“You don’t know?”
“Tell me what he said about Ebola.”
“Why are you taking orders from someone you don’t know?”
“What did he say?”
“Do you know where they are? What they look like?”
He lowered his brows in a scowl.
“Do you even know if it’s a man or woman?” she asked. She didn’t trust Dr. Grant’s assessment of gender.
“Grab her,” he barked.
The men shifted forward.
Kadance listened carefully to the other sounds in the house. The lack of sounds. If Lyndon were still fighting, she’d be able to hear something. She knew with absolute certainty that he hadn’t gotten out, hadn’t left her. One likely cause for the quiet remained.
The men continued to move toward her.
She pulled the Glock from her waistband and fired at the man on her left. He stumbled back from the hit to his shoulder. The other man lurched forward and grabbed her right hand.
The leader laughed. “Need better aim.”
She glanced at the man’s shoulder, bare from his sleeveless shirt. The bullet had gone directly through the center of the tiger’s eye on his tattoo. Inwardly, she smirked. On the outside, she created a distressed expression. She let the other man disarm her and pretended to be defeated.
“Where’s Lyndon?” she asked.
“Let’s go for a visit.” The leader turned and led the way out of the dining room.
She allowed the other man to escort her down the hall with a big hand clamped around her upper arm. Apparently, they were going to leave the man she’d shot to fend for himself.
“So, you don’t know who is behind all this?” Kadance asked the bushy back of the leader’s head.
He continued walking.
“Why are you doing this person’s bidding rather than come up with your own plans?”
Still no answer.
She looked over at the man escorting her. “Is he not smart enough?”
He pressed his lips together.
That’s a yes.
In the kitchen, the man holding her arm took the sheathed knife at her hip and her phone, dropped her into a chair, tied her hands together behind the back of the chair, and then tied her to the chair at the waist. Lyndon was seated in the next chair. His lip was bloody, and he sat crooked. He was tied the same as she was. He still held his head high, with anger in his eyes. The professor was not in the room, and something told her Lyndon had gotten him out. Careful not to let any of the others see, she winked at him.
“Where’s the other guy?” the leader demanded.
“He got away,” a younger man, not so scruffy as the others, said. “Should I go after him?”
The leader hesitated while he looked around the room. One man had partially congealed blood in his beard and an elbow that was either broken or dislocated. A man with a thick black mane of hair was leaning against the kitchen cabinets wearing a groggy expression like he’d just woken, and his jaw was swelling. Kadance stifled a smirk—surely, they hadn’t anticipated the nerdy scientist being such a good fighter. But then, neither had she. Sure, she’d seen he could shoot, but fight?
“No,” the leader said. “I scared him to the edge of death. He’ll hide in a corner somewhere rather than going to the cops.” He faced Lyndon but addressed his men. “How much have you gotten out of him?”
Silence.
He turned away from Lyndon and looked around at his men. “Well?”
They glanced at each other and remained silent.
“Nothing?” the leader demanded. “Three of you handling one geek, and you got nothing?”
“He said something about genus and genome.”
“And hemorrhagic,” one of the others offered.
“What’s any of that mean?” the leader said.
“Did the chick give you anything?” the younger man asked.
The leader turned to Lyndon. “Start talking. Now.”
“What would you like to know?” Lyndon asked.
The leader grabbed Lyndon’s shirt in his fist.
Lyndon stared him in the eye. “Can I help it if your men don’t understand what I told them?”
The leader lifted his hand and back-fisted Lyndon across the face. Blood splattered from his mouth. Then the leader drove his fist into Lyndon’s gut.
Kadance’s body tightened with fury.
The leader lifted his fist, obviously about to punch Lyndon in the face. “Talk!”
“Go ahead and knock me out,” Lyndon said. “That’ll be helpful.”
The leader sneered and turned away toward his men. “We need to move him.”
“What do you want to do with the girl?”
“We could take her along. She’d be awful fun.”
Lyndon shifted forward in his chair, and the muscles in his arms strained.
Kadance shook her head at him infinitesimally.
He stopped moving, but his chest and arms remained tight and strained.
“I think we should just dispose of her,” one of the others said.
The leader glanced back at Kadance and Lyndon, apparently to make sure they were securely tied up, and then turned and led his men into the hall.
Kadance started working to dislocate her shoulder so she could get her arms up and over her head.
“We only have a week,” one of the men in the hall said.
“We don’t have a week.”
“That’s when the State of the Union is.”
“We need to make sure the super-virus is released successfully.” The leader sounded irritated. “And make sure it takes down the corrupt, illegitimate charade of a government.”
“What about the vaccine?” one of the others asked.
“That guy in there is the only one in the country, maybe the world, who has the right knowledge.”
Kadance listened but couldn’t take the time to process what they were talking about. She only paused when the doggy flap on the lower part of the back door shifted. Mac popped his head through the opening.
“Good boy,” Kadance whispered.
Mac walked into the kitchen and sat at her feet looking up at her.
She nodded toward the counter. “Up.”
He looked over at the counter behind him. Then he turned and silently jumped up.
Lyndon whispered, “What’re you doing?”
Kadance kept talking to Mac, making sure to keep his focus. She just hoped he understood what she wanted when she wasn’t able to make hand motions. She stared at the steak knife on the counter and made a sweeping motion with her head.
Mac looked at her and then at the knife. When he looked at her again, she made the same sweeping motion with her head. He turned back to the knife and lightly touched the handle with his paw.
“Good boy,” she whispered.
He tapped it a few more times with his paw, and it clattered to the floor.
The younger man walked back into the kitchen and looked at Mac on the counter. Then he rolled his eyes and walked back out to the hall. Kadance heard him say, “Just a cat.” Then the conversation about what to do with their captives continued.
“That’s my good boy,” she whispered to Mac. She carefully stood, leaned forward as much as she could so the chair wouldn’t scrape the floor, and knelt. Then she managed to get to her side without making any noise. She could just barely reach her fingers to brush the floor.
“Scoot back about an inch more,” Lyndon murmured.
She did as he said, and her fingertips grazed the knife handle. She used her legs to twist a bit, pivoting on the corner of the chair and smashing her right arm, so she could get her fingers around the knife handle. Finally, she gripped it and started sawing the serrated edge against the rope.
Lyndon glanced between the doorway to the hall and her progress with the knife.
“Almost,” he said.
The rope snapped. She got back to her knees and cut the rope at her waist.
She silently sto
od, set the chair out of the way, and walked around behind Lyndon. As she cut his ropes, she whispered in his ear, “Out the back door.”
He nodded and stood.
She walked over to grab Mac.
A loud curse came from the doorway to the hall. “They’re loose,” the younger man called over his shoulder and then drew a gun.
Kadance threw the knife in her hand, and it sunk into his chest. He crumpled to the floor and gasped for air.
Lyndon stared at the man dying in front of them.
“Get out,” she demanded. “Take Mac.”
Another man came through the doorway and almost fell over his friend.
Kadance grabbed all the knives out of the block on the counter. As the man reached for his gun, she hurled a knife at him. It wedged into his chest, more centered than the last man, and he stumbled back against the wall and then fell, dead.
“Get. Out!” she ordered Lyndon.
He snatched Mac off the counter and opened the back door.
Now, she was sure he’d escape and have no problem leaving her. He’d seen the side of her she’d been running from for a long time. She couldn’t blame him for running away from her too. She was just thankful he’d grabbed Mac to get him out safely.
Then his footsteps stopped. “Let’s go!”
She glanced back to see him waiting at the open door. Waiting for her.
“Shoot her!”
She turned back to see the leader and another man drawing their guns and aiming at her. One knife in each hand, she threw them at the men and ran for the door. As they made it outside, she heard the men drop to the floor.
They ran around the house to her car. Lyndon held Mac tightly to his chest. As they jumped in the car, Kadance watched the front door. She’d taken down four of the six. The one she’d shot in the shoulder was very possibly still out of commission, but that left one able-bodied man.
She shoved her key in the ignition, started the engine, and slammed on the gas.
A block away, she took a breath, but still watched the rearview mirror. The last man could follow them, or a neighbor could have called the police.
After several blocks and many turns, she let herself calm down.
“Are you all right?” Lyndon asked.
She couldn’t look at him.
“Mac’s fine,” he said, and she realized he still had him on his lap and was stroking his soft fur.
She closed her eyes for a second. Then she finally spoke, while keeping her gaze on the road. “Thank you for making sure he got out safely.”
“He saved our lives.” He stroked Mac again. Then he lightly touched her shoulder. “Are you all right?”
She pulled away from his touch.
twelve
LYNDON TOOK HIS HAND AWAY from Kadance’s shoulder. He set it on Mac’s fluffy fur instead. Mac watched Kadance with those big amber eyes, as if analyzing her.
Kadance didn’t look at either of them. But she didn’t seem particularly upset. Her hands didn’t shake, her expression didn’t twist, and her breathing remained steady. But then he realized there was a change. Something in her eyes was flat. She had her barriers up, like when they’d first met.
He decided not to push her. That was always the last thing he wanted anyone to do to him, and yet it always seemed to be exactly what people wanted to do.
Instead, he turned his mind toward analyzing all he’d learned in a short period of time.
Super-virus, they’d said.
State of the Union.
Take down the United States government.
He was possibly the only one “with the right knowledge.”
One week.
He absentmindedly stroked Mac and stared out the windshield, eyes unfocused. He shifted the different elements of the situation around in his mind like puzzle pieces, trying to make a coherent picture.
Several minutes passed.
He continued staring out the windshield. “They want to kill the entire House, the Senate, and the president. What’s the motivation?”
Kadance glanced at him.
“Obviously to cripple the government,” he said. “But what do they have to gain from it?”
Kadance continued driving. He finally focused on the road and realized they were on the freeway.
He turned to Kadance. “Did they say anything to you when we were separated?”
She finally looked at him, met his eyes. Then she turned back to the road. “Where do you want me to drop you?”
He drew his eyebrows together. Then he mentally shook his thoughts and tried to shift the puzzle out of the way and focus on her. “I’m sorry. You didn’t want to be involved in this in the first place. You can leave me wherever you want.”
She stared at him for a couple of seconds. “I just killed four men in front of you, and I shot another one who might die.”
He looked back at her. Seeing that had admittedly shocked him, images that would stay in his mind the rest of his life, no matter how much he tried to rid himself of them. “You let them catch you,” he said. “Didn’t you?”
Her eyes widened slightly, and then she turned back to the road.
“I think this is the most genuine emotion I’ve ever seen from you,” he said.
Silence.
She passed a big SUV and got back in the right lane.
Finally, she looked at him. “Aren’t you horrified?”
“Of course.”
“Then why are you still sitting there?”
“The vehicle is moving.”
She glanced at him with creased brows, and then she laughed one weak laugh. It sounded like she wasn’t sure whether to laugh or hit him. It wasn’t the first time he’d caused that reaction.
“I’m right,” he said. “Aren’t I? You let them catch you.”
She hesitated and then nodded once.
“Because you knew they’d bring you to me,” he said.
“The inexperienced always corral their prisoners.”
“You wanted to make sure I was all right, gauge the situation, and formulate a way to get us out. Both of us.”
She nodded once.
“You could’ve gotten out yourself.”
She clenched her jaw.
“But the thought didn’t even occur to you,” he said.
She didn’t answer.
He lowered his voice. “I know what you did was hard on you. Much harder than you’ll ever admit, even to yourself. But I want you to understand how I see it all. You were willing to sacrifice yourself to get me out. You barely know me, and you certainly don’t owe me anything. And yet, you would’ve died to get me out.” He stroked Mac’s soft fur. “And you would’ve done the same thing for Mac.”
She gave no reaction.
“That’s how I see what just happened,” he said. “And you know I’m not lying. Like you said, I’m a bad liar.”
Quiet.
Her expression strained.
He turned his head to look out the side window, to allow her some small measure of privacy. He wanted to reach over to her, hold her, but he knew she didn’t want that. She’d surely hit him if he tried. And holding her would be too much for him, too dangerous.
They drove for miles.
Though he didn’t look, he was acutely aware of her, of each breath. He swore he could feel as her emotions calmed, or more accurately, as she got them under that harsh control of hers.
By the time she spoke again, they were out of the city on Route 40. “They were anti-government militia,” she said. “They were hired anonymously. They had no idea who they were working for, not even a gender.”
Lyndon nodded. “Obviously, it’s someone with a medical science background, but that doesn’t give us much to go on.” Then he paused. “Is this us or me?”
“You mean am I ditching you?”
“You don’t have to get involved.”
“I am involved. I won’t let what happened be for nothing. I’m seeing this through.”
He felt relieved, which he hadn’t anticipated. Typically, he preferred to work alone. “I assume the militia group was involved because they were told the government was going to get taken down.”
“But was that the truth, or just something fed to them to get a desired behavior?”
“I think it was true. They weren’t sophisticated but also not idiots. They wouldn’t have gone to such lengths without some kind of confirmation of the plan. I can’t possibly know what that confirmation was, but I think the best course of action is to assume there is a super-virus and the plan is to infect the House, Senate, and president, to kill all of them at once, and topple the government.”
“It would have to be an almost immediate death. Or at least an immediate incapacitation.”
“So there wouldn’t be time to set up a secondary leadership.”
She nodded.
“It would have to be the deadliest strain ever seen. And surely, they’ve made sure there is no cure, no effective treatment, and ideally, it would be highly contagious.”
“Obviously, your theory that it was man-made is correct,” she said. “And someone thinks you have the knowledge base to stop them. Perhaps they think you have some idea how to make a vaccine.”
“My work doesn’t focus on vaccine creation. I focus more on theory—patterns, histories, behaviors.”
“Maybe you worry them because you’ve already hypothesized that they exist. No one else is even thinking that. You’re so adept at those patterns and behaviors, you’ll be able to recognize them.”
“Recognize the mastermind, you mean.”
“Understanding your enemy, knowing how they tick, is how you beat them. This person isn’t even on anyone else’s radar.”
He lifted his chin. Knowing the disease was like knowing the person, and no one understood the disease better than he did.
He took a breath. “One week.”
“One week.”
“Is this even possible?”
“Wars have been fought and won in a week.”
“One war—the Six-Day War between Israel and Egypt, Jordan, and Syria.”
She smirked. “One war that you know of.”
He liked that smirk. And not just because it made her dark eyes more alluring. If she was confident, she had good reason to be.
“We should fly,” he said. “Get to DC as fast as possible.”
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