Shallow Graves
Chapter 1
I stared down at the very fresh, very tousled-looking dirt that covered what was so obviously a grave, and shivered.
Strike that. I didn’t shiver just because of the grave. And I didn’t even just shiver. No, I was outright shaking. And I had been, basically, since those thugs had found me in the city and then dragged me to this freaking house and into this freaking situation.
“Dammit, dammit, dammit,” I said on a breath, being careful to keep my tone to myself. Being careful to keep my lips from moving.
Because I might be standing out here in the garden by myself. I might be hidden—I hoped—in the shadows of the walkway that rose above me. I might have snuck out here—I hoped—when the team that had kidnapped me was looking the other way.
But I didn’t for one moment think I was alone. I didn’t think I was safe. And I definitely knew that I was being watched. Maybe not right at this moment. But they’d barely let me out of their sight since they'd found me, and I wasn’t stupid enough to think I was going to be out here on my own for long.
For reasons that I still didn’t understand, they’d decided that I was valuable to them. And that meant they’d want to keep me. It also meant, I assumed, that they weren’t going to be too happy that I’d figured out that this grave was here—and that there was a 99 percent chance that it held the CEO they were claiming had saved them. The poor guy who actually had owned this house.
I glanced up at the house to my right, taking in again the soaring white walls, the towering faux-Grecian columns, the wrap-around porch, the stately windows, and the peaked roof. There was even a turret at the corner, which I was sure held a lovely little reading nook or something else that only rich people had. I believed that there had been a CEO who owned the house. I believed he’d probably been here when the gang had arrived. Hell, I even believed he’d had a panic room.
Rich people liked that sort of shit. I’d conned enough of them to know.
But I did not for one moment believe that he’d known the people who were now living here. I definitely didn’t believe they’d worked with him—or that he’d invited them over to save their lives when the VXM attack happened. They’d told me that they were working with him—in a larger city, presumably—when the first attack occurred, and that they’d had time to drive all the way here, get to the safe room, and hunker down for the interim.
I hadn’t believed it when they’d said it. Then I’d seen the house, and the enormous blood stain in the entryway, and I’d believed it even less. When I turned around and saw this grave, I’d known exactly what had happened.
Well. Not exactly, obviously. I hadn’t exactly asked them for the deets. But it didn’t take a fucking computer scientist—which I could have been, for the record, if I’d wanted to be—to figure it all out.
They were a roving band of thugs. He’d had food and shelter, and they’d wanted it. In the end, he’d paid for it with his life.
I know what you’re thinking. I know what the Michelle from three months ago would have been thinking. Hell, I know what the Michelle from two weeks ago would have been thinking.
“So, you’re thinking about this faceless guy and how he might have died rather than thinking about all the dead bodies you saw in town? You’re thinking about that instead of thinking of Simone and your uncle—who are either definitely or probably dead—back in your uncle’s bunker? You’re thinking about this rich no-name rather than the world at large, and what’s actually going out there?”
Easy answer: Hell yeah, I was. And I’m guessing anyone else would have been doing the same exact thing. Because it was a hell of a lot easier to focus on something small, like the grave in front of me, than to think about all those dead bodies I’d seen. The fact that they’d all died spasming, their bodies seizing up until they actually stopped working. The fact that I’d seen my freaking boss on the street, dead.
The fact that I’d seen Simone shot by my uncle. And that I’d then thrown my uncle against the wall, possibly killing him.
It was too much. Emotional overload, if you will. And I couldn’t deal with that. Not yet. So the only things that were still allowed into my head were the simple things that I could deal with right now. And behind it all, the echo of the plan I’d been building. The plan to get the hell out of here, find someone who was actually an ally—and not a thug with a chain or a bat or a gun—and try to make my way back into civilization. Where I might be able to do some good. Where I might be able to help them get the world back online.
I still wasn’t sure how much of civilization was actually left out there. But I knew I needed to get to it.
I also knew I needed to get the hell away from this house. Because the people who had killed the man buried right in front of me weren’t going to bat one single eyelash at killing me, too, if they figured out that I wasn’t going to play their little game.
The problem was, I knew I was out of my league, here. Like, way out of my league. I’d been a world-class hacker, once—hell, I probably could be again, if someone gave me a working computer—but that had never taught me what to do when you ran into a bunch of homicidal maniacs or what I was starting to think might actually be the end of the world.
I didn’t like being out of my league. Didn’t like coming up against something that I didn’t know the answer to. I sure as hell didn’t like that I was being kept prisoner here—and that I didn’t know what to do about it. I was used to doing whatever the hell I wanted, and this whole restriction thing? Yeah, it was already grating on my nerves.
I liked having a plan. I liked knowing exactly where I was going—and what I was going to do if that didn’t work. And then having another plan, in case that Plan B didn’t work. When I was hacking, I never started without at least five different options for my way to get in, get what I wanted, and get out again without being caught.
That had only ever failed me once. When I was caught. But I was still willing to put that down to an aberration.
So I was still going with the I-need-several-plans option, here. And I’d basically been working on them since the moment they got me to this weird, otherworldly, supposedly safe mansion that wasn’t actually theirs.
Suddenly, someone started shouting from the house, and I ducked back against the walkway wall, which was about seven feet high above the grounds of the lawn. There was a good amount of shade here, and I thought I was pretty well hidden.
Which was good, since I was hoping to have a little more time out here by myself before they came searching for me. I’d lied about having to go to the bathroom, assuming that no one would want to bother me too much about that—because who really wants to accompany a girl to the bathroom but her friends—and had snuck through one of the bottom-floor windows to the yard to come out here the moment I was alone.
My mission: Get some time to myself and check out this grave. Give myself five seconds to think without Camo Girl (who I’d learned was named Sally) and Bat Guy (who I’d learned was named Bruce) shouting in my ear, or at each other. The problem with being a hacker was that I was used to working on my own. I didn’t do well with a whole lot of distraction.
And those two arguing about how they were going to find more food was definitely distracting.
The positive, though, was that I had already figured out that Sally and her little crew weren’t as tightly knit as they would have liked to pretend. She and Bruce didn’t exactly see eye-to-eye, and though she was the smarter of the two, Bruce was the more trigger-happy. It wasn’t going to take a lot for him to snap and shoot her, I was pretty sure. A few seconds of listening and I could tell that the shouting I could hear from the house was them getting into another argument.
I tuned them out and went back to my thoughts. I didn’t give one single shit what they were arguing about. I only cared that it kept them busy, and out of my hair. They definitely didn’t have a plan for what came next—or how to stay alive.
And there were d
ivisions in the group. Sally and Bruce definitely didn’t like each other, and their underlings—whose names I hadn’t yet caught but were younger men—clearly didn’t like either one of them.
One of the guys, in particular, had a look about him that made me think he didn’t belong here. That he was somehow out of his league, as well. That he didn’t want to be here any more than I did. And that he might jump at the opportunity to get the hell out.
Like most thieves, they didn’t seem to have any loyalty to one another. Hell, they probably hadn’t even known each other that well before they’d teamed up. And I was willing to bet that they’d sell each other out in one hot second.
I was planning to take advantage of that. Just as soon as I figured out how to do it.
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