Hero for Hire (3 page)

While I waited for Mr. Channing, I sat. I stood. I sat some more. The magazines were nearly four years old and since most of the gossip in them was about celebrities who were either dead or Infected, I lost interest quickly. I wished I’d brought one of those trashy romance novels I’d stashed away to read when I missed people most. By the time I heard the sound of an approaching engine, I was tired, hungry, sore and bored, which made for a very cranky Gwyn.

A tall man entered through the door behind the window. He was well built, and his hair was backlit to a golden color by the evening sunlight. He moved with a careless male swagger, confidently in charge. I unfolded myself from the upholstered bench and strode to the glass, trying to ignore the multitude of aches moving brought on. As stiff and sore as I felt today, his easy movement annoyed me. I swallowed it down, reminding myself I needed these people, but they obviously didn’t need me.

When he stepped up to the glass, I saw him properly. He was beautiful in the way a big cat is beautiful–all golden, sleek, dangerous muscle. A man like him, well, he might actually manage to liberate my journals.

I pasted a smile on my face. “Hello. I–”

“Might be infected. I heard.”

I glanced away. “I’m not, and I’m in quarantine until you see I’m not. So Mr. Channing, it would be good if we could use the time we have right now to discuss terms.”

He cocked his head at me. “It’s not Channing. It’s Charming. Rafe Charming.”

I mirrored the tilt of his head, biting the inside of my cheek, but it made no difference. The ends on my mouth turned up until I felt an immense grin on my face.

His eyes narrowed. “Something funny?”

I tried. I really did. But it had been an awful day–hopeless, frightening, humiliating, boring and uncomfortable by turns. I simply didn’t have the internal fortitude to be professional anymore. I opened my mouth to tell him I was glad to meet him, but a snort of laughter came out, uncorking the unruly thoughts from my head. “Really? You go by Mr. Charming? Is that a stage name? Were you an actor before all this?”

“Stunt double, actually, but that has nothing to do with my name.”

I clapped my hand over my mouth, attempting to stop the flow of laughter. Instead, the firearm flung out of my brace again, hitting the window.

Mr. Charming dropped to the floor. I screamed as the gun bounced off the glass, jolting the revolving portion open, flinging bullets everywhere.
 
I sucked in a breath, and when I let it out a bubble of laughter escaped, followed by another until I could barely catch a breath. “I’m so sorry Mr. Charming. I’m just out of practice with people right now.”

He raised himself off the floor, glaring at me through the glass. “Lady, infected or not, you’re a hazard.” He turned and walked out, leaving me giggling helplessly in my very own little asylum.

Chapter 2

I slammed the guardhouse door behind me and climbed on the Harley. It started with a growl that matched my mood.
 
Revving it again, I took off up the winding road to the house.

Little Miss Might-be-infected could incubate overnight. We’d see what was left of her in the morning, when we’d either do business or I’d pump a couple of rounds into her pretty little head.

And it was a pretty head, I thought, rounding the S-curve before the driveway. Prettier than I’d seen in quite some time, even before the apocalypse. ’Course, for the last couple of years I’d been living with seven men. Plus, most of the women in LA were either dead or not-quite dead. So, my standards were lower than usual, but either way I looked at it, the dating pool was reduced to pretty much nothing. Unless I counted Mrs. Hester Davenport and her sister Iris Coleman, the dried-up old ladies two doors up the hill, which I didn’t. I wasn’t that desperate yet.

Speeding through the gates and up the driveway, I spun the bike under the portico where I cut the engine. I hoped our little butterfingers wasn’t infected. I’d like a chance to look at that face again, a little closer.

When I stalked into the foyer, I was so focused on finding Doc to discuss taking the girl on as a client that I missed the ambush. A blood curdling scream split the air right before six-year-old Rufus hurtled himself from the banister onto my back, followed by seven-year-old Rusty. Eight-year-old Ricky went for my legs. They were so fast, I didn’t even have a chance to react before I crumpled on purpose as we wrestled around on the travertine marble floors. When it came down to it, they were just three little boys.

“You’re not doing them any favors, you know.”

I barely heard Doc’s raspy voice over the noise of boys giggling in my ears. Ignoring Doc, I let the boys beat on me for another minute before I shook loose from the pile of kids.

“Okay guys, you did a great job getting the drop on me. But remember, when zombie hunting, you don’t want to wrestle them down, too much of a risk of being bitten. You’re better off sniping them from a distance, or–”

“We know, Rafe,” Rusty said, rolling his eyes. “Take them from a distance, stay away from teeth, claws or anything gooey. Blah, blah, blah. We
know
already.”

I chuckled as they all sulked out of the foyer, grumbling amongst themselves as they went.

“How is that not doing them any favors?” I asked Doc when he appeared at my side. “They have a good time and I reinforce safety lessons.”

Doc grunted. “You’re encouraging them to associate playing with hunting. Not a good way to make them take it seriously.”

It was my turn to roll my eyes. “Oh, please. Hunting
is
fun. But they’re not stupid. Do you think any one of them will forget losing their families? Being orphaned? Living in the streets at the mercy of those monsters? Let ‘em play, Doc, but trust me, they take those zombies seriously.”

“All right, fine, whatever,” he said. “So, what about the girl?”

We talked as we took the stairs to the second level, watching for ambushes along the way.

“I didn’t really get a chance to talk to her before she nearly killed us both.”

“Oh?”

“She had a handgun stuffed up her sleeve. You can guess what happened, right?”

“She flung it across the room?”

“Bingo.”

“She did the same thing with me. I’m surprised she’s managed to survive this long,” Doc said, shaking his head.

“Yeah. She’s crazy as a loon, cackling like she needed a wraparound jacket and a rubber room.”

Doc raised a bushy brow. “She did seem a little Rain Man.”

“Plus, she made fun of my name.”

At the second floor living room I flopped onto a brown leather couch, and propped my boot on the mahogany coffee table. Doc dropped onto the couch across from me. When we’d found this place a little over a year ago, it was obvious some super-rich fancy pants Hollywood guy had owned it. Probably a big time producer. We had no idea what happened to him, most likely infected, but the furniture had been the ugliest crap I’d ever seen. Looked like something a prissy poodle-in-my-purse person would like, all white and froufrou. So I took the guys raiding in some of the other empty mansions until we pieced together a decor we could live with.

Doc snorted. “That was pretty funny. Mr. Channing. So she thought Charming was amusing, huh?”

“She wouldn’t shut up with the laughing, so I just left. What did she want, anyway?”

“She wants us to retrieve some journals from Paragon Pharmaceuticals that she claims are hers.”

I dropped my foot to the floor and leaned my elbows on my knees. This chick had nerve.

“Seriously? She wants us to waltz into the very source of the zombie apocalypse, just to fetch her little diary?”

Back when the sickness started, every drug company in the world scrambled to find a cure. Paragon was the first to claim it had succeeded, but thanks to insatiable twenty-four seven media, the world watched in horror when, instead of fixing the problem, the vaccine only made it worse.

Doc shrugged.

“What did she offer in payment?”

“She had some weapons, some ammo. I’d guess she has more than she brought with her hidden somewhere.”

I stood and went to the window to survey the perimeter. The sun was sinking behind the horizon, casting a purple glow over the city. From this vantage, it was almost possible to forget what ruled the streets down there.

“It’s not like we can’t forage weapons or ammo on our own. We already have a whole basement full of them,” I said.

“Well, you’re the one who put up the flyers. If people want to use our services, they have to pay us with something. Even if we don’t really need anything.”

I turned from the window, meeting Doc’s gaze. “What I need is something to keep me busy so I don’t lose my mind locked up in this fancy prison.”

“A trip to Paragon should do the trick,” Doc said.

* * * *

The next morning after breakfast, I gave out work assignments to all the boys. Leaving Doc to supervise, I jumped on the Harley and headed back down the hill to see if the girl was still human. I had a shotgun slung into the makeshift holster on the side of the bike, just in case she showed signs of going bad. The one thing the world didn’t need was another zombie. If she’d turned I’d take her out. If our roles were reversed, I’d want her to do the same for me.

At the guardhouse, I parked the bike. Before entering the door on my side of the gate I chambered a shell in my shotgun, just in case. Inside, I slid the muzzle through the circular opening in the window, focusing it on the room beyond.

She slept on the bench facing the wall, all curled up in a ball. Small enough to be a kid, she reminded me of the boys up in the mansion. But the boys didn’t have eyes the color of a summer sky, or silky black hair, or a tiny little waist. Even thought she was petite, she was all woman. Something I hadn’t seen or touched in over two years.

“Hey,” I said, loud enough it jerked her out of sleep.

She scanned the room searching for the source of my voice. Still half asleep, she looked terrified. Probably worried I was a zombie attack and she was about to be breakfast. When she saw me in the window she seemed relieved. She ran her hands through her hair as she caught her breath.
 

“You startled me,” she said.

“Yeah, I could tell. So, am I going to have to put you down?”

“If by that you mean am I infected, it would appear not.”

“Come here so I can get a better look.”

She stood and stepped to the window. Her eyes were clear. She didn’t look feverish–no lesions, no rattling lungs.

“Looks like you’re clear.”

“I feel fine. Now that you know I’m not infected, can we discuss business?”

The silly girl from yesterday had disappeared overnight, replaced by a pretty ice princess.

“Sure. First, hand over the handgun so you don’t kill us both before we get to the house.”

Her eyebrows pulled together. Whether she was insulted or unwilling to give up her only protection, I couldn’t tell, but it made no difference to me.

She pulled the pistol from inside her sleeve. When she slid it toward me through the narrow slot at the bottom of the window, I grabbed it, checked the safety, which was off, and shook my head. Dumb luck had to be all that kept this girl alive. I put the safety on before jamming the gun in my waistband at the small of my back.

“I’ll open the gate and you can follow me up the hill. By the way, you can call me Rafe.”

“I’m Gwyn.”

I grinned. “Nice to meet you, Gwyn.”

Plenty of experience working with Hollywood starlets guaranteed that grin had a devastating effect on women. They’d blush, or get all shy and giggly. That’s when I knew I could reel ‘em in. But Gwyn just blinked. Certainly not the response I’d expected. On the upside, I seemed to have struck her speechless, which was interesting, maybe even promising.

I unlocked the door on her side, and she climbed into her Rover while I cranked the gate open using the manual override. Once she was inside I cranked it closed, then climbed on the bike. I headed up the hill, damsel-in-distress in tow.

Doc met us at the portico, wearing an apron. The bandana wrapped around his head made him look like he’d just stepped out of a pirate galley. I’d assigned fourteen-year-old Rocky to watch duty on the roof. He must have seen us heading up the hill and sent word down to Doc, who, from the looks of it, had been in the kitchen.