by Rachel Caine
But she came into his arms.
His lips met hers with exquisite slowness.
The warmth came first—the feeling of his skin glowing on hers before the touch, whisper-soft and then firmer, hotter, damp and smooth and rough where his beard rubbed her chin. It was a long kiss, and it tasted like dark things to her, sweet and disturbing. And it made all of her body warm and tingle and respond, and she broke free with a gasp.
“Go,” she whispered, and sank down on the bed. “Please just leave. I’m sorry.”
He didn’t speak, and he didn’t delay for more than a few seconds; she saw him in the periphery of her vision as he moved away, walked to the door, and she heard the click of the catch as he pulled it shut behind him.
Only then did she raise her hand to her lips.
Whatever magnetism Patrick held for her, it was still there, still stronger than logic and reason. Stronger than pain and disappointment. She wanted him. Every part of her body needed him.
And she couldn’t possibly deal with that, and the complications it represented. Not now.
She undressed, wrapped herself in sheets and blankets, and surrendered herself to the darkness, for a few precious hours of restless, nightmare-driven sleep.
* * *
It was hard to tell night from day, but evidently the lights were programmed to help—at dawn, the room lights slowly increased in intensity, and Bryn woke up feeling as if she were bathed in morning sunlight. It was a nice feeling. Calm.
And then she remembered that she was essentially buried deep, deep underground, she was essentially dead, and people really were trying to destroy everyone she loved. So that good feeling passed quickly.
She still treasured the shower; common sense told her it might be the last luxury she experienced for a while, so she made the most of the hot water, foaming soap, and floral shampoo. The fluffy robe came in handy again, and then she put on the same clothes she’d worn the night before. They felt cool and comfortable against her flushed skin. She brushed her teeth and hair, and looked in the mirror for a long, silent moment.
I should look different, she thought. When someone made you a monster—more of a monster than before—you ought to stop looking like yourself. It was confusing, and probably heartbreaking for everyone around her, that her new flesh-craving self looked so . . . normal. Zombies should announce themselves with mindless ambling and snarling, at the very least. It was only decent.
A knock at the door startled her out of useless contemplation, and she opened it to find Joe Fideli standing there, fully kitted out in street clothes, with a bulky black duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He rubbed his shaved head and gave her an impartial smile. “Morning,” he said. “Time to pack up, Bryn.”
“Yeah, I figured,” she said, and shut the door behind her as she stepped out in the hall with him. “You’re already geared up?”
“I like to shop before the stores get busy,” he said. “Plus, I admit it, I wanted my pick of the good stuff. Don’t worry, I don’t wear your size.”
She gave him an eye roll and an air kiss, and he nudged her with an elbow in reply. She and Joe were comfortable together—had been almost from the start. He was just . . . a real guy. A good man. No sparks between them, but genuine comfort. “How heavy are we packing?”
“Can’t afford to get caught with anything technically illegal, so I kept it to the legal carry weapons, plus a couple of bonuses we’ll have to not show unless we mean to use them. Easiest way for our enemies to take us out is to trap us and call the cops on us. We end up in cells, easy pickings. So we do everything legal and aboveboard, until we don’t. Right?”
“Right,” she agreed. “But I actually meant, how many days of clothes did you bring?”
“I’m a guy, Bryn. It ain’t like I’m going to need a lot of variety.”
They had reached the end of the hall, and he led her down a set of metal spiral steps to the next level down. A door with a biometric lock on it was labeled ARMORY, but they bypassed that for the moment, and went into one called WARDROBE.
It was like a mini-mall. There were even signs on the walls calling out sections for men, women, and children. At the back, there was a mini–shoe store. Bryn checked the racks, and found more practical outfits for herself—shirts, pants, nothing fancy and nothing that would get her noticed in a crowd. She added a light jacket and a thick coat, because she wasn’t sure where they’d end up, and a pair of boots in addition to the athletic shoes she was already wearing. Underwear. The bras were all stretchy sports models, which were practical to cut down on the sizing choices.
She finished in fifteen minutes, and loaded everything into another duffel (suitcases and bags were in the far corner). Hers was navy blue, and once she’d packed it, she hefted it over her shoulder and nodded. “Next,” she said. Joe took her out of the wardrobe room, and to the armory.
She wasn’t surprised, by that point, that the armory was the size of a small-town gun show, ranked neatly from revolvers to semiautomatic handguns to shotguns, and all the varying types of rifles (sniper, hunting, military assault). Manny showed a little bit of a predisposition toward American made, but it was a veritable U.N. of killing power—Israeli, Russian, German, Swiss, Belgian, Chinese. Bryn whistled. “Gives new meaning to the term stockpile,” she said. “Does the ATF know about this?”
“Hell, those guys probably helped him get half this stuff. The feds love Manny,” Joe said.
Bryn picked her favorite handgun from the rack—a Glock 23, with the standard thirteen round clip. The extended clips added more rounds but jutted from the butt of the gun and threw off the weight, at least in her opinion. It was a solid weapon, favored by various US agencies, including the FBI, and it had the reputation of being one of the most reliable, even in rapid-fire situations.
Shotguns were heavy weight, but they were decisive in close quarters, and after consulting with Joe about his choices, she added a Winchester of her own, and then chose an FN PS90, the civilian version of the selective-fire P90. She’d always felt comfortable with them, and from her army experience, they were sturdy and accurate.
Ammunition took up the rest of the space in her bag, and when she hefted it, it was about as much weight as she felt comfortable carrying. “Where’s the checkout?” she asked, and Joe grinned.
“I’m guessing that the scanners in here tote it all up, and Manny will bill us later,” he said. “He’s not a giver, really.”
That was very true. Manny had, from the beginning, made it very clear that his help came with a price, and a hefty one. Bryn respected that. She also knew he’d never bargained for this much trouble, either, and she wondered if Patrick had thought about what to do if Manny ever decided to switch teams on them. He could, any time. Pansy would try to stop him, that was certain, but Manny didn’t always listen to her, especially when it came to personal security issues.
Bryn knew she’d tested the limits of his tolerance, and probably shattered them, and he was certainly not happy with the current situation. The only thing stopping him from selling them out would be the certainty that if he did, the Fountain Group would never let him live with as much as he knew about their business.
Self-interest would keep him on their side, at least.
They met Riley and Patrick upstairs again, near the elevators. Riley handed Bryn a backpack, which she found upon inspection to be full of high-protein bars, stacks of cash, and airplane-style toiletry kits. “The essentials,” Riley said. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be stuck hungry or broke in our current situation . . . and I hate not having a toothbrush.”
“Amen, sister,” Joe said, and accepted his own backpack. “Sweet. Now all we need is a deck of cards.”
“I thought you’d be more of a chess man, somehow.”
“Hard to bet on chess,” he said. “Harder to bluff. Okay, then, let’s hit it.”
“I need to say good-bye to my—” Bryn began, but before she could finish, Annalie stepped out
of her room, still dressed in a fluffy robe and slippers, and hurried toward them. She breathlessly threw her arms around Bryn, and Bryn hugged her back, hard. “—sister. Hey, Annie.”
“Hey, stupid,” Annie said. “I can’t believe you’re leaving me behind.”
“I can’t believe I’m going. Crazy, huh?”
“Pretty crazy.” Annie pushed back to arm’s length, but held on to Bryn’s hands. “You be careful, okay? I mean it. Careful.”
“I will. And you, stay out of trouble. Do what Manny and Pansy tell you.” Bryn kissed her cheek and hugged her again. “I love you, brat.”
“Love you, too.” Annie forced a smile, though tears shone in her eyes. “Some reunion we’ve had, huh?”
“I don’t know. We’ve had worse. Remember that time at Cousin Bernard’s, and the stories about the aunt with four thumbs?”
“And the roadkill stew,” Annie said. “Oh yeah, I remember. You’re right. This doesn’t really even make the top five.”
Patrick tapped Bryn on the shoulder, and it was definitely time to go. Like it or not. One more hug, and Annie stepped back, crossing her arms across her chest. Not defensively, but in a way that suggested she wanted to hold that last hug very, very close.
The elevator doors opened, and Bryn stepped in, followed by the others. They arranged themselves at equal distances, the way people did in elevators, and so Bryn had a clear view of Annie standing there in her disheveled, just-out-of-bed glory one more time.
Annie raised her hand and waved.
Bryn waved back, and then the doors shut, and they left the security of what might have passed for normal life.
“Before we hit the surface, let’s make sure we all understand procedure,” Patrick said. “Pansy’s given us a hardened SUV from the motor pool; it’s registered to a shell company out of Belize, so it shouldn’t trip any alerts. We get on the road, and Pansy’s going to feed us intel as we drive. Within a few hours, she says she will break down the firewalls on their servers and start feeding us names and locations of people in the top ranks of the Fountain Group, or near it. We take out as many as we can, as fast as we can. If we run into trouble while we’re out of the vehicle, we run and stay in contact. Burner phones are in your packs. Do not engage in a firefight unless you’ve got no choice, understand?”
“Yep,” Bryn said. “And stay off the police radar.”
“They’ll probably have some kind of alerts out for us, and we can’t always avoid facial recognition; too many street cameras. But we should try to stay out of metro areas as much as possible. Anything else?”
Riley said, “I’ve got a friend who can help us. His name is Jonas. He’s retired Bureau—honest as they come. And he runs his own show now, mostly doing contract work in war zones.”
“I’ve heard of him,” Joe said. “Good man, by all accounts.”
“No,” Patrick said. “Nobody else unless we get in over our heads. We’ve dragged down enough good people.”
He wasn’t wrong, Bryn thought, but neither was Riley; it was good to have options, and there would inevitably come a time when they’d need someone to help who wasn’t already flagged. Maybe Patrick was thinking it, too, but the expression on his face said that there wouldn’t be any discussion on the subject.
Riley shrugged and let it go as the doors opened on the ground floor level. This exit had four security stops, and they passed through them all. As they entered the last room, a light flashed red and Manny’s voice came over an invisible intercom.
“As of now, your security creds are burned here,” he said. “Try to get in, and you’ll trigger the countermeasures. Trust me—you won’t like the countermeasures, and you won’t survive them. From this point on, it’s one way only: straight out the door. Understand me?”
“Manny—”
“Don’t, Patrick. You screwed me, you and your little girlfriend. I want the Zombie Apocalypse outside, not in here. Get it? So don’t come back. Ever.”
“What about my sister?” Bryn asked. “What about Liam?”
Silence, and then finally Manny said, “I’ll look out for them, because they had no choice. But not for you. As of right now, the store’s closed.”
The thick blast-proof outer door buzzed and winched itself open, and strobe lights flashed yellow. A recorded voice came on, advising them that they had thirty seconds to exit the room before countermeasures were employed.
They got out, and watched the blast door swing shut. Then, with a heavy crunch of gears, it locked.
“Right,” Patrick said. He sounded resigned, and a little bit bleak. “Let’s get moving.”
Chapter 3
Info came in an hour down the road, in the form of a text to Patrick’s phone from Pansy. It didn’t say much, but it did give them an address in Kansas City. Bryn sighed when she saw it, because it meant a long, boring drive . . . if they were lucky, of course. And for the first few hours, they were; they managed to stay at a constant, legal speed, and no one seemed to notice them. “It’s a little late to ask, but are we sure the anti-tracking shot worked?” she said. Riley glanced up from whatever she was doing on her phone, and nodded.
“I double-checked,” she said. “We’re dead air. Nobody’s tracking us.”
That was a relief, because Bryn was fairly sure that without Pansy’s countermeasure they’d have already been under attack. Jane wouldn’t be messing around, and she’d be investigating any avenue to finding them. Including, of course, going after their friends and family.
Her own family, in fact. The only saving grace to that was her family, with the exception of Annie, who’d gotten caught up in the madness, had no idea what was going on. Sometimes, dysfunction was good for something after all. She didn’t know about Riley, but she hoped Joe’s family was somewhere very, very safe. He had a lot of precious people he could lose.
It was too late to warn them or try to get them to safety—not that her family, never all that close, would have listened to what she had to say in any case. Certainly not to the extent of pulling up stakes and running away. It would be far, far better just to stay away from them. Any contact could put them in greater danger.
“We’re staying on I-40 all the way to Oklahoma City,” Joe said, “and then switching to 35. I figure we’ll need a gas and rest break in about thirty minutes. Sound okay?”
“Find someplace with lots of traffic,” Patrick said. “The more people that pass through, the better; major truck stop, preferably. Crowds are good cover. If that looks iffy, go for someplace off the beaten path with old pumps. If they haven’t upgraded those, chances are they won’t have state-of-the-art surveillance, either.”
“You’re really worried, aren’t you?” Bryn asked him. Patrick looked at her for a few seconds, and then nodded.
“I’m worried,” he agreed. “The Fountain Group hasn’t exactly been idle this whole time while we thought the government was in charge of Pharmadene’s research programs; they’ve been carrying things forward, and they’ve got Jane on their payroll. I know Jane. We both understand what she’s capable of doing, but more than that, I understand how tactical she is. She’ll be casting as wide a net as possible. For all I know, she might have already pinpointed every one of Manny’s secured bolt-holes, which means she might be satellite-tracking us right now; I don’t doubt the Fountain Group has that capability, or can buy it from those who do. So any stops we make are risky, and potentially deadly. We need to bear it in mind.”
“And I was looking forward to scoring some beef jerky and beer for the road,” Joe said. “You really know how to kill a good time, man.”
“Let’s hope I’m wrong.”
He seemed to be, at least for the first portion of the trip. Joe picked a huge truck stop, one with at least fifty cars, trucks, and vans crowding the lot, and dozens more giant tractor trailers. Joe pulled up to a pump, and the other three bailed out to head inside to the store. Even if they’d been willing to forego the magic lure of beef jerky and candy bars, B
ryn needed to pee, and she knew she’d better grab the chance while it was available. The line was—inevitably—longer than she would have liked, and she felt tremendously vulnerable standing in one place . . . but the bathroom break passed without incident, other than a squalling two-year-old throwing a fit at the counter.
She bought a not-entirely-unflattering hat to shade her face from the cameras, and some candy bars, and was in the van before anyone else except Joe.
Odd. She’d thought Riley would have made it back first, since she’d been ahead of her in the bathroom line. Or Patrick. He didn’t strike her as much of a convenience store browser.
Bryn passed Joe a Snickers bar, and he unwrapped it and ate half. She had taken over the shotgun passenger seat, and they sat in chocolate-medicated silence for a full minute, but she didn’t stop watching their surroundings, and neither did Joe.
Patrick returned, bearing bottles of water and a ridiculously large coffee, which explained his delay.
But Riley was missing.
Joe finished his candy and said, “Bryn.”
“I’m on it,” she said, and bailed out to go back inside. The ever-shifting crowd had a certain weird sameness . . . mostly overweight bodies not flattered by baggy cargo shorts and overly patriotic T-shirts, with a few holding-their-noses sleek-looking elites scattered in for diversity, getting their chic diet water before climbing back into their high-dollar cars. She wasn’t sure how she fit in here, or anywhere. But one thing was certain: Riley wasn’t anywhere in sight.
Bryn checked the restroom. Nothing. She was on the point of calling an alert when she finally spotted Riley outside the windows, pacing back and forth at the side of the building. She was on the phone, and she closed the call just as Bryn headed toward her.
“What are you doing?”
“Hedging our bets,” the other woman said. She’d also invested in a hat, a khaki boonie-style thing that was oddly cute on her. “It isn’t that I don’t trust Pansy, but I want to be sure we have some options and backup.”
