Love Starts With Z (19 page)

T
HE
S
INKING
S
UN
cast lengthening shadows across the floor. They reached for Soren, and an irrational fear seized her that when the shadows touched her feet, her time would be up.

So far she’d only managed to fight the ties that bound her hands enough to do damage, and now the entire room smelled strongly of iron. Swallowing the whimper that scratched its way through her chest, she wiped the emotion from her face as the door handle turned.

“Do you hear that noise?” Bossman asked as he entered.

A clank, clank of metal resonated through the open window, and she nodded.

“They are hammering two stakes about a body’s width apart, and the echo you’re hearing is from the manacles dangling from them. I wouldn’t want you to be unprepared when you see where you’ll die. It seems our boys have been very frustrated by the amount of hunting they’ve had to do with all these Deads migrating through our territory, and they’ve been planning all day for your demise. We’re popping popcorn as we speak for the festivities. You should consider this an honor. No other Dead’s death has been revered so much in the history of the apocalypse. Are you ready?”

No, she was not freaking ready to die for show. Time was up. He approached with one corner of his thin lips turned up in a smile that she’d only seen on Mark. Hands down, this was the worst twenty-four-hour block of time ever.

Limply, she contorted her face until she hoped he would read defeat, and as she rocked back, she kicked her legs out, battering his chest, which sent him sprawling.

Good thing she wouldn’t feel this. Grunting, she pulled her tied wrists underneath her bottom, and squirmed until they were in front of her.

Bossman roared and untangled himself from the table of clutter he’d blasted into and charged.

Weaponless, she turned and jumped out the window.

And right at that moment, she realized the room she’d been locked in all day was in a damned tree. A tree! Panicking, she flung her hands out and hooked the zip tie onto a sturdy wooden peg on a crude wraparound porch. Panting, she looked down. From here it was a good thirty foot drop between her dangling feet and the unforgiving ground. The colony didn’t have gates, from what she could see, but they didn’t need them. Almost every building had been constructed in the canopy, and Deads couldn’t climb.

Boom!
An explosion rocked the tree, loosening the peg. She yelped as the warm air brushed her skin and stared in confusion at the blazing building on the edge of the grove.

“What the hell?” she breathed.

“Find out who set that fire,” Bossman barked at a trio of guards on the ground. He turned a frosty glare to her. “I have something to take care of here.” His boots made a hollow sound against the porch.

Arms shaking, she grunted and tried to haul herself higher to lessen the strain on her fatiguing muscles.

“Looks like you got yourself in a little spot, Dead. Pity the boys will have to miss their fun.”

They won’t have to miss their death game, Bossman
, she mouthed.

“What’s that?” he asked, leaning closer.

“They’ll have Deads to play with after all,” she whispered, then used every last ounce of upper body strength she possessed to pull herself up and kiss his mouth.

The peg gave under the strain, and she watched his face transform with the recognition of what she’d done to him as she fell to the earth. Her death would come, and she wouldn’t fight the inevitable, so she swam in his fear filled eyes as he wiped a hand across his mouth. Her final revenge was bittersweet. She’d enjoy it, but not for long.

Closing her eyes, she waited for impact, and it came sooner than she’d expected. Except she flew sideways into the tree and grasped a branch out of instinct. When her body stopped pummeling the rough bark, she opened her eyes. Colten’s furious face was inches from hers.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Saving you, obviously. You couldn’t wait five freaking minutes, could you? You just had to jump out of the damned tree.”

“Where’s Kaegan?”

A pepper of gunfire trailed down the tree, shooting shards of bark at them as the bullets barely missed. Another louder shot rang out, and the gunfire stopped. Probably because the man holding the weapon had dropped like a sack of stones.

Kaegan sat atop a ridge with a long range rifle, lining up his next shot.

“He’s a better shot than me, and I’m better at climbing trees so I had to play rescuer. Should we kiss now?”

“Stop messing around, you asshat,” Adrianna called from below. She and Lauren were sprinting from the direction the fire was raging.

“Right.” Colten leaned against the trunk he’d tucked into and pulled his machete. In one swift stroke, the zip tie was cut and fell to the forest floor below. Soren reached for a lower branch just as a bullet ricocheted off where she was about to put her hand.

Another shot rang out, deep and short, signifying Kaegan had hit something. Soren grabbed the branch and flung herself downward, and Colten followed closely, weaving in and out and letting gravity rush them.

Panic spurred her faster, and when she reached the last branch, she jumped to the ground and rolled to ease the impact. Colten almost landed on top of her, and before she was even on her feet, he was dragging her toward the woods.

Four armed guards were sprinting after them, and Colten turned long enough to down two with his Berretta. A knife whizzed past her face, and the
thunk
of a body hitting dirt sounded behind her. Adrianna stood ahead of them with a look of fierce concentration, and another deep boom made her cover her ears in shock. Pushing her legs faster, she climbed the hill behind the others, clawing at dirt and rock and propelling herself upward until her legs burned with exhaustion.

“Don’t stop,” Kaegan ordered. “Just keep going.” He let off two more shots, then hoisted himself up and ran beside her.

The next hour was consumed by ducking low branches and watching for uneven terrain to keep the pace. Kaegan favored his ankle but didn’t slow until they were miles away. He grabbed her shoulder and held her still. “Quiet,” he panted.

Her chest rose and fell so fast she thought she’d pass out if she denied her body oxygen by quieting her breathing, but she stilled her feet and hoped that’s what he meant. Colten had doubled over, and Lauren retched behind a tree. Adrianna pulled her arms over her head like that would help her catch her breath, and every single one of them dripped with perspiration.

“I don’t hear ’em,” Colten said between gasps.

“I think we lost them, but we’ll have to be careful,” Kaegan rasped.

Soren gripped his shirt in her clenched fist. “You came for me.”

He moved from side to side, like a racehorse asked to stop running too soon. His eyes never left her, but his head shook slowly. “I can’t…” His lips pursed to a thin line at odds with his normally relaxed features, and his dark eyebrows drew down, brightening the intense color of his eyes. He was beautiful and terrifying, all at once.

“Soren,” Colten said low. “Let him go.”

Kaegan brushed past her and strode away. With a confused glance over her shoulder, Adrianna followed, then Lauren.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

With a pitying look, Colten turned and jogged to catch up.

Had she done something wrong? She hadn’t asked them to come after her, wouldn’t have ever put them in danger like that, so what? The woods suddenly felt stark and lonely, and she dug the toes of her boots into the dirt between ferns and bolted after them.

Kaegan wouldn’t talk to her, wouldn’t even look at her in the hours that followed. They hiked long into the night, and every passing mile brought silence to spur her agony. Hungry and exhausted, a chill crept into her bones and she couldn’t seem to warm up. And just as she thought her legs would lock and refuse to take another step, Colten jerked his head and pointed his flashlight at an old cabin.

“Anyone here?” he called. “We’re looking for shelter. Tell us the cabin is occupied, and we’ll move on, no trouble.”

Nothing stirred, and the frogs screamed on.

“Thank God,” Adrianna muttered. “I can’t feel my legs.”

The door was locked, but all of the panes of glass had been broken, so Kaegan reached in. The
snick
of the lock was the most beautiful thing she’d ever heard.

A quick sweep of the house revealed they were alone, and when the door was locked behind them, Soren nearly collapsed on the dusty couch. She blinked, and when she opened her eyes, Adrianna and Kaegan stood over her.

“You need to eat,” Adrianna said.

“Eat what? I’m too tired to hunt right now. What I need to do is sleep.”

“You’ve been asleep for two hours,” Kaegan said quietly. “Colten found a couple of ducks in the pond behind the house.” Indeed, a limp mallard hung from his outstretched hand.

Eyes on the stitching of the worn blue couch, Kaegan dropped it in her lap and turned for the door. “When you’re done eating, come outside, and I’ll stitch you up.”

Stitch her up? He shut the back door a little too firmly behind him, and she shot Adrianna a questioning glance.

Swirling her hand in the vicinity of Soren’s head, Adrianna said, “You need like twenty of them, Sor. Your face looks like a crime scene.”

Ah, the gash on her head, compliments of Tattoo Face Troy.

When her stomach was satisfied, and her face washed clean with canteen water, she stalled at the fire Lauren stoked in the stone hearth. Kaegan was angry, and a wise woman didn’t storm a battlefield confused. Nothing in her wanted to endure his wrath right now. She was raw and so tired her bones didn’t want to work, and hurt, if she was completely honest. Kaegan’s aloofness stung, and quite frankly, she didn’t want to do what he said until he started making sense. Determined to tell him just that, she stomped out the door, threw it open, and froze.

Kaegan leaned against the dilapidated porch railing, arms flexed in the moonlight, and the muzzle hung from his left hand, bumping the wooden posts in the breeze.

The implications cut her worse than any ever knife could.

Closing the door gently behind her, she stood beside him and watched the full moon’s reflection on the rippling waters of the pond.

“I saw you,” Kaegan said low, his voice cracking on the last word. “Why did you kiss that man?”

Baffled, she studied his tense profile. A muscle twitched in his clenched jaw, and she fought the urge to touch it, to soothe it away.

“It wasn’t what it looked like.”

He turned so fast she jumped. Gripping both sides of her face in an unbreakable grip, desperation tainted his gaze as he studied her for something she couldn’t fathom. “Tell me he wasn’t your first kiss. Tell me you didn’t give away what was mine to some guy you didn’t know.”

God, she wanted to cry for their loss. “Kaegan,” she murmured, rubbing her hands down his forearm and resting them on his knuckles.

He gripped her hair and leaned forward until his forehead rested on hers. “Tell me it wasn’t.”

“I killed him.” Her whisper was ragged and laced with tears. “I hated him for what he was going to do to me, and he wasn’t vaccinated. I could smell that he wasn’t. I was going to die, but I wanted to take him with me, so I kissed him to murder him.”

A desperate sound came from deep within his chest, and he pulled her against him. “I can’t do this. I had all these ideas about how easy this would be when I found the right person, and it’s not like what I thought at all. You’ll have to do things that hurt me to survive. It won’t stop. People will try to kill you, and if I can’t get to you, I’ll have to watch you fight for your life, and it guts me, Soren. Watching you come flying out of that window, watching you fall, seeing you get peppered with gunfire and running for your life, and if I missed, just one hair off on my aim, you’d be gone forever. I don’t think I can do this. I can’t go to war with you.” He dropped to his knees, pressed his head against her stomach and gripped her legs. “I’m not strong enough to lose you.”

Even kneeling, his dark hair brushed her chest. Running her fingers through his silky tresses, she said, “You were the one who convinced me I was strong enough to leave Dead Run River. You gave me something you’ll never know the worth of. I appreciate who I am now because of the way you look at me. You were right, Kaegan. My destiny was bigger than that small-minded place. I was meant to be with you.” She tilted his face up. “If you don’t want me to fight, I won’t. But I’m still going with you. I’m not asking you to give up your mission because it’s who you are. You spill your own blood to give others a chance. It’s part of the reason I fell in love with you. But I want the same trust. I won’t always make the decision you want me to, but you can’t control that. Thinking you can will only drive you mad when I do something different, and I can’t have you in my head when I’m making those decisions. If I worry about what you’d want me to do, my end will come sooner than either of us wants.”

Kaegan stood slowly, never taking his eyes from hers, and as he towered over her, he leaned down as if to kiss her. An inch from her lips, he closed his eyes and said, “Fight if you must, but don’t kiss another. It’s all I want, Soren. I want to taste your lips so bad I’m losing my mind. I know what I can bear, and I can’t take your lips on another man.”

Without another word, he stepped around her and disappeared down the porch stairs. Tall marsh grass hid him as he strode toward the lake. He didn’t get to walk out on a conversation. He was supposed to stay and fight for them with her, and anger surged through her, making her arms tingle with the adrenaline. Stupid man, drawing her out here only to leave her alone.

“Kaegan,” she called, jogging the trail he made through the weeds. Where had the man gone so fast? “Kaegan!”

An arm reached out and grabbed her by the waist, and she stifled a yelp. Kaegan’s hand went over her mouth as he dragged her against him. “Put this on,” he growled, holding out the muzzle.

“No! You’ve been trying to make me get rid of the stupid thing this whole time and now—”