by Dani Worth
He met her gaze and whatever snapped between them made her heartbeat pick up again. He smiled, one corner of his lips not moving up because of the scars. “I’ve never known anyone who hasn’t been.”
Chapter Two
Watching Keera walk away was the hardest thing Chase had done since he’d had to bury his sister and leave her in that lonely backyard grave. As he walked, he glanced back to see that Keera had climbed the huge, jutting rock formations behind the waterfalls so she could watch him. Something in her stance told him she might be feeling a little of the same pull.
If he were any kind of brother, he’d set it up so Tripp got a chance with her. He couldn’t pinpoint the woman’s age, but he guessed she was in her twenties, like Tripp, and damn, would his little brother go nuts over her. Tripp watched an old movie called The Mummy constantly and Keera looked a lot like the actress in it. Same silky-looking black hair, same big, dark eyes and full, pouty lips. Yeah, she might be just the thing to keep Tripp from his scary silences of late.
A primitive anger suddenly burned in his gut and he stopped abruptly before forcing himself to continue moving. He felt possessive and she wasn’t his. Hell, he barely remembered what it was like to have a girlfriend. He’d had one once and at sixteen, they’d been hot and heavy, but then the Crux had taken her away. Along with his mom, his uncles, friends…and everyone else. It had just been him, Tripp and Maggie—the twins only six years old. He’d scouted out Oklahoma City for two years and in that time had only come upon Jeff and Mooch.
The grief he still carried for that sweet couple made his chest ache.
He stopped and looked back.
Keera was gone.
He stared at the place she’d been—standing like a small, perfect goddess on those rocks—and he felt the world crumble beneath his feet. He was a damned fool. She’d probably never show up at the RV. He’d never see her again.
He stepped over a moss-covered log, grimaced at a mass of black bugs crawling on the kudzu. Another random shot of green—like a lot of it he’d seen, while there were huge patches of dead, brown or gray vines in most places. He guessed the winter hadn’t been harsh enough to kill it all off, but the bugs were a surprise.
Chase picked up the pace, hoping to run off the fierce resentment boiling in his gut. When he walked out of the woods and up to the RV, he felt eyes on him and knew his brother kept watch. The gun coming out of the window stopped him for a second, and then he couldn’t help but grin when Tripp growled loud enough for the sound to trickle through the wall.
“I said I’d shoot you if you came back without some real food,” he yelled through the open window. “I don’t want freeze-dried spaghetti goo or beef stew-ish surprise tonight. Thought I got that across, Dimwit.”
“We’re going to be eating something better than gamey rabbit.”
The thin door to the RV creaked as Tripp pushed it open and leaned against the jamb. “I like gamey rabbit.” He rubbed his flat stomach and for the first time, Chase truly realized his little brother had lost that awkward late-teen gangly look and grown into a man. Keera would probably go crazy over his overgrown little brother. A little brother who’d topped him by at least two inches.
Chase scowled at the thought of Keera with his brother—even though he hoped she liked him.
“What?” Tripp grinned. “Thought you wanted gamey rabbit too. And what about fish? See any good ones in that creek?”
“I saw a good one, all right,” Chase murmured.
Tripp leaned right, then left as he peered with exaggeration around Chase. “Don’t see anything good.”
“I saw a woman.”
Tripp’s mouth fell open, his blue eyes flaring wide. He jumped to the ground, then promptly stumbled over his big feet. He was back on them within a second. “A woman? A real live breathing woman? With real live boobs?”
Chase rolled his eyes. Real live boobs? “Let me just say I’m glad she didn’t come back here with me to witness you stumbling over the thought of boobs. You don’t want to scare her off.”
“Was she pretty?”
He brushed past his brother to check on one of the windows that had rattled loose a few miles back. He set his rifle against one of the tires.
“Chase, come on. Tell me about the girl. Was she pretty or not?”
Chase straightened up. “Would it matter, Tripp? Would it really matter in this world whether she was pretty or not?” He spread his arms. “As far as I’m concerned, they’re all pretty.”
Tripp pushed his lips out, tilted his head, then nodded. “True, even Mooch was kind of pretty.”
Chuckling, Chase shook his head. “Bet you never told Jeff you thought his boyfriend was pretty.”
“Nah, he would have told Mooch and the guy was small but did you ever notice the size of his hands and feet? One boot to the head would have caved in my skull.” He watched Chase a moment, sad memories painting shadows on his expression, then released a low chuckle. “Oh yeah, she was pretty. I can tell. So what happened? Where’d she go?”
“Home, I guess.”
“Think there are more people there?”
“She said there weren’t.” He thought about telling Tripp about the raiders, but didn’t want to upset him. The journey here had been a lot more morbid than even Chase had expected. Tangled vines and weeds covered most everything, rats infested buildings and heavy layers of depressing decay darkened towns. The worst were the bones…bones in unexpected places. One town had been overrun with packs of wild dogs and they’d strewn human bones everywhere. Tripp had been quiet for a week after that.
“One woman means there are more people out there, Chase.”
“We know there are. We found Jeff and Mooch and we’ve run into others.”
“Raiders. Don’t consider them people, to tell you the truth.” Tripp shoved his hands into the pockets of his holey jeans. “I mean people who are trying to make it, you know? The smart ones who have started over, moved into safe places that aren’t on the main roads. If you can call anything a road these days. But people. People with gardens.”
Again, Chase bit his tongue. He’d started to tell Tripp about the promise of fresh food—well, fresher than the freeze-dried fare they’d been living on—but what if she didn’t show? And he refused to acknowledge the knot of regret that tightened his chest at the thought.
Tripp was twenty-three years old and though he still sometimes showed the energy and exuberance of youth, he’d grown up in survival mode just like every other person out there. He was probably strong enough to take the disappointment if she didn’t show. But protecting Tripp had been Chase’s life. He wasn’t sure he’d ever stop.
“So tomorrow, before we find the plantation, let’s go into town and see if we can salvage some clothes or material for some. I’m tired of looking at your raggedy clothes.”
“We could go home. We had all those things in storage. Maybe the raiders didn’t find them.”
“We’re never going home, Tripp. You know that. We have to find a new place—we need more people. I know you miss your sister—” Chase broke off when his brother’s expression flattened to the scary, distracted one he’d been seeing more and more.
Nodding, Tripp walked back to the RV. He didn’t say anything, just hopped inside and shut the door.
Chase strode into the woods and sat behind a tree. Burying his hands in his hair, he worked to still the racing emotions tearing him up. The loss of Maggie still ripped into his heart every single day. They couldn’t go home, couldn’t ever visit her grave. They had to find a new home with people who were trying to rebuild civilization. Their own lives depended on it. They could find more stored freeze-dried foods, they could survive off the land, and they could find clothes that had been packed away and were still usable…but loneliness could eventually cause them to do what countless other survivors had done.
Give up.
In one town, he’d seen one—a survivor dead from suicide—and the sight of that decomposed body in a patch of
yellow wildflowers would haunt his dreams forever.
He was determined to find his brother a new life so that didn’t happen. These silences of Tripp’s, they terrified him.
Of course Keera followed Chase. She wasn’t letting him leave without knowing more. Nothing, absolutely nothing, had happened in her life in so long. She wanted to see where he stayed, watch him with his brother and try to get a feel for what kind of person he was.
The younger brother was a looker too—prettier, less rugged. His hair, a blond that reminded her of summer wheat, had been recently hacked off. And badly. The same royal blue eyes were bright enough to see even from her cover of trees. Her gaze went back to Chase. The bright sun wasn’t kind to the scarred half of his face, but the twisted lines did nothing to dampen his appeal. He strode across the clearing in front of their RV and she couldn’t keep from watching the muscles bunch in his thighs. His jeans were ridiculous. Too tight and so full of holes, she could see the light brown hair on his legs shimmering in the sunlight. Hair the same soft color as his beard.
The brothers were thin—a lot thinner than her father or Dax had been—but her family had stored jeans and clothes of different sizes in the bunker. Dax had been a mountain of a man who had always been trying to lose weight. He’d left shirts she could take in, though she kind of sucked at sewing. These two had the lean, wiry builds that would probably never fill out one of Dax’s old shirts, but it looked like the boots might work.
But first, Keera had to be sure they wouldn’t just kill her and take her things.
The instinct to clothe and feed the men surprised her. She’d been on her own since her father had passed away three years before. By all rights, she should be insane by now, but she’d learned that keeping busy kept her from losing it.
Until recently. Recently, there had been a lot of bad nights. Even worse thoughts.
But today there were people. Other people who were possibly good. The zip of giddiness jolting through her surprised her. That was certainly a long-forgotten feeling.
She listened to Chase tell his brother they couldn’t go home. The younger man’s sadness as he walked back to the RV made her heart ache, but watching Chase sink to the ground out of his brother’s sight made her knees buckle. She pressed one palm against a tree to keep from following him to the ground. There was an enormous mass of carpenter ants in the hollowed-out bottom of the trunk and she didn’t want those on her.
Keera couldn’t imagine traveling, couldn’t imagine the things they saw on the road. In town, most had fallen ill and died in their beds, but she’d come across one or two who’d collapsed inside their stores and not been able to get up. She’d left the bodies there, just as her father told her to. Better for raiders to think the town held no survivors than to show cleaned-up buildings in town.
Watching Chase, she decided then and there to risk it. She was tired of being lonely. She’d bring them food in the morning as promised and stick around to talk.
Keera turned to go, but halted in her tracks when she spotted movement in the brush. Reddish-brown fur with small black spots showed between leaves, and as she stared, the bobcat came fully into view. A gold-eyed gaze met her eyes. The cats mostly left her alone in these woods, preferring to go after smaller prey, but this one stared her down. It could have a litter nearby but that was doubtful at this time of year. But then, everything felt off this winter. It barely felt like winter at all.
The cat made a long, growling sound. A female in heat calling for a mate. Keera froze, sure the men had heard the noise. The RV’s door squeaked. She didn’t turn, didn’t take her eyes off the cat. She couldn’t run because that would only provoke it.
Something rustled behind her and the cat growled again, low in her throat.
“Don’t move,” Tripp said as he came up beside her, a rifle sighted on the cat.
“Don’t shoot her,” Keera said, voice low. “Just turn and go back to your RV. She’s only looking for a mate.” She glanced to her right to see that Tripp had every intention of shooting the cat—his intent blazing in his expression. Taking a deep breath, she stepped toward him just as the cat must have decided more than one human was too much. It turned and fled as Keera pushed the rifle up.
“Dammit,” he growled. Lowering the gun, the young man swung his gaze to her, his pretty blue eyes going wide. “You the woman my brother found in the creek?”
“Hi Keera,” Chase said as he came around the trees. He held his gun as well.
“Thank you both for coming to my rescue, but the cat probably wouldn’t have bothered me.”
“You followed me back.” It wasn’t phrased as a question, but Chase lifted an eyebrow.
“I wanted to see you with your brother, make sure you’re a nice guy before I bring the food.”
“What food?” Tripp asked, eyes now narrowed but still stuck on her. “You’re wearing Chase’s coat.”
She found her gaze returning to the scarred Chase with his longer, sun-streaked light brown hair. “Your brother loaned it to me. I told him I’d share some of the vegetables and fruit I canned this summer.”
“You have a garden?” Tripp leaned against the tree, then scowled as carpenter ants crawled onto his hand. He shook it and straightened back up.
She had to smile at the longing in his voice. “I do. My father was an avid gardener and I learned to save seeds and grow things pretty much from birth.” She glanced at Chase again, then had to drag her gaze from him to get a good look at the younger brother. The boy…or young man, since he looked like he’d passed his twenty-year mark, was tall—over six feet. He had a square jaw, soft, full lips, a long nose—one of the most attractive faces she’d ever seen actually. Like Chase, his jeans and T-shirt had seen better days.
Chase cleared his throat. “We don’t have a lot to trade.”
“I don’t need a trade. I have everything I need.” She sighed. “I do have to get going, though. There are more big cats in the woods these days and they tend to get braver after dark. So do the wolves.”
“We’ll take you home,” Tripp said quickly, flashing a charming grin.
She couldn’t stop the return smile. The kid had charisma and an obvious sweet nature. She looked back at Chase, who stood silent and watchful, his expression harder and not only due to the scars. He’d helped her fight off the raiders…but he had a darker edge to him that still sent up her radar. It unfortunately seemed to be awakening all her interest too. “I’ll come back tomorrow. Will you two still be here?”
Chase frowned. “I was going to move us on to the plantation tonight. We’re all charged up.”
“Okay. I think I can still get my car there. It’s small.” She grimaced. “But now that I’m thinking about it, you might not be able to get all the way there in that big vehicle. Few years back, a bad storm swept through and knocked a bunch of trees down. There are a lot of abandoned cars…that highway is a mess.”
“You have a car?” Tripp took a step closer.
Keera instinctively took two quick steps back.
He held up his hands. “I swear, I won’t hurt you. Couldn’t. Not for anything. Please don’t be scared.”
“Can’t be too cautious these days,” she murmured, glancing at Chase to find that sharp blue gaze glued to her face. “As your brother can tell you from earlier. Thanks for helping me fight them again.”
“Fight?” Tripp’s face lost all color. He turned to his brother. “There was a fight? Raiders?”
“Shit.” Chase set down his gun and held his hands out to his brother. “Tripp, don’t freak out on me. I was going to tell you, I promise.”
But Tripp didn’t say anything. Instead, he only stood there, swallowing, and it looked like he was trying to gulp razorblades. His face had gone so white, alarm filled Keera.
“It was just a couple of jerks who didn’t want to take no for an answer, Tripp.” She smiled and risked walking a little closer to him. “Your brother was great. He helped me.” She looked at Chase.
/> His lips tightened as he briefly met her gaze then looked back to his brother. “Hey, it’s okay. Look at me. I’m okay. This was nothing like last time. Are you listening to me? See anything on me? Wounds? Blood? There’s nothing, right?”
“You almost died,” Tripp muttered. “Like Maggie.”
The grief that flashed across Chase’s scarred face threatened to send Keera to her knees again. Damn, these two had fresh wounds. Such fresh, fresh wounds. “I have a cool electric car, Tripp, and a solar-powered set-up at my home that keeps the car powered.” She bit her lip. “You guys probably have honey because the stuff seems to have an infinite shelf life, but I have a ton of it if you’d like some.”
“You have a hive?” Tripp asked the question, but he hadn’t looked away from his older brother.
“Wouldn’t that be nice?” Chase smiled his half smile. “Think about how much that will help mask the freeze-dried cardboard we’ve been eating.”
“It hasn’t been that bad.” Tripp’s voice, barely raised, took on a sort of blankness…like his throat had been suddenly hollowed out. Or his soul.
Though worry made her want to stick around, Keera glanced at the sky. “I do have to leave. But I promise to meet you two tomorrow with my thanks for the help today.”
Chase finally looked away from his brother. “You don’t owe me any sort of thanks. Any decent person who’d come along would have helped too.”
She offered him a sad smile. “That’s the thing. Not too many people left and the decent ones seem pretty few and far between. I couldn’t have taken them on by myself. I appreciate it.” She glanced at Tripp, who seemed to have zoned out—still staring at his brother’s face. “He okay?” she mouthed.
Chase shrugged. “He will be.” He spoke aloud, surprising her. He walked forward and put his arm around his brother’s waist and pulled him close to his side. “He’s not hearing us right now. Or at least, I don’t think he is. It’s a kind of um…”
“Post-traumatic stress,” Keera supplied. “I know. I’ve seen it before.” Twilight began to creep over the clearing behind the brothers. “I really do have to leave. I promise to bring you both something good tomorrow.”