Scorch Road (Scorch Series Romance Thriller Book 1)

by Toby Neal

  “There’s a room full of vaccine. We could save hundreds of people, thousands.” Elizabeth was dizzy. She held onto the kitchen counter to still the tremble in her hands.

  “We need it. More is being produced, and it will be distributed as soon as possible.” Her father ran a hand through his graying hair. “It wasn’t supposed to get out.”

  Elizabeth stared at him with fresh eyes—the facade had crumbled, and before her stood a selfish old man afraid of death, clinging to power.

  “Then how did it happen?” Elizabeth raised her hand before he could answer. “You know what, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what happened. It matters what we do now.” A deep resolve was forming in Elizabeth, a new foundation shaping as her old loyalties collapsed.

  “Elizabeth, is everything okay?” Her mother stood in the doorway of the kitchen. She was thin, so much thinner than Elizabeth had realized. Her blonde hair was streaked with silver—how had Elizabeth missed that?

  “Did you know too?” Elizabeth held up the bottle of vaccine, looking right into her mother’s honey-colored eyes, naked without mascara and eyeliner. Her mother’s eyes dropped, new wrinkles appearing on her face as it sagged—her parents were aging before her eyes. “I’ve been such a fool.” Elizabeth was so sick of crying, but her breath stuttered as tears welled, blurring her vision. “I almost died bringing those irrelevant cells. JT almost died getting me here! And it was all a lie.”

  “I’m so sorry, Lizzie. We didn’t want you to find out this way,” her father said.

  What would be the best way to find out? How do you break the news that we are responsible for the plague and have the resources to vaccinate people, but are hoarding it rather than helping?

  She turned away from them, clutching at the counter. What was she going to do?

  “I gave up the man I love for this,” Elizabeth said, the truth leaving her in a rush of words that had been burgeoning in the darkest part of her and refusing to stay there—her love for JT belonged in the light.

  “John, give us a minute.” Susanna Johnson’s soft voice matched the swish of her silk robe as she approached. Elizabeth heard her father leave and didn’t turn around.

  Her mother touched Elizabeth’s back and rubbed in small circles. Despite the betrayal, her familiar touch was comforting. After the “incident” as it had come to be called, her mother was so attentive to Elizabeth, her only child, that it had become another layer of smothering. It now dawned on Elizabeth how hard it must have been for her mother to watch her go through that, and to be even more powerless than Elizabeth to change anything, to stop anything, to do anything.

  “Elizabeth.” Her mother’s voice was soft and gentle. “The man who brought you here? You fell in love with him?”

  Elizabeth nodded, her hands clenching the counter, her eyes screwed shut, her breath coming in jagged gasps.

  “I’m sorry.” Her mother kept up the little circles.

  “Sorry?” Elizabeth coughed, clearing her throat. “I don’t think sorry covers this, Mom.”

  “If your father could have done things differently he would have. He voted against developing the disease. He voted against hoarding the vaccines. But democracy lets the majority rule. And in this case the majority voted to do those things and your father had to fall in line.”

  “Developing the disease?” Elizabeth’s voice sharpened. “What do you mean?”

  “Scorch Flu is one of our nation’s bioweapons. But your father never supported it. He was as shocked as anyone when we were informed.”

  “Oh my God.” Elizabeth’s world was crumbling around her with these revelations. “How did it get out?”

  “Your father doesn’t know—but some are saying it was an act of terrorism. This young man. What’s his name?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Elizabeth turned to her mother. “He’s gone. I’ll never see him again.” She sucked in a deep breath. “He’ll probably die, like everyone else who isn’t vaccinated.”

  Her mother shook her head, her eyes filling with tears. “I know what it is to give your heart to someone. To feel that you can’t live without them.”

  Elizabeth had seen pictures of her parents when they were first together. Susanna had only been nineteen when they married in college, young and so beautiful. Tall, strapping John had Susanna wrapped in his arms, huge grins on both of their faces—genuine smiles Elizabeth had only seen in a few old photographs.

  “We did the best we could. When the incident . . .” her mother paused, blinked, and cleared her throat. “When Brian tried to rape you and you killed him, we just wanted to protect you.” It was the first time her mother had ever used those words “rape” and “kill.” Despite the long trial and the media frenzy, her parents had always called it the “incident.” Elizabeth’s therapist explained that it was normal, that her parents were dealing in their own way, but it had hurt Elizabeth—that her own parents refused to acknowledge the truth when so many were trying to change it. Brian’s parents, scandal rags—they all wanted it to be so much more sensational—as if a girl defending herself from a rapist was too small a story.

  What happened was black and white—Brian tried to rape her and she protected herself. It’s not like she wanted to kill him. There was only one angle for her to attack from, only one chance to escape him, and she’d taken it.

  When the knife sank into him, when his blood poured over her wrist, Elizabeth’s only thought had been get off of me. She hadn’t wanted him to die. She’d performed CPR on him. Used a towel to try to staunch the blood flow. Cried for help.

  The media and prosecutor wanted her to be guilty of more than his death though; they wanted her to have led Brian on, to be more than just a killer, they’d wanted her to be a slut who brought it upon herself.

  Melody had been her biggest defender. And while Melody would yell at anyone—scream the truth from the rooftops—Susanna Johnson had stared blankly, clutching a glass of cognac, and flinching whenever the word rape was used.

  “I’m so sorry,” her mother said. A heavy lead blanket lifted off Elizabeth. The shaking in her hands stilled, the dizziness making the room spin stopped. “All we’ve ever wanted, Lizzie, was to protect you.”

  “I know, Mom, but can’t you see that hiding from what I did made it harder? You never defended me—not in words. I’ve felt dirty and wrong and ashamed ever since. I’ve never wanted anyone to touch me. Until I met JT, I thought I couldn’t ever love someone because you can’t have real relationships without real honesty and physical intimacy.” Elizabeth still held the small, cool glass bottle of vaccine in her hand. It felt like a talisman against evil, and in a way it was.

  Mom began to cry, her delicate features crumpling. The two of them shared so much—the same features, petite stature, and blonde hair, but so much more than that too—a lifetime of memories, Elizabeth’s history. But it wasn’t her whole history anymore. There was more to her than the relationship with her parents. More to her than that brief moment with Brian when she took his life. There was so much more to be had, still.

  The past was irrelevant. What happened next was what mattered.

  Elizabeth reached out and embraced her mother, taking a deep inhale of that familiar scent. Would she ever smell it again? “I love you, Mom.”

  “I love you too.” Mom squeezed Elizabeth, face buried in her daughter’s hair.

  “I have to go.”

  Her mother nodded and whispered, her voice choked with emotion. “Let us know that you’re safe. Please.”

  “I will.”

  Elizabeth picked up her backpack from her room and returned to the lab without saying goodbye to her father. Her heart ached, but she also felt lighter than she ever had. She was going to JT, and she was going to make things right. She entered the storage room and put as much of the vaccine into her backpack as would fit. Then she filled her pockets and tucked in her shirt, and dropped even more bottles into it.

  “Miss Johnson. What are you doing?” Th
e bluff male voice at the door spun her around.

  “Dr. Tether.” Elizabeth firmed the tremble from her voice. She wasn’t the criminal—this man was.

  “I asked you a question, young lady.” The man’s volume increased. He reached for a walkie-talkie clipped to his lab coat’s pocket.

  Elizabeth stiffened her spine, donning the haughtiness she’d learned to project through her very public life as her parents’ daughter. “What are you doing here, Doctor? Coming to check on the supplies? Planning to give a few vials to your cronies?” She drew herself even taller, expanding with righteous anger. “Put that radio down. You’re part of a cover-up, part of keeping this vaccine from people who need it. I’m not going to stand for that.”

  “And you’re going to help—how many? A hundred?” Tether’s pale eyes gleamed behind his horn-rims. “You think that will make a difference in the scope of things? Things aren’t going as planned, I’ll give you that—but a few thousand vaccinations more or less won’t make a difference.”

  “It will to those who get them.” Elizabeth scooped a few more vials into the last inch of space in her backpack. “I’m going. And you can’t stop me.”

  “I believe you’re having a nervous breakdown, young lady. Brought on by all the stress of what you’ve been through.” He came toward her, stalking with the athleticism of an older man who kept himself fighting fit.

  Elizabeth swung the backpack on and darted behind one of the counters. “No one will believe that.”

  “You’d be surprised what people will believe.”

  Elizabeth’s hand curled around her knife, and she took it out, pressing the button as he lunged to grab her. The blade flicked out and she whipped up her arm. The slim steel blade pressed the man’s throat, instantly breaking the skin and drawing a line of blood. “Don’t touch me. And don’t doubt that I will use this on you if I have to—I’ve killed before.”

  The fierceness of her eyes must have convinced him, because he slowly raised his hands. “Back there.” She pointed to the supply closet lined with vaccine.

  She backed him into the narrow space. “Give me the radio. Empty your pockets.”

  Slowly, rage distorting his features, he did so. A cell phone, the walkie, and then a small black pistol was in his hand. Elizabeth didn’t hesitate, she brought the knife down hard, onto his wrist. Tether screamed as she connected, cutting him deeply. The gun hit the floor and Elizabeth kicked it behind her. Tether gripped his injured wrist to his chest, blood seeping into his shirt.

  She stepped back slowly and picked up the pistol. Holding it on him, she was able to tie and bind him and leave him locked in the closet.

  She went to another section of the lab and donned one of the engulfing white hazmat suits, picked up the backpack, and hung her freshly minted ID badge on the front of the bulky material.

  She took the elevator up and headed for the exit.

  “Excuse me, miss.” A soldier held up a hand to stop her. “Where are you going?”

  Elizabeth held up her ID badge. “I need an escort to my parents’ house to pick up some more belongings. I will also need to stop and take samples from any recent bodies we find on the way. Dr. Tether’s orders.” Elizabeth wasn’t sure how she was going to dodge the soldiers once at her parents’ house, but she’d think of something.

  “Right away, Dr. Johnson.” The soldier called into his walkie, and Elizabeth was escorted through the barriers. A heavily armed Hummer with two soldiers plus a driver pulled up, and she got in. Soon they were driving through the early morning streets of DC, dawn casting a gray glimmer over the city.

  They stopped at a body lying alongside the road for her “sample errand,” but the deceased was a victim of gunfire, not the plague, so they still hadn’t found a body to “sample” by the time they reached the townhouse. “My parents wanted me to pack up some things. Go locate me an infected body, and come back to pick me up in an hour,” Elizabeth commanded authoritatively outside the house. She heard something inside that made her stiffen in surprise, suffused with a sudden draft of hope—Pinocchio’s bark?

  JT hadn’t left yet. He might even be inside the house. She had to ditch these soldiers!

  “I need that body,” she barked. “We’re wasting time. I’m perfectly safe here, but you’re not.” As if to underline her statement, a burst of gunfire somewhere down the street caught their attention.

  “We can’t be responsible for anything that happens to you, Dr. Johnson,” one of the soldiers said stubbornly. “We can’t leave you unprotected.”

  “She’s not unprotected.” JT seemed to appear like a djinn from around the corner of the next building, carrying the Remington she’d come to think of as her own. Dressed all in black, his skin darkened, crisscrossed with shoulder holsters holding the twin Glocks, he looked deadly and amazing.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Elizabeth

  Elizabeth gave a little shriek and ran toward him, ripping off the hood of the bulky white hazmat suit. “JT!”

  JT scooped her in with his spare arm and crushed her close, keeping an eye on the soldiers, who’d gone for their weapons.

  “I went looking for you,” he said into her hair. “I was trying to get into the bunker to see you.”

  “I came to find you,” Elizabeth managed to say. She turned her face up to his, and he kissed her. It was searing and all-consuming.

  A throat cleared behind them. “I take it you know this man.”

  Elizabeth turned to face the bewildered escort soldiers. Her face was warm and her smile huge. “Yes. He can watch over me. We are staying here.”

  “Dr. Johnson, my orders . . .”

  She cut him off. “Your orders are coming from me, and they’re to go get a sample and take it back to the lab. We’re staying here for now.”

  “It’s on your head,” the soldier said, and motioned for his men to follow. The men got in the Hummer and left them at the house.

  Elizabeth found the key, unlocked the door, and greeted Pinocchio—all while vibrating with ecstatic emotion. JT had come back for her!

  In the grandiose foyer at the base of the stairs, JT shed his weapons, filling the spindly-legged side table with armaments as Elizabeth lowered her precious backpack and unzipped and stepped out of the hazmat suit. Stripped of their burdens, JT took her hands. “Alone at last.”

  He drew Elizabeth into his arms in a long sweet hug. She shut her eyes, resting her cheek against his heart. The thump of it was pure life to her, and his voice was a rumble against her skin as he spoke. “I’m sorry for being such an ass. I didn’t mean what I said last night—I was trying to make it easier for you to go to your parents.”

  “I understand. When I got into the bunker I hated every minute. I only wanted to be with you,” she said. “We were both stupid.”

  He lifted her hands, kissed each of her knuckles. “Can we get a do-over of last night?”

  “Oh, hell yes. But first . . . you need a wash.” Elizabeth reached up to twine her hands in those curls she loved. She touched his face. “What is this stuff you’ve got on?”

  “Shoe polish.”

  “So you were like—going in, commando style, to get me out?”

  He smiled, his teeth very white. “That was the plan, but I was having trouble finding a way in. I’d decided to nab a hazmat suit and try to sneak in, and eventually a scientist wearing one with an escort came out. I followed you waiting for my chance . . . and here we are.”

  Elizabeth led him upstairs to her bedroom, scene of so much recent pain, and sat him on the bed. She walked into her bathroom and returned with a dampened towel.

  “Let me clean this off.” She pushed him to sit on the bed, and bent to rub the shoe polish off his face.

  Her cloth stroked his high, wide brow, around the deep-set eyes closed in pleasure, the eyelashes a fringe long enough to cast shadows. High cheekbones, a hard jaw . . . and that mouth. Oh, JT’s mouth.

  She tipped his chin up and set her lips on
that mouth.

  He tugged at her shirt, and the clink of the bottles inside stopped him. Elizabeth covered the lumpy area around her waist with her hands. “I forgot. I have to unload these.”

  “What are they?”

  “Vials of vaccine.”

  “What went on in that bunker?” JT’s voice sharpened as she carefully removed the vials, setting them on the bureau next to her family portrait.

  Elizabeth told him, in brief pain-infused sentences, the little she knew about the origin of the disease, and that she’d taken all she could of the vaccine.

  “So you’re telling me this virus was government issued?” JT’s fists balled as his face darkened. “I can’t believe my worst conspiracy nightmares are true.”

  “I know. I couldn’t even look at my father after I found out. I just had to get out of there with as much vaccine as I could carry.”

  “How did Scorch Flu get out?”

  “I don’t know, maybe some kind of accident. But the vaccine being withheld—that was no accident.” Elizabeth’s mouth tightened. She took the metal case holding her injection kit out of her pocket. “I need to inoculate you right now.”

  “I’m probably immune if that guy coughing all over us didn’t make me sick,” JT said, but Elizabeth just shook her head, filling a syringe from the rubber-topped bottle, swabbing his arm, and sticking him with the dose. She sighed as she unscrewed the needle. “I have to sterilize and reuse these, but thank God you’re covered now.”

  “What about you?”

  “Already taken care of.”

  JT’s arms encircled her waist immediately as he drew her down to straddle him. Her tongue dove into the silken cave of his mouth. Elizabeth dropped the polish-stained towel and stripped the black cashmere turtleneck off JT’s head. “This my dad’s?”

  “Yeah.”

  She flung the garment backwards as far as she could, and it landed on Pinocchio in the doorway, making him bark and JT snort a laugh. She touched his bandaged arm. “What happened?”

  “Flesh wound. Got shot after I dropped you off.”