Ethan’s attraction to Remy was something of an open secret. It was obvious to all of them, though no one knew why Ethan hadn’t acted on it yet. Gray theorized it had to do with Ethan’s dead wife. Despite his lack of movement on Remy, though, Ethan seemed to think that Gray had horned in on territory that wasn’t even Ethan’s yet—if it ever would be. And if Gray had anything to say about it, Ethan would never have the opportunity to tread on that ground.
Not that he did, in fact, have anything to say about it. That was all up to Remy.
Cade brushed past Gray and went up the stairs, shaking him free from his deep thoughts. He watched her ascend to the second floor before he glanced back at Ethan. The older man was still glued to the front door. Brandt lurked behind him, clutching the gun he’d taken out with him earlier in the day—no doubt one of the many weapons he had on his person. Brandt Evans was a man who Gray didn’t spend a lot of time with. In all honesty, the big man was absolutely intimidating, primarily because of his height and sheer strength. Couple that with his frightening skills in dispatching the infected, skills that only Remy and Cade had been able to rival, and Gray was justifiably nervous of the man. He’d seen Brandt do it once; the ease with which he’d taken out five infected with nothing but a .45, two bullets, and a butcher’s knife was impressive. Brandt fought like his weapons were natural extensions of his body. Gray didn’t know where he’d learned to fight like that—he doubted even the Marines trained their soldiers to fight quite at that level—but after that episode, he’d avoided ever getting on the man’s bad side.
The sound of footsteps above him brought Gray’s attention back to the stairs. He expected to see Theo and Cade coming down, but instead, Nikola descended the stairs, followed by a blond woman Gray had never seen before. He raised an eyebrow and pushed his dark hair back from his eyes, tilting his head to study her. The woman was maybe thirty years old, average height, slender in a way that suggested she’d been skimping and scrimping on food for quite some time, her blond hair falling to her shoulders and her blue eyes darting about in the same manner everyone’s eyes did. He supposed it was the old familiar feel of paranoia working through her system. She likely hadn’t been anywhere near a large group of people in quite some time.
“Who is this?” he asked.
“Avi Geller. She just got here,” Nikola said. She didn’t look like she had any further information to add regarding the new arrival.
Gray was willing to bet that Avi hadn’t gotten anything resembling a warm reception from Ethan Bennett. Hardly anyone ever did. He wasn’t sure if Ethan would know what a warm reception was if one jumped up and bit him on the ass. He’d be damned if he treated her the same way Ethan likely had. Despite his worries over Remy and the faint twinges of exhaustion tickling at the back of his mind, Gray stepped forward and stuck his hand out, giving the woman something that he hoped at least resembled a pleasant smile.
“Welcome to the party,” he greeted. He took Avi’s cold hand in his and gave it a light, friendly squeeze and shake. “I’m Gray Carter.”
“Nice to meet you,” Avi replied. Her strong tone surprised him. He hadn’t expected her to sound so…confident. He’d expected a woman who was a little scared, maybe upset and tired and stressed. Not so much of…this. “Avi Geller.”
“You staying with us or just passing through?” he asked politely, skimming his eyes up and down her body again, not in any way sexually, mind you, just assessingly. Avi didn’t look like she’d be much use in a close-quarters fight. Or any fight, really. She was too skinny—probably from that lack of adequate food, as he’d guessed before—and she didn’t carry herself like a fighter. She looked like a stiff, abrupt wind would knock her right over.
Avi stepped to the bottom of the staircase and faced him. “I’m actually here to—” she began.
“I said we’d discuss that later,” Ethan cut in. Gray shot him a dirty look and rolled his eyes. Ethan ignored him and continued. “Right now, we’ve got one of our team missing, and we’re making plans to go out after her.”
“Go out after who?” a voice asked.
Gray and the others all turned as one in the direction of the sound. A slim brunette woman stood in the doorway leading to the kitchen, having apparently slipped into the safe house via the back door rather than the front. She was covered in blood and dirt and grime and who knew what else and clutched a handgun in one hand and a long, machete-like weapon in the other. Her hair was in disarray, pulled mostly free from a ponytail and tangled down her back. Her face was pale and sweaty, and the left sleeve of her jacket was ripped nearly free at the shoulder. She still panted from the exertion of getting to the house.
“Jesus Christ,” Gray breathed as he took in the sight.
It was, unexpectedly and impossibly, Remy Angellette.
* * *
Ethan reached Remy in four large strides, stopping short of pulling her into his arms. “Fuck, are you okay?” he gasped out. His hands were out to grab her, but he didn’t dare. Remy was dirty, reeked of smoke and natural gas, and had been stained with potentially infected blood. No one in the group had managed to establish how long the infection could survive outside the body; none of them, after all, were scientists with that sort of expertise. As a precaution, therefore, they treated all blood as if it was infectious. Considering the amount on Remy’s clothes, it wasn’t yet safe to touch her. His fingers curled, and he withdrew his hands, tucking them into his pockets before he did something stupid.
Remy’s knees tried to give out on her, and she dropped her weapons with a clatter, slumping against the kitchen doorframe. It was obvious she was exhausted. Ethan could imagine the adrenaline that pumped through her veins was quickly leaving her. He glanced at the gun and the long, bloodied knife on the floor at her feet and frowned. All he wanted was to get her cleaned up and get her somewhere where she could relax and rest after her trying ordeal out in the field.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay,” she answered dismissively, waving her hand absently in Ethan’s direction. His forehead scrunched in concern and no small amount of annoyance. It was an odd mixture of emotion to have, but for the second time that day, he’d been flatly dismissed. It was all he could do to not punch the nearest wall in a fit of temper.
He hesitated again. He still wasn’t sure what to do. When it came to Remy, any confidence and certainty he had flew out the window. He’d never seen her look so exhausted. “Are you sure you’re okay?” he persisted.
She ignored his question. A clatter of hurried footsteps came down the stairs, and her brown eyes cut to the staircase. Ethan followed her gaze and saw everyone staring at them. Gray was white as a sheet; he looked like he’d seen a ghost. Brandt was gathering towels from one of the bags under the dining table. Cade and Theo appeared behind Nikola and Avi, and they both pushed past and went straight to Remy. Theo paused at one of the first aid bags and tossed Cade a pair of gloves before donning a pair himself. Ethan put his hands out for Theo to throw him a pair, but Theo didn’t see the gesture, much to his disappointment.
“God, Remy, you’re still in one piece?” Cade asked semi-jokingly, though rather than humor, the only expression in her eyes was one of relief. Ethan rolled his eyes at the wise-ass remark as Cade slipped her gloves on and pulled the younger woman away from the doorframe. Remy obediently held out her arms, and Cade stripped her soiled jacket off, shoving the damaged clothing into a plastic trash bag Theo held out.
Remy ignored Cade’s question, giving equal treatment to Theo as he checked her for injuries. Oddly, Ethan was relieved at her reaction; at least she wasn’t being dismissively solely to him. She nodded her head in Avi’s direction. “Who is that?” she asked as Cade and Theo continued to manhandle her.
“Avi Geller,” Ethan spoke up. He stood nearby, watching Theo and Cade’s every move. As Theo concluded his examination of Remy, Ethan breathed out a slow sigh of relief. She didn’t appear to be seriously injured—a miracle in itself. “We’ll discuss that later, okay
? Right now, you need to get cleaned up, and you need food and rest. You’ve probably been on your ankle way too long—”
“No,” Remy contradicted. “I’m fine.” She studied Avi for a long moment, her eyes narrowing slightly. Ethan followed her gaze to the blond woman standing on the bottom step of the staircase, leaning against the railing. He wondered what was on Remy’s mind as the skinny visitor returned their stares. He knew what was on his mind, and it was all less than flattering. “She wants something,” Remy finally said. “More than just shelter or food like the last person who found us.”
Ethan raised an eyebrow and looked at Remy. The woman hadn’t moved her eyes from Avi. Her perception was admittedly impressive. He’d known her for just under a year, and in that time, he’d often wondered if she was psychic or telepathic or one of the other -ics that people always used to talk about—as if that sort of thing actually existed. Remy always seemed to know what someone else thought or felt without having to be prompted. Ethan was sure she was simply a master at reading body language and expression, a skill he often wished he had; the little bit he did have, while handy when he’d been a police officer, had always seemed to be not quite enough. Remy, though, was as sharp as a razor blade, and it never failed to drive him crazy. Just trying to figure her out was an adventure in and of itself.
“Yes, I do,” Avi confirmed. Ethan didn’t take his eyes off Remy, watching her reaction. She accepted a towel from Brandt and began to dab at the blood and dirt on her face absently. She didn’t respond to Avi’s words whatsoever. “I need help.”
Avi’s words sparked something in Ethan’s chest, something cold and ugly, something that made him feel almost ashamed of himself for feeling it. He gritted his teeth against the sensation and curled his left hand into a fist. He needed to take control of this situation, despite the irritation he felt deep in his gut. He was the one in charge here, not Avi. The last thing he needed was some random woman storming in and throwing this entire group, the group he’d fought to mesh into a strong, cohesive unit, the group that he’d begun to look at as a surrogate family over the past year, into disarray.
“She wants us to go into Atlanta,” Ethan interrupted.
The silence was palpable. Ethan could feel it sitting on his skin, making him itch. Theo shifted uncomfortably. Gray and Cade looked impassive. Brandt clenched his fists at his sides, his jaw tight with suppressed emotion. Ethan wondered what they were thinking. He would have bet that Remy knew. If only she’d look somewhere other than at Avi.
“Why?” Remy asked.
Cade stayed silent, opening a bottle of water with a sharp crack. Ethan startled at the sound and shot her an admonishing look, but she ignored it, wetting a corner of Remy’s towel and handing it to her. He had to give Cade credit, though; she could have spoken up and said something about the reason for Avi’s visit right then or at any point prior to that. But she’d obviously decided to leave it to Avi to explain her reasons herself. The ability to keep her mouth shut on this was admirable, and Ethan wished it was a quality everyone in the group possessed.
“I need your help,” Avi said again. “I believe there are groups of people trapped in Atlanta, and I need your help getting them out. And…” She hesitated, and Ethan knew—he just knew—she’d left something out of her proposal to him earlier that day that she was trying to decide whether or not to reveal. “And I think the government covered up something about this virus, and I think the answer to what that is is in Atlanta, too.”
Ethan gritted his teeth at the revelation but otherwise chose to not react, at least outwardly. He was still trying to wrap his head around the fact that she’d had the nerve to suggest something as risky as walking into someplace like Atlanta. And he couldn’t believe he was allowing her to even present the asinine idea to the rest of the group.
“Atlanta is pretty…” Theo trailed off. He studied a bad scrape on Remy’s forearm attentively, dabbing at it with a square of clean gauze. He didn’t look up as he added, “Atlanta isn’t a city we go into. Georgia isn’t even a state we go into.”
“I know,” Avi said. She adjusted her stance against the staircase railing and folded her arms over her chest, scanning the group. “I’ve been informed of that already.” Her eyes lit on Ethan; he stared back at her unblinking, challenging. “I think we can be of some help to the people who are still trapped inside the city. And I think finding out what really happened so we can maybe recover and build back our lives is something that needs to be done, but I can’t do it alone.”
Brandt, who was standing behind Cade, trying to help clean Remy up, looked up at Avi’s words and shook his head. “No. No, no, no. You have no idea,” he said, his voice quiet but hard. He fell silent and turned his back to Avi.
Ethan was glad he had an ally in Brandt. He should have expected that, though; he knew Brandt would have some problems with just the idea of going into Atlanta and would offer a straightforward refusal. He was the only one of them who had experienced the city and its fall on a personal level. Needless to say, Brandt had said exactly what Ethan thought he would say.
“But don’t you want to help people?” Avi asked. Desperation edged into her words, and Ethan barely fought back the smirk threatening to spread across his lips. Desperation meant she was losing her argument and knew it. “That’s what you do, right? You help people! And while you do that, you can get me into the city, help me get what I need while we’re doing it.”
“Where exactly in Atlanta are you wanting us to take you?” Nikola spoke up.
“She wants to go to the CDC,” Remy said, giving the woman a thoughtful look. “Don’t you?”
Avi nodded slowly. “Yes. You’re right. I’d like to get into the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and get whatever information I can find about the virus. They studied the virus there, and I want to know everything they knew. Everything about where it came from, how it got out of the lab, and if they ever began development on a cure for it.”
“There is no cure!” Ethan snapped. He stepped closer to Avi and snarled, “How can there be a cure? You can’t even make a vaccine from the virus, because it’ll only change you into one of those things!” He jabbed his hand at the front door emphatically. “If there was a cure—” He broke off and turned away, emotion welling up in his throat. After everything he’d been through, after Josie, after Anna… If he could have saved either one of them, if there had been a cure, there’s no way he would have rested until he’d had it in his hands. But there was no cure. If there had been, he was sure it would have actually been used by the government or the CDC or whatever before the pandemic got out of hand. To his utter disgust, he realized he was shaking slightly, and he drew in a slow, deep breath in a poor attempt to steady his nerves. Remy’s now-clean right hand rested gently on his forearm, squeezing it reassuringly. The gesture didn’t do much for his mood, but he was grateful for it.
“I know that,” Avi said, moving her eyes away from Ethan. Ethan clenched his jaw. He’d been dismissed. Again. “But all we really know is what the government deigned to tell us at the time. I know for sure the story was embargoed by the media. Someone told them to bury it. I know that for a fact. My own reporting was cut off, my sources stopped responding to my calls, texts, and emails, and my bosses threatened to fire me if I wrote another word about it. There is no way to know if the little they told us, if the little bit we were allowed to report, was the truth, the whole truth, unless we go in and find that out for ourselves.”
This Avi woman was all pretty, inspirational words, but Ethan knew, he just knew, that she didn’t understand how horrible it actually was out there. This was a woman who clearly didn’t live in reality, who had obviously not faced up to the fact that what remained of humanity was now at war. She was deluded on a massive level. The thought that she’d managed to survive despite being so ignorant of the circumstances in which they lived astounded him.
Ethan looked at Remy again. To his shock and surprise, she was nodding sl
owly, as if she agreed with Avi. He jerked his arm from her grip and glared at her, eyes narrowed. “Remy,” he hissed, anger flooding into his veins. He couldn’t believe this.
“No, Ethan, she’s right,” Remy said. She started to unbutton her bloodied shirt, stripping down to the white tank top underneath, revealing her tattooed, olive-toned shoulders. The dragon wrapped around her left bicep contrasted sharply with her complexion. Ethan averted his eyes. “We need to help the survivors. And people need to know what happened,” she continued, stuffing the shirt into the trash bag. “They deserve to know what happened.”
Ethan turned on Remy and took a step closer to her. He was aware his anger was making him irrational, but the knowledge didn’t stop him from leaning into her face. “Not at the expense of our fucking lives!” he barked.
“I’m with Ethan on this,” Theo agreed. He stripped off his gloves, careful not to touch the outsides of them with his bare skin, and dropped them into the trash bag. Ethan spared him a grateful glance, but he didn’t seem to notice; instead, he turned away to retrieve a fresh, clean pair of jeans for Remy. The young woman ducked into the kitchen with the jeans and closed the door between them.
With Remy gone, Ethan shifted his eyes to Gray and Nikola as he schooled his features into a neutral expression. The teenager still lurked partway up the stairs, watching them all warily. Gray stood at the bottom, a few steps away from Avi. “What about you two?” he asked, watching them both attentively. He tried to read their body language like Remy did. It was a frustrating practice, and while Remy had it to an art form, Ethan had never managed to succeed at it.
“I’m not…I don’t know,” Nikola said, her voice trembling slightly. Her eyes swung like a pendulum back and forth between Ethan and Avi, visibly bewildered.
“Gray?” Ethan asked pointedly, watching the man for his response and sizing him up. He was certain Gray would intentionally take whatever was the opposite stance that Ethan held on this. He always did, regardless of the topic.
Ground Zero Page 5
