by Toby Neal
“Oh yeah?” JT leaned over and caught her earlobe between his teeth in a playful nip. “Because I’ve got a surprise for you, too.” He tapped his spoon on his glass. “Everyone, I have something to say.”
“Hear, hear!” The sheriff raised his glass. “To our new deputy!”
JT stood up, pushing back his chair. “Elizabeth, can you stand for a moment?”
Elizabeth looked startled but stood, straightening her dress self-consciously. He took her glasses off and set them on the table so he could see her eyes, almost turquoise in the early evening light.
He took her hand and addressed the table.
“This terrible disease has rained death and horror on our world. We can never get back those we’ve lost. I miss Nando every day, and always will. But this disaster brought one good thing into my life. When that plane crashed in my potato field, it brought me Elizabeth Bailey Johnson.” He raised his glass in toast. “To Elizabeth, and her dedication to finding a cure.”
“Hear, hear.” Everyone toasted, and Elizabeth blushed. JT went on. “After Mary and Zoe died, I thought I’d never find love again. But I’ve healed.” He looked over at Elizabeth. JT knelt, holding Elizabeth’s hand in his. “E, will you be my wife?”
JT had been sure, with all of that buildup, that Elizabeth would have had some clue where this little speech was going—but she dropped into her chair, her eyes huge. He held both her small hands tighter. “Elizabeth. I love you. Will you marry me?”
“Yes.” Her voice wavered, and she squeaked when he enfolded her in the biggest, hardest hug, smashing her close as he stood. Tears overflowed to wet his shirt as he tucked her under his chin, and everyone applauded.
“We preppers are always prepared. I have a ring.” JT dug the modest quarter-carat diamond out of his pocket and held it up. “Mama brought her engagement ring from Philly and donated it to the cause.” Elizabeth sniffled into his shirt, her face pressed to his chest, as he slid the ring onto her finger. “I promise to love, protect, and care for you, for as many days as we are given.”
“Likewise, Jacob Teodoro.” Elizabeth reached up and touched his face, and as his mouth met hers, hope lifted the star on his chest.
There was still good in the world, and much to live for.
THE END
Acknowledgments
Dear Readers,
Thanks so much for taking this wild journey in the world of the Scorch Flu to the Haven with us!
Co-authoring: what the heck is it? In our case, it’s a blitz of excited planning, followed by more excited writing, followed by much less excited editing, followed by the next book’s planning, and rinse and repeat. We each get one of the main characters, either the guy or the girl, and we primarily write that character. Every day is a fun feeling of anticipation to see what the other has written in the next chapter. “It’s like writing until you’re tired, and then having the best magic fairy write the next chapter. Every day is a fun, interesting surprise,” Emily has said.
But why co-authoring? We’re both successful writers in our own right . . . why not just keep doing what we’ve been doing?
One of the realities of being a writer is that it’s a solo journey: we enter our writing caves, and we make stories, and we capture them however we can, and for the most part, it’s a lonely road (except when we’re interacting with readers!). But sometimes, if we’re lucky, we meet a writer friend and hit it off, spurring each other to new heights in the craft and personally, too.
That’s how our friendship has been. We met when Emily did a novella for Toby’s Lei Crime fan fiction world, and hit it off, getting along like instant BFF sisters. We wrote all day for three days in the same room, and had a blast working on our different projects. Later, Toby wrote a novella for Emily’s Sydney Rye World, and the friendship deepened.
Toby hit a dry spell of writers’ block and Emily had a baby, so we were both away from the work for awhile and uncertain how to get back into writing. Toby remembered how fun writing with Emily had been, knew that we had similar styles and genres and writing speeds, so she approached Emily about trying it. Emily was just coming back to the page from maternity leave and feeling a little uninspired, so this new adventure was perfect timing for her, too.
We did something different for both of us: a new genre (romantic thriller) and planning/outlining ALL the stories and creating the world of the Scorch Series (including the flu, the politics of the time, the Haven, and the whole Luciano family) before we started writing. By the time we sat down to actually do it, we were raring to go.
We dashed through Scorch Road on a crazy writing high, and completed it in thirteen days! Thirteen glorious days . . .
. . . and then came the editing.
Because the book was a mess.
Filled with run-on, repetitive scenes, wayyyyy too much gazing into eyes and heating cheeks and punishing kisses. Eek! It was terrible! Hilarious things had also happened plot-wise as we galloped along—this scene is getting boring—how about a stampede? We want to show Elizabeth’s newfound confidence, so she scares off a bear! The two of them bond as they break in and raid a high school! (Oh wait, we kept that one.)
Well, in the sequels we’ve learned to be more careful. We talk almost daily, plan better, and trust our outline so we never have to edit that hard again . . . close to 20,000 words of that first draft had to be cut and rewritten!
But Emily and Toby still love the dynamic fun that occurs as the sparks fly between our characters and we wrestle with the issues of survival, overcoming, and most importantly, LOVE.
We hope you’ll keep going with us for the rest of the journey as each of the very different Lucianos try to make it to the Haven . . . and find the right person to love as they struggle to survive the perils of the Scorch Flu and help rebuild the world that comes after.
Thanks for joining us as we travel this “scorch”ing road!
And if you liked the book, any reviews you leave are a tremendous gift! We thank you in advance.
Read on the next page for the opening chapters of Cinder Road, Scorch Series Book 2, Dolf. With love,
Toby (Neal) & Emily (Kimelman)
Click HERE to buy Cinder Road, Scorch Series #2!
Click HERE to join our mailing list and never miss a new Toby & Emily title!
Click HERE to see more of Emily’s work! Click HERE to see more of Toby’s work!
Click HERE to join the Toby & Emily Facebook group, where we hang out and do giveaways and more!
We are both award-winning, bestselling authors with many fast-paced reads to keep you turning pages late into the night while you wait for the next Scorch Series book!
Cinder Road, Scorch Series, #2
By Toby Neal & Emily Kimelman
Dolf
Adolfo Luciano lifted one end of the long, white-wrapped bundle that held the body of his twin brother, Nando. Opposite him, their brother JT lifted the other side.
Dolf’s back strained with the effort to swing the fabric-encased form into the deep hole they’d dug in their mother’s backyard.
The sound of weeping surrounded Dolf: the ugly, raw crying of his sister Lucy, never one to show restraint in her emotions, joined with the soft whimpering of his mother. They stood together, leaning on each other. Stoic JT’s eyes streamed, and his chest heaved with sobs. JT’s traveling companion, Elizabeth, a scientist who looked about the same age as Lucy, on her way to DC, knelt on the grass and he could see the shine of tears on her pale cheeks.
A stranger wept for his twin, but Dolf couldn’t. He was split like a tree cleft by lightning, halved and destroyed, but still standing. Nando, now nothing but a series of lumpy shapes in a white sheet, had been the heart of the two of them.
Dolf was the brain. His family even called him “Tin Man.” He didn’t feel much for many people. And now his heart had died.
Dolf and JT lowered the body into the grave. Dolf coughed, choking on the dirt rising up and surrounding Nando’s corpse, as if he too w
ere in the hole. He itched, grains of soil adhered to the sweat coating his skin from digging in the sweltering humidity of August in Philadelphia.
“I wish I were there instead of him,” Dolf said. Only JT seemed to hear him, shooting Dolf a sharp glance from perceptive hazel eyes.
Avital picked up the first handful from the pile of loose soil and tossed it on the white-wrapped bundle in the grave. A stray beam of sunset tangled in her deep red hair, and Dolf’s chest squeezed with a strangled tightness.
God, he loved her. He always had. Just his bad luck that Nando met her first. He could have won her if he’d met her before his twin, he just knew it. What Dolf wanted, he got—but never at the expense of his brother. When she chose Nando, that was the end of that.
The whole thing was screwed up.
Nando knew, like he knew everything about Dolf, and he’d been sad for his brother’s emptiness for years. “Take care of her,” he’d rasped yesterday, the phlegm in his lungs strangling his final words.
“I’ll take care of her forever. She will want for nothing,” Dolf had sworn, holding Nando’s hand, a hand that matched his own, but transformed by the Scorch Flu. He’d felt his brother’s protruding bones. Those bones would be exposed soon, the flesh eaten away by worms and insects. They would do their job, and transform Nando’s body into something useful, but Dolf clenched his fists. He wanted to crush them all, to protect his twin from decomposition the way he’d tried to protect him from everything else.
Dolf had failed. Nando was gone, his body at the mercy of the earth—and still, he could not cry.
Avital’s hands, soft and white from being covered by surgical gloves, were folded tightly in the skirt of an ill-fitting black dress as she held a single bold sunflower. Dolf recognized the bloom from the backyard at her and Nando’s little fixer-upper house a few blocks away. It eased him somehow, that she wasn’t crying either.
He wasn’t alone. They two had lost the most, and showed it least.
Lucy and Mama both took their turns, tossing a handful of soil into the grave as Father Dominic, his robes hanging loose since the plague broke out, read from the book of Psalms. He made the sign of the cross over Nando’s body. “May he rest in peace. I’m sorry, my children. I must go. There are more who need me.” The priest swished off across the rich grass Pops had taken such pride in when he was alive, now long and untrimmed.
They all had a lot more to worry about than keeping the grass mowed.
If only the rest of his brothers were here, maybe Dolf could release the trapped emotion he knew was locked inside. They’d always been a happy, demonstrative family. Perhaps with all of his brothers present, Dolf could have given Nando the honor he deserved.
But Luca was serving as a National Guard trainer in Texas, and Dante was in California, doing computer wizardry, while Cash was fighting summer fires in Colorado. Nando was the best of them, a selfless legal aid lawyer who did nothing but serve his city.
Dolf dug his shovel into the pile of soil and tossed it onto the body. JT did the same. Self-hatred was bile in Dolf’s throat as he filled in the hole, moving like a machine.
Like a robot.
Like a tin man.
The exertion felt good and it was over too soon. Dolf tamped the soil down with the back of his spade. Any job worth doing was worth doing well. Nando had always thought so too.
Lucy and Mama set bundles of flowers on the grave, their tears and murmuring voices like a stream in the woods, a background to his surreal state.
Avital knelt to set the large yellow bloom she held atop the other flowers—but then she tipped forward, falling on the piled dirt. She lay there on the grave and buried her face in the lilies and roses. Her shoulders shook. Her white hands clenched the black dirt. If she sobbed, no one could hear it but the crushed blooms beneath her.
Dolf would fulfill his promise. His season of watching over his twin’s widow had begun. He stood beside her, his head bent, as everyone else trickled back into the row house his mother had raised her children in.
Five brothers and one sister were now four brothers and one sister. How many more would they lose before this plague ended?
Time passed.
The sunset lit the sky in flagrant, rude beauty and slowly extinguished into darkness. A few fireflies came out, dancing like will-o’-the-wisps in the steamy night. Light fell through the window in the back door, making a bright square on the grass.
Inside the house, he could hear talking. Someone was playing the old upright piano—probably Lucy. Music soothed her.
Dolf knelt beside Avital and put his hand on her shoulder. He seldom touched her, never trusting himself to not give something away. “Avi. Let me get you home.”
She moved a little and he lifted her off of the grave and hooked her arm around his shoulder to support her. She felt light as a child, and her five-foot frame sagged in his arms. He and Nando were the “short” Luciano brothers, at five eleven, which still dwarfed her. Avital stumbled in the long grass.
He opened the side gate and she took her arm off his shoulder but hooked it through his elbow, her soil-covered hand a burning touch on his forearm. She looked up at him finally, her big, tilted brown eyes hard and dry.
“I have to clean up the house and make sure it’s disinfected. Then I should get back to the hospital. My patients need me, even if Nando doesn’t anymore.”
Dolf gave a single nod. He knew better than to argue with her. Avital was capable, strong, and stubborn. And so beautiful it made his teeth ache. They walked the few blocks to her and Nando’s house in silence.
He followed Avital up the stoop and inside, where she washed her hands in the kitchen sink. Every fleck of the grave-digging dirt itched on Dolf’s skin. He had to get it off his body. “I’m taking a shower,” he told her hunched back.
She nodded.
He’d been staying in the spare room since he came down from New York two weeks ago, before things got so bad that the roads closed and trains stopped running. He’d been helping Avital nurse Nando, who’d had every possible advantage with his wife a doctor—and still the flu took him. They said this plague, called “Scorch Flu” by the media, fed off the young and strong. It was a filthy demon sucking the life and heart out of the country.
Dolf scrubbed briskly with a washcloth. His body was the same as Nando’s, all the way down to the cellular level. Just hours before, he’d watched Avital wash Nando’s body, a white washcloth from the same linen closet sliding down his brother’s chest, along his abs, over his once-strong legs.
He’d felt like she was washing him, too—preparing Dolf for burial as well.
If only it were him in the ground instead.
They weren’t the same, though.
Dolf’s skin was darker than Nando’s, deeply browned by the California and Colorado sun where he took rock-climbing vacations. He was more in shape than his twin. He kept his body fit so he could chase a passion that filled his time when he wasn’t filling his metaphorical pockets—he’d done so well as a broker at a major financial firm that he’d gone independent a few years ago, and growing his own wealth was almost as satisfying as climbing a mountain.
Social interactions consisted of business-related events, and a series of well-groomed, accomplished blondes on his arm and in his bed. Dolf spent his time making money and rock-climbing while Nando dedicated his life to charity work.
Why had God taken his brother? It didn’t compute. People should get what they deserved, and Dolf knew the depths of his own selfishness.
He’d forgotten to feed Slash.
Animals were easier for him than people had ever been and his cat, Slash, traveled with him everywhere.
Dolf finished his shower and wrapped a towel around his waist, padding rapidly down to the kitchen.
Avital was on her hands and knees, scrubbing the kitchen floor in rubber gloves, still wearing that awful dress.
“What are you doing?” Dolf’s voice came out harsher than he meant i
t to.
Avital looked up at him, and whatever she was going to say died on her lips. Belatedly, he remembered he was only wearing a towel. “Sorry about this.” He gestured to his naked torso. “I didn’t expect you down here. You should be in bed—you can take mine and I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“And you should be dressed.” She went back to scrubbing, using a large-bristled brush. Sudsy water sloshed from the bucket beside her onto the new tile of the floor. Dolf had paid for it, something Avital didn’t know because Nando said she had way too much pride. But Dolf’s help didn’t feel odd to the twins—they shared everything.
“I just got done stripping the master bedroom. The linens from his sickbed are in the fireplace, if you want to make yourself useful and burn them.”
Dolf frowned. “We don’t have to do this right now.”
“Yes, we do. You want to be next in a hole in the back yard?” Avital scrubbed harder at the floor.
“Let me feed Slash. Then I’ll do whatever you want.” He crossed the kitchen, careful with the wet floor, and opened the fridge, taking out a can of Tasty Vittles.
As if to confirm he was on the right track, Slash emitted a grumpy yowl from the top of the stairs.
Slash was a one-eared, grizzled tabby with a crooked tail. He was one of the ugliest cats Dolf had ever seen, headed for euthanasia at the animal shelter when Dolf adopted him two years ago. The old tomcat provided all the company needed for a driven workaholic suffering from unrequited love.
Dolf hurried up the narrow stairs and Slash led the way into the guest room.
“Hey buddy.” Dolf set the can on the floor and Slash, whipping his crooked tail in irritation at his master’s tardiness, minced over and squatted to eat, making muffled sounds of appreciation.
Dolf dressed quickly in his usual outfit when he wasn’t in a suit: boxers, tee, and jeans, all black. He gave his short hair a rub with the towel and tossed it over a chair.
