Dying by the Hour (A Jesse Sullivan Novel Book 2) by Kory M. Shrum Read Free Book Online Page B

now it’s more like emaciated supermodel. The right side of his face is a purple color, the hint of an old bruise. And his favorite leather jacket hangs off of him.
    “What the hell happened to you?” I said. “Are you sick?”
    He makes no reply. In one hand he still has the dart gun, something you’d find in the toy section of the store. He points it at me playfully and shoots me in the cheek with a dart that bounces off and falls into the mud.
    “Oh so it’s fine if you know what I’ve been up to, but not the other way around?”
    “I have my reasons,” he replies.
    “ What reasons?”
    He points the gun again.
    “Never mind. Forget I asked.” I reach out and push the plastic barrel down. “Before you take my eye out or something. As far as I know I can’t regrow those.”
    Brinkley faked his death so he could investigate his own organization, the FBRD—The Federal Bureau of Regenerative Deaths—and my employer. A couple of other agents double crossed him and tried to kill us. They license me but I’ve been sans handler for almost two weeks since Garrison was reassigned. I’m supposed to be reassigned a new handler, but I haven’t heard anything.
    “So I guess I’m not supposed to ask about your face?”
    Brinkley shrugs but he doesn’t raise the gun. “You should have seen the other guy.”
    “Why do men always say that?”
    “Not all of us heal in a heartbeat.” He rubs a calloused thumb over his bruised cheek, scraping a jagged nail over his scruff.
    “I don’t heal in a heartbeat. I have to be dead for at least a few hours.” I notice his tan. “Where have you been?”
    “Arizona,” he says. “At the old base where Eric Sullivan was last seen.”
    My heart begins its vicious climb up the back of my throat, the way a cat crawls up the drapes to get away from a yappy dog. Eric Sullivan .
    “Not much to connect him to Caldwell,” he continues.
    Because that’s the latest theory—Caldwell and Eric Sullivan are the same man.
    Eric Sullivan, with his newly discovered NRD was swept up in protective custody. For over 17 years, the protocol was to detain those with NRD and those detainees suffered unknown tortures at the hands of their military captors. Eric was unfortunate enough to discover his NRD nine months before the public forced the military to release their prisoners. And Brinkley thought the reason Eric managed to stay hidden so well after his release was because he’d taken on a new identity, emerging eight years to the day of his death as Caldwell—North American leader of the Unified Church—a social climb I can’t even imagine. If Caldwell and Eric Sullivan are the same person, then what he did in the years after his release remain a mystery.
    “I got this,” Brinkley says. He opens his jacket enough to pull out a folded piece of paper.
    I trade him the hard drive and my mush of a banana peel for it. “He’s going to know it’s gone.”
    Brinkley drops the peel in disgust. “Of course he’ll notice. A computer won’t work without a hard drive.”
    “Oh he’ll notice long before that.”
    “Jesse—” my name is a growl in the back of Brinkley’s throat.
    “It was the best I could do just to get the drive into Ally’s hand and jump in front of that tree.”
    Brinkley raises an eyebrow. “Tree attacks child. That must have made headlines.”
    “We might still be in the dark,” I say pointing at the hard drive. “Lovett might not have anything on there.”
    “Even things people think they’ve deleted can be pulled off their hard drives. Maybe we’ll get lucky,” he says. And I hope so. We’ve been keeping our eyes on all the higher Church officials for over a year. About time something works out in our favor.
    I open the sheet of paper Brinkley has given me and swear under my breath. “Is this a medical record?”
    “For Eric Sullivan,” Brinkley says. He has a small device in his hands which he is attaching to the hard drive. Oh Brinkley with his