Dying for a Living (A Jesse Sullivan Novel) (26 page)

“Eve might not tell the truth ever,” I said, examining the picture more closely. “If I can show this to Garrison along with the falsified signatures, then he might believe I’m the victim.”

“Jacob might not have known she was forging his signature,” Cindy said. “He looked surprised to see his name on our D.R.s.”

“Or he could’ve been acting,” I said. “You saw the way he totally tried to scam me.”

I started to shake from my crashing adrenaline. My eyes wandered over the picture again, searching the happy foursome for clues, staring particularly at happy Eve holding a baby.

My eyes were fixed but my mind wandered. Eve’s death wasn’t a real death. I died for nothing. Worse, there was still the possibility I’d have to pay the fine and go to jail. I tried to breathe against the panic.

“Someone is still baiting agents,” I said. “I’m betting on mystery dude from the hotel room, Brad Cestrum. We could use your replacement to bait him, see how he likes it.”

Cindy frowned. “It’s too risky.”

“You’re right.” That still left us in the dark as to how to find Brad Cestrum. It’s clear he was still working to polish off the Nashville zombies, but then why hadn’t he come back for me? Was that Gabriel’s doing? Brinkley’s?

“Do you have any way of getting a hold of that agent who’s supposed to be working your case?” Cindy asked.

“Garrison?” I asked.

“We should give him a call,” she said. “She can’t chase him out of the house.”

I turned the picture over so I wouldn’t have to look at their grinning faces. “Mrs. Mayhem doesn’t seem like the sort of woman to let a federal agent hold her back.”

I called Garrison and he turned up with another fat folder in hand.

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing at the bulging brown flaps. “Not my warrant I hope.”

“We are in the process of acquiring that,” he said, deadpan.

I couldn’t tell if he was joking. I forced a laugh anyway, but I was pretty sure it just sounded nervous and awkward. I tried to offer the picture of Eve that I stole but he waved me away.

“I brought my own,” he said. He unfolded the envelope flap and removed several large 8x10 photographs. He spread them side-by-side on my coffee table.

“Do you recognize him?” he asked, pointing to a middle-aged, bald man on the table.

“No,” I said. I didn’t like his blunt, irritated tone.

He turned to Cindy. “You?”

She leaned over the coffee table, peering closely. “No.”

“This is Brad Cestrum,” he said, turning back to me.

I pointed to a different photograph. “That’s the man Eve introduced as Brad.”

The photograph I pointed to was much less clear, an unfocused security cam photo rather than a staged portrait. The fuzzy photo was a black and white photograph of Eve and fake-Brad. In this picture, fake-Brad was checking out of some kind of store.

“This is the real Brad Cestrum,” he said, again. He pointed at the middle-aged, bald man I’d never seen.

“But look at him,” I said, trying to draw Garrison’s eye back to fake-Brad’s picture. “Doesn’t he look familiar?”

He spoke as if he hadn’t heard me. “We took it off a convenience store security camera.”

Cindy handed me the picture I’d swiped from Jacob’s place and nudged me. I offered it to Garrison again, hoping he wouldn’t disregard me a second time. He took it and assessed with a thorough eye while I explained how we got it.

“You took this from Jacob Willis’s house, 507 Kenney Street?”

“Eve fabricated her paperwork using her cousin Jacob’s signature,” I explained. “I have a couple of the signature sheets that prove his signatures don’t match and that he knows Eve.”

“We were chased out of the house,” Cindy said. “She only took that by accident.”

He didn’t look interested in arresting me for a minor theft.

I looked at Garrison’s photographs. This whole situation was bizarre and surreal. A cop in my living room, showing me black and white photographs of someone who’d tried to kill me. Did this really happen to people?

“So the man in the hotel room isn’t named Brad Cestrum?” I asked. “So who could he be?”

I couldn’t make it any more obvious unless I told Garrison what Brinkley had told me, but that meant admitting that I’d seen Brinkley.

It was Cindy’s turn to shuffle through the photographs. “My God, that’s him.”

Apparently Garrison and I didn’t look nearly interested enough.

“Him,” Cindy said. She poked the picture several times. “The priest I told you about.”

Garrison snatched the second, slightly better photo of fake-Brad from my hands as if I weren’t worthy of touching it anymore. He handed it to Cindy. “You’ve seen this man as a priest?”

“A few days ago he tried to get me to leave the church with him.”

“He’s a priest,” I said, elated. “She just identified him, so you can go pick him up, right?” I would’ve felt so much better if this fake-Brad wasn’t lurking around. And at this rate, Garrison was going to have to look this guy in the face before making the FBRD connection.

“Are you certain?” he asked Cindy.

“Yes,” we both said in unison.

“I interviewed all the listed priests and clergy members last week. I didn’t come across him.” He gathered the photographs together.

“Maybe he’s visiting from a different church,” Cindy said, standing up because he did. “They do that.”

He tucked everything under his arms and hustled toward the door. “I’ll see what I can find out.”

“Wait,” I touched his arm hoping to stop him. It worked but it was immediately apparent he did not like to be touched. I released him. “Sorry. But look, so it turns out Eve’s paperwork was fake. You can’t really punish me for that, can you? How was I supposed to know?”

“Quit sneaking around,” he said. “Or you’ll run into something worse than an irate mother.”

“But I’m trying to get out of trouble here. I swear to you I didn’t do anything!”

Garrison leaned real close, almost as if he would kiss me. But then at the last moment, he turned his head and whispered directly into my ear. “If you are so concerned with proving your innocence, I’d watch what you say over breakfast.”

It took a moment for me to process this.

What did I say over breakfast? Everything.

I’d told Lane everything.

“Get the hell out of the house. Now,” Gloria yelled, and Gloria never yelled.

I either moved the phone away from my ear or risked losing an ear drum. “What? Why?”

I took another bite of the sandwich I made after Cindy left. I’d been standing in my kitchen trying to figure out what I could do—if anything—in the event that the police really did have my confession to killing Eddie on tape. Call a lawyer, maybe? Make arrangements for Winston?

“You have company coming,” Gloria said. “You need to get out of the house before they arrive.”

“I just want to finish my sandwich. Is that okay?”

“Move, move, move!” Gloria barked like a drill sergeant. “You’ve only got minutes.”

“Is this a long trip? Do I need to pack?”

“Forget your clothes! You can’t let them catch you! You have somewhere else to be.”

My skin shivered when she said this. “You found her.”

“But that won’t mean anything if you don’t get out of that house!” Gloria kept screaming.

I dropped the sandwich and grabbed my keys.

“Leave your car,” Gloria said. “I’ll meet you where you met Brinkley last. And leave the dog!”

With this final warning she disconnected the line. The place I met Brinkley? She must’ve meant the trail behind my house. I heard sirens in the distance and I about shit myself. Those sirens might not have had anything to do with me, it could’ve been a fire for all I knew, but it was motivation enough to drop the keys and run for the backdoor.

I was almost out the kitchen door when I saw Winston lying in a heap of wrinkles by his food dish. Dinner wasn’t for another two hours but he was very patient when it came to food. The sirens grew louder and I knew I should be running, but I just couldn’t leave him.

“Gloria’s going to kill me,” I said, scooping his chubby butt up. I ran out the back door, cut through the yard and hit the trail at full speed.

It wasn’t easy running with forty pounds of pug pressed against my chest. Winston didn’t appreciate it either, all his huffing and wheezing told me so. I apologized to him a million times explaining that I just couldn’t rely on the FBRD or the local police to feed him. They would’ve taken him for evidence.

We had to stick together, for better or worse.

I travelled much farther down the trail than Ally and I had before I saw Gloria’s car. My legs and lungs were on fire and my biceps threatened to give out on the pug, but we made it.

I had to balance Winston in one shaky arm while I opened the back door and put him in the car. I fell into the front seat panting. “God, I need to work out more. Lift weights or something.”

“I knew you were going to bring that damn thing,” she said, throwing the car in reverse and speeding away before I even had the door shut.

“I couldn’t just leave him!” I whined. “He’s my baby.”

“Well who’s going to take care of him while you’re off saving the world?” she asked with raised eyebrows.

I gave her a pouty lip.

“Honey, you don’t want to leave your
baby
in my care,” she said. “I disappear into my head for days at a time. I might come out to find that he’s died of starvation or pissed on my floor.”

I chewed my lip nervously. “Maybe Lane will watch him. We’re dating now. I think.”

Gloria didn’t respond.

“So where are we going?”

“Somewhere they won’t look,” she said.

“They have to know I’m not home if they know what I said over breakfast. They’re probably following you instead.”

“Where is your cell phone?” Gloria asked.

I showed it to her. Her response was to snatch it from my hand and throw it out of her window. It hit the pavement with a sickening crack.

“Oh my god,” I screamed, my head out the window. “I had a million pictures.”

“Cellphones are traceable,” she said.

“And my contacts!”

“You had to ditch it.”

“Then why did you let me take it to St. Louis?” I asked.

“I forgot,” Gloria said.

I must have looked cynical. Gloria snorted.

“Contrary to popular belief, I am human.”

“You’re saving my ass now. That’s what counts,” I said, but I was still pretty irritated. “So where’s Ally?”

“I’ll show you,” she said.

During the drive, I made another attempt to use the shocky thing. After all, I might need that trick soon. When I failed to change my vision or go electric, I asked Gloria a few questions for ideas. She hypothesized that it was connected to emotions, a stress response. So I tried to think of things that made me sad, then angry. Neither worked.

By the time we pulled up at Lane’s comic bookstore, I’d accomplished nothing.

I hit the floorboard of her car. “Jesus Christ, Gloria. This place isn’t exactly secret. It’s attached to my office!”

“No one is watching right now,” she said. “And we’ll only be here for a little while.”

When we entered the store, Lane knew immediately that something was up, either because I kept spastically looking over my shoulder, or because I was putting a fat blob of pug in his arms.

“What happened?” He ushered his two regulars—the only current patrons—out the door and locked it. He flipped the sign to read CLOSED.

“You know all that stuff I told you over breakfast?” I asked. “My house is bugged and so now that’s all on tape. Like police tape.”

I let that settle in.

“I’m pretty much running from the law,” I added, tugging my ponytail. “For, like, the rest of my life.”

“Then you shouldn’t be here.”

“It wasn’t my idea.” I pointed at Gloria who wandered the store. My cheeks burned a little hotter. “But it’s good to know you like me even if I’m a fugitive. You could get in trouble for aiding me, you know.”

He smirked. “I’ve always had a problem with authority. We have that in common.”

I was blushing so hard I thought my head might explode. “About earlier—”

He stopped me. “I get it. We will take it slow.”

“Oh God,” I said. “Like no sex?”

“I need a minute to decide what I’m comfortable with and what I’m not,” he said. “I’m not saying no.”

I opened my mouth to argue that depriving me of sex would not be his best approach in securing fidelity—but he pointed at Gloria.

“Go talk to her and find out what’s going on,” he said, nudging me with a smile. “I’ll watch the pug.”

“But are we okay?” I asked him.

“We’re okay.”

I kissed his cheek before cornering Gloria at the anime display case. She looked particularly interested in the girl with a big sword and pink hair.