Never Miss

by Melissa Koslin

  “A man in love goes after what he wants, no matter what.”

  Even if the woman he wants doesn’t want him in return? Isn’t that stalking? But she said, “He has a funny way of showing love.”

  “Not all men are very good at these things. You have to be patient. You may not approve of every single thing he’s ever done, but he’s shown very clearly that he loves you.”

  She sighed and looked up. “What does he want?”

  “Just to spend some time with you. He said he’s putting off other pressing matters just to come see you. The least you can do is go sit with him for a while.”

  She paused. Then she sighed again, flipped the book closed, and stood.

  “Try not to attack the poor boy again.” There was a warning in his voice but also a slight grin in his eyes.

  “No promises.”

  “Just don’t kill him. Too much mess to clean up.” He turned toward the door.

  She followed him out to the living room. James was sitting in the same spot on the sectional. He stood when he saw her.

  She turned to the right toward the kitchen. Her father stayed by her side.

  “I just want something to drink.” She opened the refrigerator door.

  Her father stood casually in front of the drawer with all the utensils and knives.

  She looked over at James. “Want something? Pepsi?”

  He smiled. “My favorite.”

  “I know.” She grabbed two bottles of Pepsi, closed the refrigerator, and walked past her father toward the dining table. She’d wondered as a child how anyone had ever gotten the beast of a table in through any of the doors. She sat in one of the chairs and set the other bottle of Pepsi at the chair next to her, the head of the table.

  James walked over and sat down.

  Her father stayed in the kitchen, leaned against the cabinets, and looked at something on his phone. She tried to think of a way to get him to leave.

  “Are you feeling better?” James asked her.

  She wanted to punch him in the face.

  Instead, she unscrewed the cap off the bottle and took a sip.

  “You look better,” he said. “Get a decent night’s sleep?”

  She nodded. While she’d spent most of the night thinking things through, plotting, when she finally had gone to sleep, she’d slept better than she usually did.

  “I have to leave tonight,” he said. “I was hoping I’d get to see you again.” He reached out and brushed his fingertips against the back of her hand.

  The urge to punch him in the face rattled up her arm again, but she controlled it. She took another sip of Pepsi. “Where’re you going?”

  “Work stuff.”

  Her father’s phone rang. He looked over at James and Kadance. Kadance guessed it was a call he didn’t want to take in front of them, perhaps something about a job.

  “We’ll be all right,” James said.

  Her father met Kadance’s eyes, a warning. She nodded once minutely. He walked past them out the front door.

  James smiled at Kadance. “You seem better today.”

  “Acceptance of reality.” She took a sip. She did actually want the sugar and caffeine. She hadn’t been eating or sleeping properly. She needed any boost she could get for what she was about to try. She set the bottle on the table. “Where’re you going?”

  He kept smiling at her. “You don’t need to worry about anything. It’s all handled.” He took the same syringe out of his inside jacket pocket. “Please.”

  She kept her demeanor calm, verging on kind. “You know I don’t handle being kept in the dark well. If you want me to trust you, you need to tell me what’s going on.”

  “You know the basics.”

  “Where?”

  He paused as he looked at her. Then he reached out and tucked a stray hair behind her ear.

  She managed not to hit him.

  “Atlanta,” he said.

  “CDC.” That made sense.

  He smiled a little. “Sometimes I forget how smart you are.”

  That was something he always seemed to forget.

  “When?” she asked.

  “You don’t need to worry about any of this.”

  She waited for an answer.

  “I’m flying out tonight. Let’s just say I’m cutting it close. I needed to make sure you’re safe before I leave.”

  The front door started to open, and James slipped the syringe back into his pocket.

  “You both look like you’re enjoying this visit,” her father said.

  “Yes, sir,” James said. “Thank you.”

  She looked over at her father. “I’d like to take a walk. I need some fresh air.”

  “Your cousins aren’t home.” Translation: he didn’t feel he had enough people to control her in the open.

  “There’s nothing but barren land and a few cacti for miles.” She wanted him to be convinced it would be pointless for her to run—there was nowhere to run to and nowhere to hide.

  “I’d love some fresh air,” James said.

  Her father continued to look at her. Finally, he said, “Out back.”

  James stood and took Kadance’s chair. They walked out the French doors by the kitchen onto the back patio. Sandy terrain stretched out in front of them. While the sun was warm, the air was no more than sixty degrees.

  “Are you warm enough?” James asked.

  “I’m fine.” She glanced around, mostly using peripheral vision. Her uncle was nowhere in sight. Her father was watching out the kitchen window. She knew he was hoping she’d fall back under James’s influence. That would make keeping her under control much easier. That was the only reason he was allowing them time alone—hoping she and James would bond.

  She tucked her hand in the crook of James’s elbow and led him off the concrete patio. James smiled and easily went with her. Some part of her wondered if James really did love her, in his own way. But that was the problem of her life, wasn’t it? People who loved her in their own way. In a way that suited them, not her. Except Lyndon.

  And it hit her why she’d allowed her family to take her. Some part of her was scared of Lyndon, of what she felt for him. She hadn’t understood it. She understood better now—or was starting to.

  She’d led James away from the patio toward the rock formations in the distance, and she slowly veered their path toward the right, slowly enough that her father, hopefully, wouldn’t think she was purposefully getting out of his sight.

  “We should probably head back,” James said.

  “I want to show you the mountains over here. Have you ever seen them from this vantage?”

  His gaze softened as he looked down at her. “Show me.”

  She pulled him along a little more quickly. “See how the sun hits them?”

  “Maybe we can get a place around here so you can always see them. Maybe build our own house.”

  She wanted to say, Why don’t we just move into my family’s house, since you’re obviously planning on letting them die in the outbreak? But she kept her mouth shut.

  “Here,” he said quickly. “Let me give you the injection.” He took his arm away from her and reached into his breast pocket.

  She slammed a hook across his jaw.

  He fell to the ground with a thud.

  Part of her wanted to do more, cause him more pain, but right now, she just needed him knocked out and silent. And she needed to be fast.

  She took his keys out of his pocket, and as silently as she could on the rocky terrain, she ran to the front corner of the house. Her family all parked in the garages to save the paint from the corrosive sun, so the silver Toyota parked at the front of the house had to be James’s rental car.

  She paused to examine the area, to listen.

  Then she ran toward the car.

  Her father walked out the front door, his M-40 rifle in his hands.

  She stopped, fully expecting him to take aim at her, but he held it to his side.

  “Where
’re you off to?” He was just a few feet from her.

  She said nothing.

  “Where’s James? Beat him up again?”

  “I didn’t get to do it properly last time.”

  The corner of his mouth tweaked, somewhere between a smirk and a smile. “Where’re you off to?” he asked again.

  “Nothing you need to worry about.”

  “You’re my daughter, Kadance. I always worry about you.”

  She was done playing his games. “You want to control me, use my abilities to suit your purposes. That’s all you’ve ever wanted.”

  “How can you say something like that? I’ve fought for you your whole life. Admittedly, I wanted a son, but I quickly decided you were so much more. I fought your mother for custody because I loved you.”

  That was the first time he’d mentioned her mother since she was a child. She wanted to demand so many answers—what’d happened and where was she? Was she even alive? But she had another focus right now.

  “We stopped the attack at the Capitol, but they’re going to try again. I have to stop them. There’s a syringe in James’s pocket—take it and you’ll be safe if I fail.”

  He paused, surely to digest the information.

  “I’m the best option to stop it,” she added.

  “Give me the details, and we’ll handle it.”

  For one wild second, she considered it. But she didn’t trust them. And she assumed Lyndon was already working on stopping the CDC attack and would likely get in the way, and even if he didn’t get hurt that way, he’d very possibly spot her father or cousins and go after them. No, there was too much risk to Lyndon.

  “There’s too much going on,” she said. “I need to handle it.”

  “Well then, we’re at an impasse.” He shifted his grip of the M-40.

  She moved toward him.

  He lifted his chin, surely trying to figure her out. But she was different now—he couldn’t possibly understand how different.

  She continued walking.

  He lifted the rifle. “I don’t want to hurt you, Kadance. But I will if I have to.”

  “You’ll have to kill me. And we both know you won’t do that. I’m too valuable.”

  “I would never kill my only child.”

  “You’ll have to if you want to stop me.” She halted just in front of him, the barrel of the rifle pointed at her chest.

  “Get back in the house,” he demanded.

  She shifted to the right and pushed the gun to the side with her left hand, and she landed an upset punch into her father’s gut.

  He coughed but then swung the gun at her head.

  She blocked, though pain from the hard metal shot through her arm, and she fell sideways a step. He was so much bigger than she was and therefore more powerful. She’d obviously inherited her delicate frame from her mother. She was strong, but she’d never been able to put on a decent amount of weight.

  He punched her in the chest, and she couldn’t breathe.

  He stood straight. “Get in the house.”

  She was bent over from trying to catch her breath, and as she stood, she hurled an uppercut at his chin. He managed to shift enough to get most of the power of the punch to glance off, and he grabbed her wrist.

  She wanted to laugh at his error. The unwritten rule in sparring with her was never to try to hold on to her. The only chance her cousins had was to use their mass and power against her to keep her off-balance. She kicked out his knee, and as he stumbled and started to fall, she smashed her knuckles across his temple.

  He landed in the dirt.

  She knelt down. His eyes were closed. She needed to punch him again and make sure he was out, but she paused as she looked at his face, the man she’d spent her entire childhood trying to please. Losing parts of herself along the way.

  Not anymore.

  She punched him, and he didn’t move.

  She wrenched the rifle out of his grip and ran for the car.

  She raced away from her father’s land toward the freeway. With limited time, she needed to do everything exactly right.

  Once inside the city limits, she found a shipping store and paid them to package and ship the rifle. Thankfully, her father had taken only weapons and her phone off her, not her ID and cash, surely his way of maintaining the illusion that she wasn’t a prisoner.

  Then she headed for the airport. She didn’t have time to drive. She had to risk flying. She left the car at the drop-off area in front of the terminal and walked inside.

  The woman at the counter issued her a ticket. But she knew this wasn’t the hard part.

  She headed toward security. Past a couple of TSA agents, she wound her way through the maze of ropes.

  Then she waited.

  Waiting was one thing she’d always been good at. She could lie there in the dirt, at the ready with her rifle, for hours. But this was harder. Lyndon’s life was in danger. Please stay with him, please stay with him, please stay with him. She managed to remain calm and patient. At least on the outside.

  Finally, she walked up to the TSA agent who was to inspect her boarding pass and ID. She handed him both.

  He scanned the boarding pass and then looked at it and the ID carefully. Then he looked back and forth between her and her ID.

  “My hair’s longer,” she said. Her braid was sitting on her shoulder. The picture on her ID was of a woman who looked very much like her but had shorter hair.

  “It grows fast,” he said.

  “Blessing and a curse.”

  He looked at her ID one more time. And then he handed it back to her.

  “Thanks.” She walked past him, put her shoes and wallet in a bin, and waited in line at the scanner. That part was easy, and she was out of security in a few minutes and headed for the gate.

  She had to wait twenty minutes for boarding to start and then for first class, anyone who needed additional time, or anyone traveling with young children to board the plane. She waited patiently in line with everyone else. If Mac were with her, he’d hate this part. He’d want to run around in the vast space of the terminal.

  She walked down the jetway, smiled at the flight attendants as she passed, and found her seat.

  Then she waited for everyone after her to board the plane, for everyone to get seated, and as the flight attendants closed the overhead bins and made sure everyone was buckled.

  Finally, the plane pulled back from the gate.

  All the while, barely noticing she was doing it, she prayed for Lyndon.

  But before the plane made it to the runway, it stopped. Kadance looked out the window. Maybe they had to wait in line for the runway?

  She caught a glimpse of flashing lights, and she could just see stairs being wheeled up to the plane. One of the flight attendants opened the door.

  A man in a suit with cropped hair and a hard expression, followed by two TSA agents, walked down the aisle. He scanned the cabin, looking back and forth between the passengers and his phone.

  He came to her and stopped.

  She unbuckled her seat belt and stood.

  “Come with me, please.”

  forty-one

  LYNDON FELT LIKE HE WAS GOING NUTS.

  He kept driving around the CDC campus. He wanted to go find Kadance, but stopping the attack was integral to saving her. If the disease was released, he’d be dead and most likely she would be as well. But he had no way to know when the attack would happen, and so he kept circling the campus, hoping no one called the police on the crazy guy hanging around the CDC.

  He’d spent more than a day watching the perimeter, hoping he would spot whomever the mastermind sent in. But now he’d just spotted a car pulling into the complex with a license plate with the numbers 122514, the first three letters of his name and also his mother’s middle name spelled numerically. And he knew it was time to go in.

  When he’d come here with Kadance, they’d parked in a lot across the street and snuck onto the property. It was fenced, but not so ha
rd to sneak into. At least Kadance had made it seem easy. He’d hacked the FBI again, and he’d found his ID was now flagged—wanted for questioning for the events at Professor Ibekwe’s house—so he couldn’t go through security and pose as a CDC museum visitor. As he spent a day driving around the perimeter, he decided the best access point was the fire station that was basically tucked into the CDC property but still accessible from the main road. There were trees around the fire station parking lot, enough to hide him.

  He parked at the back of the small fire station parking lot. He brought Mac with him out of concern the car might get towed—losing Mac would be the ultimate betrayal of Kadance’s trust—and he snuck onto the CDC property.

  Now where to go with this big orange cat? He crossed the street to the sidewalk at the back of one of the slightly curved twin buildings. He came to the end of that building and paused. Between the two curved buildings was a delivery area. There was a loading dock, multiple roll-up doors, and a few regular access doors, and the area was pretty well secluded from the rest of the campus. The mastermind had tried this same kind of back entry at the Capitol building. He guessed she’d try the same thing again. He considered walking around the rest of the campus and getting a better look. He’d gotten a decent look at the campus from his perimeter driving, plus his examination of the campus on Google Earth on his phone. This spot was both easily accessible and secluded.

  He continued down the sidewalk until he found a tree he could casually lean against that would also hide him.

  And he waited.

  He worried Mac would get antsy and fussy, but he sat quietly on the ground next to Lyndon.

  He waited some more.

  After a while, he found a different spot to stand.

  Morning turned into afternoon.

  If today was the day, it would happen soon, when the CDC employees were all still at work.

  Then he spotted a slow-moving car turning the corner. It was a nondescript gray sedan. Unmemorable. It turned and pulled to a stop next to the loading dock.

  Lyndon started toward the car.

  It sat there for about a minute while the driver fiddled with something on the passenger seat.

  He was close now and squatted down at the back bumper.