Sole Survivors: Crux Survivors, Book 2 (19 page)

“The one who did it is named Dave and he is there. Right now. Big, ugly fucker I want to take out myself.”

“That D is why they called you Delilah?” Chase asked.

She turned her back to them to pull the shirt on and Chase winced when he saw more scars on her back.

“They call me Daisy, Doris, Delilah and any other D name their peon brains can think of.”

“Why would they think you were willingly with them then?” Anger laced Tripp’s voice.

She smoothed the shirt back down over her hips and looked at him. “Because I made sure to prove I was willing. I’m not the only one Dave branded.”

“I’m going to be sick,” Jenna said as she walked a few feet away.

Tripp moved around Chase, slung a rifle over his shoulder and checked the safety on two handguns before tucking them into the back of his jeans. “I trust her.”

Chase still wasn’t sure. The woman could drive the truck in and let the raiders open fire on the back of it. “Look, your story is awful and I do believe you want to help Cadmar’s family. I do. But I’m not going into that place like we’re in some kind of modern-day Trojan horse. If there are only ten—”

“Around ten,” she corrected. “But there are several people there who will just want to leave on their own. They’ve only stayed to help that family.”

Chase looked at Ross. “She could lure them out to the truck, show them the good stuff in the back and the rest of us could sneak in and take them by surprise.”

“That’s a good plan,” Ross agreed. “Describe the two we aren’t going to kill.”

“It’s easy. There are actually three. A black man, the only other woman than Cadmar’s mother and a teen girl. The girl won’t come willingly, but she isn’t—” MacKenzie broke off, scowled. “She doesn’t stay with them willingly either. She’s not quite right in the head right now. Just don’t kill her.”

They were going to kill the rest. Chase knew if they let anyone live, the returning raiders would learn too much about them. But this way felt better. This was fighting, not sneaking poison into their midst. “When we leave, we’ll have to go out of our way. Throw the trail off. We could be leading them right back to Keera’s.”

“About that.” MacKenzie walked up to Keera, her harsh features softening as she stared at the shorter woman. “I know what made those raiders take off in the middle of the night. One of the men you fought at that waterfall didn’t die. I saw him stagger onto the farm last night. I tried to get to him first, but he was spotted before I could take him out. I’m sure that’s why they all left. He told them about you and Chase, so the others left to find you two. They probably think there are more people and more supplies. It might be better for you not to go back.”

Keera felt the world narrow around her. Dizziness swamped her and she closed her eyes.

“Fuck,” Chase breathed next to her. He turned and grabbed her arms. “Keera, look at me.”

She just shook her head and tried to tug her arms away, but he held onto her. Tight.

“Look at me.”

She dragged her eyes open, stared into the fierce blue of his. “My home, Chase. They’re going to destroy my home.”

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart.” He tightened his fingers. Not hard enough to hurt, but tight enough to remind her she wasn’t alone in this.

Keera looked around at the group of people she’d known such a short time. Ross and Dorian, so kind, so smart, loving and strong. Jenna, who was all those things and more—someone Keera felt could turn into a close friend. She stared at Tripp, who stood fierce and angry next to the guns. Cadmar leaned on the truck next to him, watching her with his big heart in his pretty green eyes. MacKenzie…a woman she didn’t know but one who had been branded.
Fucking branded
.

She was worrying about a place when there were all these more important people around her. She looked back up at Chase and felt that odd thump in her chest, the one that told her she knew she wouldn’t have been able to leave this man anyway. “I’m glad we filled Ross’s truck with clothes and plants, but I do wish we’d loaded up more food before we left. And my books.” She tried to smile, knew it wasn’t her best one.

Chase pulled her in for a tight hug.

Too tight.

“Umph,” she gasped. “Can’t breathe.”

“Sorry.” He let her go. Almost. He kept both hands on her arms, watched her closely.

“They’ll probably find the shelter. I left Dax’s urn down there. Should have let his ashes go like he wanted. Some place in Georgia where his first love died. Oh.” She lifted her hand to her mouth. “There’s a box in that shelter full of candy.”

MacKenzie frowned.

Keera wanted to laugh but she felt too raw. She knew the woman was thinking she’d completely lost it because she was worrying about candy. “There’s something in that candy they don’t want to eat.”

“Seriously?” A rumble started in Chase’s chest. It quickly turned into laughter.

The others joined in. Even MacKenzie cracked a smile. She was pretty when she smiled.

“Yeah, Dad planned for everything.” Keera blinked. “He made the candy in case we were overrun, kept it in the house so we could hide in the shelter and hopefully come out when they’d all eaten it. I put it down in the shelter not too long ago.” She didn’t say why. Didn’t bring up that awful night when she’d nearly made a futon her permanent resting place.

Instead, she’d later made love on it with Chase. She stared at him, at this man she knew she already loved. She wouldn’t have been able to let him leave anyway, wouldn’t have asked him to stay when the others had so much more to offer.

“Why candy?” Jenna asked.

Dorian shook his head, tucked a strand of black hair behind his ear. “Candy is perfect. Hard candies?”

Keera nodded.

“The perfect way to poison a group. Nine out of ten people are going to have a sweet tooth. Too bad we didn’t pack those, eh?” He turned to the truck. Handed Cadmar a gun. “You ready for this, Caddie?”

The kid scowled. “I asked you to stop calling me that.”

His grouch seemed to snap everyone into motion. As the people around her armed themselves and prepared to take out a group of bad people, Keera found herself being tugged against Chase.

“I’m so sorry about your place, Keera. I really am.”

She stood on her toes and wrapped her arms around his neck. “I was torn. Wanted to ask you and Tripp to stay with me. But I wanted to go with them too. If you did.”

“I hoped you’d want to go to New Mexico.” He kissed her neck, spoke next to her ear. “I felt all kinds of bad for hoping you’d leave your home but I didn’t want it to be this way.”

“We don’t know for sure they’ll find it,” she started, then swallowed the rest of what she’d been about to say. Instead, she stepped back, offered him a better smile this time. “It’s not worth risking any of you and there isn’t a person in this group who would let me go back there alone to make sure.”

“Got that right.” Ross walked past her and ruffled her hair.

 
Keera felt torn by so many emotions, nausea stirred in her stomach. She was about to fight to free a family who’d been held hostage over a year and in her heart, she knew she would never be going back to the place she’d lived her entire life. She wouldn’t see her garden again, her books. She’d forgotten to give Ross a copy of
Dorian Gray
. She had years of food stored in the shelter and her root cellar. She had her pictures of her father and even one of Dax.

The loss threatened to buckle her knees, but she forced it back deep—into a place she could pull it out later and deal—because right now, this thing with Cadmar’s family needed to come first.

Chapter Thirteen

“I really don’t like watching that woman drive into that place by herself.”

Chase glanced at his brother before quickly looking back through the field glasses. They were lying in tall grass behind one of the barns. MacKenzie had told them this barn was mostly used to make fuel, so it would be empty since the ones who did that had taken off in the night. Something much smaller than a human scurried in the brush next to him. Sounded like it had feet, so odds were good it wasn’t a snake. He tried not to think about the three snakes he’d already seen in this tall, scratchy grass. Three snakes that should have been in burrows somewhere waiting out the winter.

“One of us could have hidden in the back seat. Made sure she was okay.” Tripp snorted. “But no. She had to go by herself.”

Cadmar hadn’t stopped looking through his binoculars. “That woman can take care of herself.”

“Yeah,” Tripp drawled. “That brand on her side proved that.”

“Probably took ten men to hold her down.” Cadmar’s murmur broke off as he made a strange noise. “I think that’s my father.”

“Which one,” Chase asked.

“Red hair. Overalls. My brother has red hair too, so he should be easy to spot.”

“I can’t get rid of the image of her being held down for that iron.” Tripp groaned and thumped his hand on the ground. “I want to kill this Dave person.”

“Tripp.” Chase set down his glasses to look at his brother. “We’re all disgusted and horrified at what was done to that woman. All of us. But you’re going to have to set it aside and focus. She’s pulling in now.”

MacKenzie parked the semi-truck and jumped out of the driver’s seat. A huge smile turned her face pretty as she hugged a shorter black man to her. He was on the no-kill list. Several other people came out of the house and Chase sized them up. Three men and two women joined MacKenzie and the black man. MacKenzie had said one other woman besides the teen girl and Cadmar’s mother. When she didn’t immediately hug any of the others, just kept her arm around the first man, Chase had a feeling the new woman was a surprise. MacKenzie’s scowl confirmed it.

“I get the feeling she didn’t know this woman was there,” Chase said, his voice low. “Doesn’t seem to like her.”

“No, she doesn’t,” Ross agreed.

The woman they referred to walked around to the back of the truck and opened it.

Her whoop was loud enough to scare a few birds out of the field behind them.

“You hit the jackpot, D! Hey Wallis, come check out the food she found. Think this is all still good?”

Chase couldn’t hear anyone’s replies once they reached the woman and she stopped yelling. Anger tightened his hands on the binoculars as he watched them open some of Keera’s food. He didn’t want their hands on it—none of them. He and Dorian had removed all the plants and some of the food, but left a few things to make it seem like a good haul for MacKenzie. Two more people came out of the house. A woman and a man, both of whom carried weapons. The man kept his gun ready as he eyed MacKenzie. Her glower back at him let Chase know he wasn’t one of the ones they were supposed to save either.

“This is going to be difficult,” Ross said. He lay on his stomach on Chase’s other side. “So far, I know we don’t shoot MacKenzie, her black friend and the red-haired man in overalls. She said the only other woman and the teenager, but I’m sure she wasn’t talking about the one in the back of the truck. Damn. We need to know where Cadmar’s mother and brother are and how many more are in that house.”

A cow mooed from the barn. “Well, we know they haven’t slaughtered one of our milk cows, at least,” Cadmar said.

Chase didn’t point out the milk yesterday had proved that, but he knew the kid was nervous.

“Wish we could just pick them off now.” Jenna was on the other side of Ross.

Chase turned to make sure Keera was still behind him. She patted the back of his calf to let him know she’d caught him checking. He couldn’t help it. Just the thought of something happening to her stilled his heart. She’d crawled so far into it, she’d taken up permanent residence.

Hell of a thing. Realizing you’re completely and head-over-heels in love in the middle of a snake-infested field right before what was sure to be a gunfight. He should have told her. Given her the real words.

Three more men walked outside. Cadmar sucked in an audible breath, then dropped his field glasses. He quickly scrambled for them. “Holy shit.”

“What?” Tripp poked his shoulder, reached for the glasses. “Let me see.”

“No. Wait your turn.” He stared a long time, then sighed. “Nobody hurt the tall redhead. I think that’s my little brother.”

“Your little brother?” Chase asked. He blinked, looked again, squinted. Now that he was looking closely, he could tell the kid was young. He had the soft roundness in his cheeks and chin still. “I take it he’s changed?”

“Holy shit. Yeah, he has. He’s just fourteen. When I left, he was shorter than me.”

“This sucks. I can’t see enough. Somebody give me some binoculars.” Tripp tried to grab Chase’s.

They had three pairs of glasses between them, so Ross must have taken pity on Tripp because he handed him his pair. “Okay, there are eleven people there besides MacKenzie. We know the barns are clear, we know not to shoot the two redheaded men and the black man. Did I miss her hug anyone else? And have we seen Cadmar’s mother yet?”

“No.” Chase tried to adjust the glasses to see through a slit in the curtains. “There’s no way to know how many are still in the house with her, though.”

“I hope she’s okay.” Cadmar gave his glasses to Jenna.