I sprinted through the rose garden, dodging and weaving as I passed through the bushes, pausing only when my clothes got snagged on some thorns, and in less than a minute I was on the porch, breathing heavily from the run—and from the fear that had started coursing through my veins.
“What the hell are you doing?” I asked sharply, annoyed that I’d just run so hard because this guy had looked so worried.
Instead of answering, he grabbed my arm and yanked me toward the door.
“I could ask you the same fucking thing,” he muttered. “What are you doing out here? Do you have any idea what they’ll do to you if they find you? What they’ll do to me?”
I yanked at his grip on my arm.
“They don’t even know I’m out here. They think I’m in the bathroom.”
He threw a scornful look over his shoulder.
“They’ll know in about five minutes, when they leave the house on their foraging mission. And if they find you out here, they’ll kill you. Especially if they find you nosing around that grave.”
Right, okay, that was a pretty good point, and it stopped all my other arguments in my throat. Because I’d made myself a promise that I wasn’t going to be overly dramatic. That I was going to be cool, calm, collected, and completely rational, so I could get myself the hell out of here.
And that meant that when someone offered me an olive branch—and possibly help—I was going to take it now and ask questions about why he was offering it later.
Chapter 3
We got through the door in a sort of stumbling, bumbling pile, and immediately stopped, as if by silent agreement, both of us on high alert for what might be happening around us. I wasn’t sure what we were waiting for, exactly, but I’d heard enough to know that the situation was tenuous, at best.
I’d heard the deep concern in his voice. Not quite panic, but definitely riding that edge.
The house was… mostly silent. Sure, there were the normal house-like sounds around us—those cracks and groans and squeaks that all houses seemed to make when humanity finally shut its mouth. The sounds of the building settling and shifting on its foundation, like some enormous living being.
But beside that, it was absolute silence.
“Thank God,” he breathed, his stature slowly relaxing to something that looked more human.
I kept my eyes on the house around us, though, not quite ready to relax yet. I’d been here for only a couple of hours, and I’d already figured out that Sally was a red-haired she-devil. She had the temper to match that hair and an uncanny ability to walk with absolute silence like a fox.
I wasn’t convinced that she walked at all, in fact. I halfway thought she’d figured out a way to float. She’d sneaked up on me when I was in the kitchen earlier, looking into the fridge for any food to be had—and realizing pretty quickly that said fridge had been off for quite some time. Look, I normally had great hearing. I was used to listening closely for the sound of anyone stepping up to my front door while I was in the middle of something I’d rather not be caught doing.
But I’d never had any idea she was there. I hadn’t heard her, I hadn’t felt her, I hadn’t even suspected there was anyone with me until she’d reached out and grabbed my shoulder. I’d almost had a damn heart attack—and then mentally jotted down her ability to sneak up on you and stored it away for future warning.
It would have been useful in an ally. In an enemy, it was scary. And right now, as my new sort-of friend and I stood there in the entryway, it was the top thing on my mind.
Yeah, it sounded like the house was deserted.
Based on what I’d noticed about Sally, though, that didn’t mean jack shit. And I didn’t think we wanted to be caught doing whatever it was we were about to do. Particularly not by her. Bruce would have been bad enough, but he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, and was easy enough to distract. Show him something shiny enough and he was like a Labrador retriever with a tennis ball.
Sally didn’t get thrown off by anything. Once she made up her mind about something, she was like a Pitbull. With a steak. One that it didn’t want to share.
So I ran my eyes up the stairs in front of us and down the one hall I could see, trying to figure out if she could be hiding anywhere up there. The house was enormous and I could only see a small part of it, though—which meant she could be anywhere, and we wouldn’t know until and unless we were right on top of her.
And that brought me right around to an idea. The house was enormous. It would be incredibly hard to know that someone was right in front of you and around that turn unless you made the turn and happened across them.
This house was an absolutely ideal structure for hiding in. The entire place was one confusing maze. I still didn’t know where I was going to go or who I was going to find out in the real world, but I knew that I had to get the hell out of this place and find a way to get back to civilization. Back to someplace where I might get some information about what had happened—and where I might be able to do some good. If I could get away from spying eyes and find a place to hide, maybe lay low until the gang of thugs cleared out…
It might be just the plan I’d been trying to figure out.
Of course, it was also completely useless right now. Because we weren’t trying to hide. I didn’t think.
“What the hell are we doing?” I asked, keeping my voice barely above a breath, my body poised to run at any moment.
The guy next to me yanked his hand up in a stop-speaking sort of gesture, and I clamped my mouth shut. No, it wasn’t usually in me to take orders—particularly from someone I didn’t know—but I wasn’t going to argue with him right now.
He was the one who had insight into the gang of thugs holding me hostage. For now, I was willing to let him be in charge. For now.
“Waiting,” he finally whispered back.
“For?” I asked. “A sign from the heavens? The writing on the wall? Some almighty voice from on high, telling us that it’s safe to move?”
He shot me a glance that was half annoyance, half amusement, and I let the corner of my mouth lift up into something that might have grown up to be a smile.
Then there was a bang from the second story, and we both jerked around to stare upward—at Sally and Bruce, who were tromping out of the hallway opening, arguing with each other.
“It’s better to raid the houses around here,” Sally was saying, her voice sharp. “There are plenty of houses in this neighborhood, and those people had plenty of money. Not rich enough to save themselves—” She gave him a quick, wicked grin that made my blood run cold at that statement, “—But rich enough to have fully stocked kitchens. Those are where we’ll find the food we need.”
“This kitchen wasn’t fully stocked,” Bruce responded, his voice just as menacing as hers—though less sharp. Less crafty. “If this guy didn’t have enough food in his kitchen to last out the week, how do we know anyone else will? We’re better off going into town and raiding the kitchens of the restaurants there, if you ask me.”
Sally whirled on him, drawing the knife from her belt in the same movement, and came to a sharp stop with the blade pressed up against his throat.
Bruce froze with one foot actually in the air. He was quite a bit taller than her—by at least six inches—but the speed of her reaction had caught him completely off-guard. Also, I thought, you do tend to freeze when someone has a knife against your throat.
And when you don’t know for sure whether they’re going to use it or not.
“I said we’re going to search the houses around here first, Bruce,” she said, her voice dangerously quiet—and incredibly powerful. “This guy wasn’t prepared. He was an idiot. That doesn’t mean that the people who lived around him were, as well. And this takes less time. It exposes us to fewer enemies. That’s my final decision. Got it?”
It didn’t escape me that she was talking about the owner of the house—their supposed CEO friend—in the past tense. Well, that confirmed that it w
as him in that grave outside, as far as I was concerned. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know how he got there, because that part wasn’t important.
But at least this way I knew I didn’t need to go through the house trying to figure out where he was, and whether he needed saving. Because yeah, that thought had occurred to me. On a strictly rational, time-saving level, I was glad to be able to cross it off my list of things to do.
Upstairs, Sally waited long enough to confirm that Bruce wasn’t going to respond to her, then whirled on her heel and started walking forward again, leaving him standing behind her with his hand to his throat. He looked like he was about to throw up—but he also looked furious.
Like he was going to get revenge for that, at the first possible opportunity.
I was glad I wasn’t Sally. Hell, I was glad I wasn’t any of these people. The sooner I could get away from them and their scheming and double dealing, the better. I’d known a lot of crooks in my lifetime and had called a number of them friends. But I’d never dealt well with people who were so willing to kill.
My friends and I had broken the law like it didn’t matter, because to us, in our section of the world, it hadn’t. But we’d drawn the line at doing physical harm to another human being. We’d maintained at least some of our humanity.
These people… hadn’t.
Sally’s eyes turned abruptly to us at that moment, and she frowned.
“What the hell are you two doing down there?” she snapped.
“Taking this one to lock her into her room,” my new friend answered sharply.
I almost punched him, right then and there. That was what we were doing? That was why he’d called me into the house and acted like this was some big secret mission or something? So he could take me to my room? Lock me in?
One glance at his face, though, and I could see his jaw twitching as he ground his teeth together. See his eyes jerk toward mine in something that looked like it might be a hidden message. And I didn’t punch him. Because if what I was seeing was true…
Then he was lying to her. Potentially to protect me.
Sally jerked her head up and down in a quick nod and started down the stairs, her feet pounding on the wood.
“Good. Don't give her any food yet. We’re running low already. Keep her door locked. Don’t let her out for anything. Bruce and I are going out to get more supplies.”
The guy next to me didn’t say anything. He just nodded, then stepped back to make room. I went with him, glad for once that I was being completely ignored, and she brushed past us without a second look, her eyes already on the world outside. Already, I thought, on her next move. On the next step that would keep her—and her crew, to a lesser extent—alive.
I watched her stride through the door, then turned my eyes to Bruce, who was making his way more slowly down the stairs. He paused for long enough to toss us both a glance, then sneered in disgust and stepped out after her, following Sally down the walkway and toward the street.
They’d barely hit the walkway before the guy next to me grabbed my arm again, turned me, and started rushing me toward the kitchen.
Chapter 4
The guy—whose name I really needed to figure out at some point—did that thing where he swung me into the kitchen and then shoved me forward at the apex of the swing, and I went stumbling into the area without any control, not coming to a stop until I actually hit the island in the middle of the space.
Whatever else this whole world-ending fiasco was going to do to me, it was definitely teaching me to get quicker on my feet and have better control over my body. At least… I hoped it would teach me to do that eventually. Right now, that was still in question.
I jerked myself around, though, to stare at him, fire coming out of my eyes in my fury and confusion.
“What the hell?” I snapped. “You’re taking me to lock me in my room? That’s why I listened to you about suddenly needing to come into the house? Some ally you turned out to be.”
He stepped right up to me until he was virtually towering over me and stared down, his lips tight with tension, his bright green eyes… well, smoldering.
Yeah, yeah, I know. Smoldering is such an overused, dramatic word. It made it sound like I was in the middle of a freaking romance novel. Like the jerk was about to throw me down on the kitchen counter and have his way with me.
But. That being said, it was the only word I could come up with at the time. Because his eyes, green as they were, were trying to burn right through me in their absolute need to communicate… something.
“What?” I snapped, keeping my head about me enough to at least keep my voice down.
Because I was pretty good at reading situations. Sure, they usually involved machines and code rather than actual living, breathing humans, but that didn’t change things. You looked at the signs, catalogued them all in your mind into lists, and then came to the most rational conclusion about what they might mean.
And every single thing about my supposed friend added up to scream that he was scared, but also not turning back from whatever it was he was doing.
“Do you want food, or what?” he asked, his voice barely above a breath.
It was such a mundane question, after the drama of my thoughts, that I simply stared at him for a moment.
“Do I want food?” I asked stupidly.
He rolled his eyes in frustration. “Yes. Food. You know, that stuff you eat? The stuff you put into your mouth and swallow, to bring nutrition to your body so you can keep on ticking?”
We both heard another yelling match at that point, and froze. This one was happening further away, though—like at the front of the house, near the street. Sally and Bruce. I could tell their voices apart but couldn’t figure out what the hell they were saying. Not that it would have taken a rocket scientist to guess. Anyone could see that Bruce thought he should be the one in charge here, and was going to argue with every damn decision Sally made.
Personally, though, I was betting on Sally. Bruce might be bigger and stronger, but he was also all brawn, no brain. Sally was crafty. She’d figure out how to either get him to fall in line… or get rid of him.
The voices suddenly stopped, and we heard the gate at the front of that walkway slam shut, and then there was silence.
The guy and I stood absolutely still for several moments longer, listening, and then finally relaxed.
At which point, I remembered that I was starving. Sally had interrupted my search for food earlier, and I hadn’t had a chance to renew it.
“You said something about food?” I asked quickly.
He paused for one more moment, his eyes narrowed, his ears cocked for any sound, and then he nodded.
“We have a bit of time while they’re gone. Sally wants you put right into your room so you can’t make any trouble, and Bruce is going to… well, for the moment, Bruce is still following her lead. Jameson… Jameson is so stupid that he’ll do whatever the hell either one of them tells him to.”
Jameson. The so-far-absent fourth member of the group. I hadn’t seen much of him since we'd arrived at the house and assumed that he’d been sent out to secure the perimeter, or some such ridiculous thing. Now, I marked him down in my mental catalogue as someone who was dangerous—if only because he took orders from Sally.
“And you won’t do whatever either of them tells you to?” I asked, trying to figure out where the tall, green-eyed, curly-haired guy in front of me fit into all of this. “You just do your own thing, eh?”
His mouth lifted into a very dry grin, acknowledging the irony of the question, since he was, after all, not in command of this particular band of merry men. He was, in fact, third in command, if I was guessing correctly—and very definitely taking orders.
“I know enough to take orders when it’s convenient,” he said vaguely. “But I also know enough to keep my eyes open and look out for opportunities.”
Well, that told me a whole lot of nothing. But he moved toward the cabinet and started pul
ling stuff out—peanut butter and jelly, along with some bread (which amazingly looked like it was still good) and a jar of pickles—and I quickly forgot about making him tell me anything else. Instead, I moved to stand next to him and fell into rhythm with him, pulling four slices of bread out of the bag and laying them out along the granite countertop.
“No plates?” he asked.
I snorted. “From what I can tell, we’re currently living through the end of the freaking world. Civilization itself is on the brink of failing. Fuck the plates.”
He snorted as well. “Good point. You know… when I was a kid, I used to pretend slices of bread were little soldiers. Just waiting for their orders. Waiting to be dressed up to go to war.”
Well, that was an unexpected little piece of personal trivia. I glanced up at him, torn between the unique happiness of hearing something about someone when you hadn’t expected to—and suspicion at the exact same thing.
This guy didn’t have any damn reason to share something like that with me. We weren’t at a fucking fireside chat, here. So why had he said it?
“These particular soldiers aren’t going to live very long,” I answered, wondering if he’d catch the double meaning.
He did. He looked up quickly and met my gaze with his, the fear unmistakable in his eyes. But there was something else there, too. Something that looked a whole lot like… rebellion.
“These particular soldiers had better live long enough to get out of their current situation,” he answered quietly, looking down as he spread peanut butter over two of the slices, then put the lid back on the jar.
I mirrored his actions with the jelly, making sure mine had only a thin spread—I wasn’t a fan of sweets—and then pressed the slices together.
“Do these soldiers have a way of sharing information toward that goal?” I asked quietly. “Like what the hell happened? Where the hell they are? Who the people holding them are, and what they want? And how they all got here in the first place?”
Survival of The Fittest | Book 2 | Shallow Graves Page 2
