by Kate L. Mary
“Shit,” she said under her breath.
The tradeoff was fast. Kellan pushed Harper forward, and she stumbled through the open gate where Andrew snatched her up. She had only been out of Kellan’s grasp for a second when he grabbed Blake and yanked him back through the gate.
Blake stumbled and fell to the ground, but Kellan didn’t look at him. He was too busy working to secure the lock.
“Pleasure doing business with you,” Andrew called as he dragged Harper away.
“They’re going to leave,” I said.
I couldn’t believe it. They were going to follow through with their end of the bargain and leave us alone. We were going to be okay.
All of us except Harper.
I pushed the thought aside and focused on Kellan. On the screen he looked so small, so scared, and my heart pounded as he worked on the lock, clicking it into place before turning to haul Blake to his feet.
He moved fast, practically dragging Blake toward the shelter. I attributed his speed to panic, to an intense desire to get back inside and make sure everyone was safe, but before he’d even reached the shelter, Jasper and Cade were there, both of them armed. Cade pulled Blake inside while Kellan turned back toward the fence, his gun up while he pulled out a second one. Gunfire burst through the air only a moment before Jasper lifted his shotgun and started firing.
“No,” I said as Cade appeared behind him and joined in the gunfight, a gun in each hand.
Emma gasped and grabbed for me, her hand squeezing mine. I wanted to run, to charge out and help them, but I was unarmed. Andrew had taken all my weapons back at the farmhouse.
The image seemed smaller than ever as a few of Andrew’s men went down while others started firing back. Their leader ran for the truck, pulling a screaming Harper with him. Inside the fence, Kellan had moved so he was behind the water trough, while Cade had ducked behind a pile of hay. It wasn’t great cover, but it seemed to be enough. Jasper still stood outside the door to the shelter, firing his shotgun.
An engine roared to life, and my attention was drawn from our friends. Andrew had Harper in the truck, and he was backing up, trying to flee. A couple of his men ran, one of them hitting the dirt when he was shot in the back, but another managed to make it to the truck and pull himself into the back. Others screamed for him to stop, but Andrew didn’t slow.
“No!” Emma screamed, the horror in her voice making my body hum with fear.
My eyes snapped to another screen, and then another as I searched for what had made her sound so panicked. The image on the third screen not only stole my breath away, it caused fissures in my heart that hurt worse than the punch Andrew had thrown.
Jasper was on the ground, his gun lying at his side, and even though the image in front of me was black and white, my brain registered the pool of red gathering under his body.
24
“No!” I yelled, echoing Emma’s exclamation.
I didn’t think, I just ran. Out of the control room and to the stairs, taking them two at a time. My brain registered the pounding of Emma’s footsteps behind me, but I didn’t look back. I remained focused on what was in front of me as I charged up the stairs.
When I reached the surface, I burst outside, dropping to the ground next to Jasper. The red had spread, soaking into the dirt beneath him and covering his shirt, and it only took one look at it to know there was nothing anyone could do.
“No,” I moaned, reaching for his shirt anyway, trying to pull it away so I could inspect the wound.
Jasper clasped at my hand while his breath came out in painful gasps. “Regan.”
“No, Jasper,” I said again, sobbing now. “Don’t leave me. Please.”
He reached up with the hand that wasn’t holding mine and patted my face. “My beautiful girl.”
“Jasper.” It was all I could say.
This man had saved me, and for that, I loved him, but there was so much more to it. He’d been like a second father since the day he’d found Kellan and me, and losing him was like losing my parents all over again. It opened a wound I’d thought had healed long ago, but as the pain pulsed through me, I realized it had only been dormant. Like a volcano erupting inside me, the ache throbbed through my body until it took my breath away.
Emma dropped to her knees next to me. “No. No. No.”
Like me, she seemed to be unable to say anything else.
“You’ll be okay.” Jasper’s voice was so low that I had to lean closer. “You have each other. That’s all you need.”
“We need you,” I said through my tears. “Who will take care of us?”
Jasper’s hand tightened on mine. “You can take care of each other.”
His gaze moved to Emma. “Blake and Cade will look after you, just like you’ll look after them.” Then he was looking at me again. “Kellan.” The word rasped out of him. “He loves you so much.”
I sobbed harder. “I love him, too.”
Jasper’s mouth turned up into a strained smile. “I’m just glad I was around long enough to see you two acknowledge it.” He winced, and his smile morphed into an expression of agony. “Don’t—” He took a deep breath. “Don’t let those men get away with her. We were wrong to shut people out. We shouldn’t have. Life isn’t worth living if there’s no risk.”
He let out a deep sigh and closed his eyes. My hand was still in his when his body went slack, and by then I was sobbing uncontrollably. He was gone. I knew he was, but I couldn’t let go of him. Not even when Emma threw her arms around me and sobbed into the crook of my neck. Not when Cade pulled her away. Not until Kellan dragged me to my feet and pulled me against his still bare chest.
“It’s okay,” he whispered over and over again. “It’s going to be okay.”
It didn’t feel like it was going to be okay. Jasper was dead, Blake was hurt, who knew what was going to happen with Harper now that Andrew had her.
Andrew!
I pulled back, my eyes wide as I looked around. Bodies littered the ground on the other side of the fence, eight at least, but the cars were gone.
“What happened?” I asked, turning my gaze back to Kellan
“They took off.”
“With Harper,” Emma said.
Kellan stiffened, his hands tightening on my shoulders. “I didn’t have a choice. You weren’t there. They were going to—” His voice broke, and his grip tightened until it made me gasp and he finally eased his hold on me. “I couldn’t stand there and let it happen. Not when I could do something to stop it.”
“I know,” I whispered, because it was true. If the situation had been reversed, I would have done the same thing. The idea of watching Kellan be tortured made me physically ill.
“No one blames you,” Cade said, his voice as firm as his grip on Emma. “The question is, what do we do about it now?”
“What can we do?” Emma asked. “We don’t know where they’re going.”
Kellan exhaled, his gaze moving between us and then down to Jasper. He stared at the man who’d been our father for the last nine years before focusing on the bodies beyond the fence.
I followed his gaze, squinting into the bright sun. In the distance, dozens of dots were headed our way, drawn here no doubt by the gunfire.
“We’re going to have company soon,” Kellan said.
Cade and Emma turned to face the incoming horde.
“Shit,” he said. “Like we need any more challenges.”
“It’ll be fine,” Kellan said. “You check on Blake. Make sure he’s okay. I’m going to make sure all those assholes are dead.” He turned his gaze on me. “Go inside.”
“I want to be with you.” I clutched his hand harder. “I’ll help you. It’ll be faster that way. Then we can take care of Jasper.”
“We have to bury him,” Emma said, sniffling.
“We will,” Kellan replied, his gaze still on me. “First we need to make sure the shelter’s secure and Blake is okay.”
Cade and Emma nodded, and
together they worked to get a still half out of it Blake inside. Giving me one more look of concern, Kellan headed for the gate, and I followed him.
“What’s the plan?” I asked as he unwound the chain.
He was still shirtless, making him vulnerable, and the idea of him going up against a zombie when he wasn’t as protected as he should have been terrified me.
“Right now I want to make sure none of Andrew’s men are still alive.” He tossed the chain on the ground and pulled the gate open. “We can deal with the dead later. After we’ve taken care of Jasper.”
Kellan and I went from body to body, relieving Andrew’s men of their weapons after making sure they were no longer breathing. I was armed, thanks to Jasper and Kellan, but it turned out it didn’t matter. No one was alive, and the dead were still so far away that they were little more than black dots on the horizon, and we were back inside the safety of the fence in no time.
Once Kellan had the chain secure, he turned to face me. “Was I wrong for putting your safety above hers?”
“I don’t know.” I crossed my arms over my chest when the memory of Andrew’s hands on my body slammed into me. “I don’t think—” I swallowed. “I don’t think it’s a simple black and white situation. Sacrificing her meant saving not only me, it saved you and Blake, too.”
Kellan sucked in a breath before slowly blowing it out. “I was only thinking about you.”
His words warmed me, and the shame of that feeling made me look down. It shouldn’t be that way, but knowing Kellan had thought of me above everyone else warmed me to my very core.
“Regan,” he whispered.
When I ventured a look up, he reached for me, grabbing my hips and pulling me against him. “If we don’t get her back, I’ll have to live with the guilt for the rest of my life, but I can’t regret it. I can’t. I couldn’t let them do that to you.”
“I wouldn’t have been able to stand by and watch them hurt you either,” I whispered.
Kellan leaned down, and I tipped my face up, allowing his lips to close over mine. The kiss was gentle and soft, but the way his fingers flexed on my hips made it seem like he was having a difficult time maintaining control. I knew the feeling. This thing wasn’t over, but we were safe for the moment, and I wanted to cling to that.
But we had other things to do, and we both knew it.
We laid Jasper to rest behind the shelter, beside the graves of our other family members. Blake, too injured to make the trip to the surface, was the only one missing when we lowered Jasper into the hole. I stood at Kellan’s side, leaning into him while Emma did the same with Cade. Of all the graves we’d had to dig over the years, this had been hardest.
“Does anyone have anything they want to say?” Cade asked.
I had so much to say about this man, but I suddenly found it impossible to get even a single word out. It felt as if my throat was on fire.
“He was more than a leader,” Kellan said, his voice even despite the tears shimmering in his eyes. “I know when this all started that was what Jasper thought he’d be, but for most of us, he was so much more. He was a father and a friend. He kept us together when tragedy threatened to rip us apart.” Kellan exhaled and closed his eyes. “Replacing him will be impossible.”
His words were followed by silence.
When no one else spoke, Cade grabbed a shovel and started filling the hole. Kellan followed his lead while Emma and I stood back, watching. There were only two shovels, making it impossible to help, but I couldn’t bring myself to turn away yet. I watched instead as shovelful after shovelful of dirt fell onto the white sheet covering Jasper’s body. With each passing second, less of it was visible, until he finally slipped from view completely.
Kellan and Cade seemed to work faster then, as if desperate to finish the job and escape. When the hole was filled, we went inside, leaning on each other like we needed the support to stay standing. Kellan was drenched in sweat from the hard work of first digging the hole, and then filling it, and my own clothes clung to my damp skin. I was desperate for a shower and exhausted from lack of sleep and the emotions of the day, but I couldn’t turn in for the night quite yet.
“Can we check on Blake?” I asked as we headed down.
Kellan gave me a squeeze. “Yeah. I want to make sure he’s okay.”
Emma, who was on duty for the next few hours, stopped outside the control room.
Cade stopped with her, calling after us, “Tell him I’ll be there in a few minutes to check on him.”
“We will.” Kellan waved over his shoulder.
Blake was sitting on the couch in the common area when we walked in, not the clinic like he was supposed to be.
“What are you doing out here?” I pulled away from Kellan and hurried to him. “You should be resting.”
“I can rest here just as well as I can down there,” he said then shook his head. “I was trying to come up, but I felt nauseous and had to sit down.”
I lowered myself onto the couch at his side. “You need to rest, Blake. Cade thinks you have a concussion.”
“I wouldn’t doubt it. That asshole got me good.”
“Let me see.” I reached out to touch his head, and he winced. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
He had a pretty nasty bruise on the side of his face and a bump on his head, but most of the damage seemed to be internal. Considering how hard that bat hit him, he didn’t look too bad off.
“Did you guys bury him?” Blake asked.
I dropped my hand to my lap. “We did.”
Kellan stopped at my side and rested his hand on my shoulder.
“I can’t believe he’s gone,” Blake whispered.
“It’s going to be tough to get used to,” I agreed.
Blake looked up, focusing on Kellan. “What now? Are we going to let these assholes go?”
“I don’t know.” Kellan’s hand tightened on my shoulder. “I want to try to get Harper back, but we have no idea where they took her. Not to mention the fact that we’re outnumbered. I counted six bodies, which means at least six men got away. There are only four of us.”
“Five,” I said.
Kellan looked down. “Blake has a concussion.”
“It’s just my head.” Blake waved his hand in the air. “I’m not letting those pricks get the better of me.”
“Regardless, we still have no idea where they went.”
“Back to the Holy City.” I looked up, meeting Kellan’s gaze. “Think about it. They have no idea we figured out where their hideout is. Right? The guys who took you died before their friends got back, which means Andrew never knew you were there, let alone that we came and saved you.”
Kellan frowned the way he did when he was thinking something through. “That’s true, but Harper might tell them. They’d be expecting us, then.”
“I don’t think she will,” I said, shaking my head. “Not after the gunfight. She has to know we didn’t want to give her up, and being outnumbered means the element of surprise is the only thing we have going for us.”
“So, you think we should go out there and rescue her just like you did with me?” Kellan asked.
“I think it’s worth a shot. We may get there and discover they’re long gone, but they could still be there. What if they have some injured people? They might have to stay for a few days to recover.”
“I still don’t like it,” Kellan said.
“It’s a better idea than anything I can come up with.” Blake tapped his head then winced. “Of course, that may be the damaged brain talking.”
“Your brain never worked all that fast, anyway,” Kellan muttered, not smiling despite the friendly jab. He let out a sigh. “We can talk it over. But tomorrow. We’re no good to Harper now. We’ve been up too long, and we need rest.”
He held his hand out to me and I took it, allowing him to pull me to my feet.
“Shower?” I asked, heat once again licking at my cheeks.
“I can�
�t wait for a shower,” he said.
25
The second the door to my condo was shut, Kellan was on me. His mouth found mine as his hands grasped at my hips, pulling me closer to him. His chest was still bare, and in the privacy of my living room, I was able to run my fingers over his muscles the way I’d been wanting to for a year. His skin was warm and soft under my palms, and inviting.
The kiss deepened, and I lifted myself up on my toes, grasping the back of his neck to pull him closer. We didn’t move from the living room, and I had a strange feeling Kellan was staying here intentionally, using it as a way to keep himself grounded. Like a million times before, I found myself cursing him for his self-control. I wanted more.
My mouth moved faster, and I pressed my breasts against his chest, for once not caring how small they were when he let out a groan.
“Regan,” he said against my lips.
I opened my mouth and ran my tongue over his.
“God, Regan,” he said again.
“What?” I barely pulled away when I spoke.
Kellan extracted himself and took a step back. “I’m not sure if this is the right time.”
“Right time?” He had to be kidding. I grabbed his hips and used the leverage to pull myself against him again, running my fingers up his arms and over his muscles. “It’s the perfect time.”
“We’re both exhausted and mourning, and stressed about everything that’s happened.”
He groaned when I kissed my way up his chest. I may have been a virgin, but thanks to the many romance novels Emma had loaned me, I had no shortage of knowledge about what a man enjoyed.
“And dirty,” I said when I reached the top of his chest. His soft stubble tickled my face when my lips brushed against the base of his neck. “But we could be dirtier.”
I kissed his neck, then his chin, then lifted myself up on my toes so I could cover his mouth with mine again. Kellan’s hands gripped my hips, and he kissed me back. Deeper than before. More desperate.
“Shower,” he said as he trailed his lips down my neck like I’d done with him. “Shower first.”