was my name on the top tab and that some of the papers were written in Brinkley’s handwriting. I had a record. That’s something I needed to know. And Brinkley said he’d kept me under the radar.

“Where did you go last night, Ms. Sullivan?” Garrison asked.

“At what time?” I asked, being evasive.

“The whole time,” the partner said. He was just downright mean and I wasn’t in the mood for mean after the trip I’d had.

“Hi, I’m Jesse Sullivan,” I said, extending my hand toward him. He jumped back as if I’d burned him. “I’m a real person with feelings, so maybe you can treat me like one.”

Agent Garrison cracked a smile. Whoa. Too bad I didn’t have a camera to capture that brief miracle. His face was a mask of calm again before his partner even had time to react.

“Can you get me a coffee, please?” Garrison asked. The partner wandered away without as much as a glance my way. I guess we disagreed on me being a real person.

“Wow, and I thought the good cop, bad cop thing was just a cliché,” I said. “Good to know some television still gives it to you straight.”

Garrison laced his fingers in front of him. “I think your humor is your defense mechanism, Ms. Sullivan.”

“
I
think I already have one government-issued therapist, thanks.”

“This conversation is going to end in one of two ways. Either you’ll cooperate and I’ll let you walk out of this building, or you won’t cooperate and I’ll serve this warrant.”

He tapped a piece of paper beside the file. That certainly got my attention. Did he really have a warrant? Don’t they serve those when they arrest you, so why wait? Or was he bluffing to get me to talk?

Garrison spoke in a low, guarded tone. “Let me be clear. My sole objective is to discover who is responsible for the recent events and hold them accountable. However, interagency diplomacy is on its last leg. Detectives like Bobkins have little or no patience for our involvement, so I do not have much time—do you understand?”

I nodded. “Then why are you even working with them? Don’t you have your own office?”

“The FBRD doesn’t have a Nashville Branch,” he said. “So I must work with what I have. And if you refuse to help, let’s just go with the understatement you won’t like what comes next.”

I tried to remember what Brinkley had told me about the FBRD corruption. If Garrison knew what was going on, why would he feel any kind of ‘pressure’?

“What do you want? To kill me and get me out of the way? Get promoted? A fat check? Why should I believe that you want to protect me at all? How do I know you aren’t just looking for my weaknesses?”

Garrison’s face had a strange unreadable expression. “Did Brinkley tell you the FBRD meant you harm?”

If I couldn’t lie for shit, there was no point trying.

“What else did he tell you?” he pressed as if I’d spoken. But then Bobkins reentered the main office from the adjacent corridor, Styrofoam cup in hand.

“Nothing you want him to hear,” I said and nodded in Bobkins’ direction.

Garrison’s intense gaze made my skin itch just to look at him. I diverted my attention to Bobkins approaching with the coffee.

Garrison’s tone changed when he accepted his coffee. His veiled warnings from a moment ago still hung mid-air between us, but he spoke as if nothing had been said. “When you left the club with Ms. Kyra Fenton, where did you go?”

“Back to her place.”

“How long were you there?”

I’d stick with the truth as long as I could. “Not long.”

“Do you know what time you left?”

“No,” I said. “I’m not even sure what time we left The Loft.”

“Where did you go next?”

“We stopped at Arby’s for milkshakes.” Technically true even if those two stops were hours apart. “But they were cleaning the machine so I didn’t get one.”

“When is the last time you saw your assistant, Alice Gallagher?” he asked.

The mention of her name was enough to make my heart jump. “Last night at the club.”

“Have you spoken to her since?”

“No,” I said. I definitely noticed this shift in the conversation. “Why?”

“Are you currently aware of Ms. Gallagher’s whereabouts?”

“Aren’t you aware of her whereabouts?” My heart pounded harder. “You’ve been following us for days.”

“Ms. Gallagher left the night club alone. We quit tailing her in an attempt to find you,” he said.

My heart felt like it was completing a series of 180-degree flops in my chest.

“Do you have any reason to suspect that she may have conspired with Eve Hildebrand to kill you?” he pressed.

“No,” I asked.

“Are you aware that Alice and Eve Hildebrand are members of the same fitness club?”

I couldn’t breathe.

“I’ll take that as a no,” he said, scrawling something on the paper in front of him.

“Stop!” I yelled. Several heads turned my way as Garrison asked me to calm down. “Just stop, okay! Why are you asking me these questions about Ally?”

Bobkins answered me. “We have tried to contact her but we cannot reach her.”

“What do you mean can’t reach her?” I dug in my bag furiously for my phone and called Ally twice. She didn’t answer.

“No, no, no.” I dialed a third time.

Garrison watched all of this in silence.

When she didn’t answer again, I slammed my fist against the desk. If the police quit watching her in an attempt to find me, and something happened to her, I’d never forgive myself. When Bobkins came toward me I knocked him away, much farther than a tiny person like myself should have been able to move a man that size. For some reason, I thought of Rachel taking out those two men.

“Why didn’t you protect her?” I screamed at Garrison. “You’re an idiot if you think the people who want to kill me wouldn’t go after her. Nothing would make me come running faster.”

“You’re assuming the attack was personal—not random, or even orchestrated by yourself,” Bobkins said.

My body turned electric. Something inside me moved and shifted and all I could think was God, please let her be okay. I have to tell her I’m sorry. I have to tell her that after all that she did for me, all those times she consoled me after what Eddie did, when she told me everything was going to be okay, after all of that—

You must calm down
. Gabriel appeared behind Garrison, wings stretching out before tucking.
It is not safe to lose control here.

I swallowed, inhaling quickly. I didn’t think I was losing control. I wasn’t hurling desks or choking people. My body was still electric, like a small current ran through my veins.

Garrison’s eyes were wider than before which meant I was at least a little frightening. He motioned to Bobkins, but the officer objected. Whatever I was doing, Garrison saw it and Bobkins didn’t. What was I doing? What was happening to me?

Ally is not yet harmed. Focus, Jesse.

Ally wasn’t hurt. Yet. He’d said
yet
. Focus. Focus.

“Where did you see her last?” I asked. I couldn’t remember the last question he’d asked so this was the best I could do as I slowly drew deep breaths in and out of my nose.

“I think you know where she is,” Bobkins said. He wasn’t happy about being pushed. At least, they weren’t trying to arrest me for assault just yet. “And I think you know what’s going on.”

“Yes, because we replacement agents just love to kill ourselves off.” As soon as the words left my lips, my stomach twitched. I guess I did have a history of killing myself. Garrison’s eyes narrowed. I thought it best to add the very true statement, “Believe me, if I wanted to die, I wouldn’t need Eve’s help.”

But Bobkins just wouldn’t shut up. “There’s a guy in Auckland who’s killed himself fifty-five times. He does it for kicks, just for fun.”

I made a strangled sound in my throat as I fought to focus, but really I just wanted to explode. “Uh, Bobkins, did you have a point?”

His fists went from red to white, as if he’d like nothing better than to pulverize my face.

Garrison finally spoke up. “This morning at 8:47 A.M. Ms. Gallagher received a call of unknown origin. At 9:23 A.M., she disappeared somewhere near 4th Avenue.”

“It means you don’t know who called, right? Because that’s not suspicious as hell.” I put my head in my hands, laughed high in my throat and then felt like crying. What was I going to do? How the hell was I going to find Ally?

Keep breathing, Jesse
. Gabriel warned. My skin still itched with electricity.

“Are you aware that over four hundred replacement agents have died in the last six months? Over a thousand in the last year?” Garrison asked as if to intentionally change the subject.

“It’s what we do Agent Garrison.” I squeezed my hair in my hands, pulling it away from my temples, hoping from some release of pressure.

“Dead
, dead, Jesse,” he said. “And not just death-replacement agents. Several of the Necronites had not yet made their condition public. That means someone with power and authority is able to discover who has NRD even when they’ve not reported their condition.”

If Brinkley hadn’t already told me about these attacks, I might have wondered why we were dying. It could have been a virus depleting the Necronite population, or a newly discovered medical “cure” that prevented us from resurrecting anymore. Yet the word Atlanta scrawled across my mind. Someone had decided Necronites deserved to stay dead like the rest of humanity.

But who was doing it: FBRD, the Church or the military?

I lifted my head from my hands to see Gabriel was watching me carefully.

“We think these attacks are only the beginning,” Garrison said.

Bobkins threw up his hands and turned away. I couldn’t figure out if this was an elaborate dance between them, some kind of cop code, or if Bobkins was genuinely disgusted by Garrison’s willingness to bring me into the loop.

Over one thousand of the unkillable,
killed
.

I wet my lips. “Maybe the military wants us back in protective custody to make super soldiers, or to use us for bio-warfare or whatever. If they scare us enough, maybe we’ll run right back into their camouflaged arms.”

“That’s bullshit,” Bobkins said, posturing himself like a gorilla or something. “No idiot’s going to believe this shit.”

I ignored Bobkins and met Garrison’s eyes in a challenge. “Then there’s the FBRD.”

Garrison cocked his head to one side.

“You know why they’re suspect,” I told him. “After all, Eve isn’t the only one who gets around.”

I was close to treason. The Bureau licensed me. They took this high school dropout and gave her a good paying job. I could be unemployed and under-skilled in a heartbeat. But I wanted Garrison to know about the rogue FBRD agent and his connection to Eve. I wanted him to start looking in the right place.

“Someone like Brinkley,” Bobkins said, mocking my tone.

I grinned and it was easy. “It’s no secret that Brinkley enjoys watching me die.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” Garrison said. He wanted my attention back.

“Yes I did,” I answered. “You’re not listening.”

He had the strangest look on his face—doubt, if I didn’t know better. I was willing to bet that Garrison knew something was up in the FBRD. Maybe he’d heard something, or better yet, he’d seen the tapes himself and recognized Eve’s accomplice.

“That’s enough for now,” Garrison said and stood.

“A few more questions,” Bobkins said. “Then she can leave.”

Garrison gave me a look. If I wanted to end this now, I would have to speak up for myself.