The Lair

CHAPTER EIGHT

Carter

I crept across the side porch of the house, my heart pounding from my flat-out run from the truck. And, yeah, my terror. What would I do if I was too late? If something had already happened to her?

During the crazy drive down the mountain, I tried to tell myself that I was overreacting. Okay, so Lily had left on a supply raid without telling me. Yeah, I was pissed. But just because I was paranoid, that didn’t mean she was in immediate danger. But then I’d called Stu a second time. And no one answered. Not Stu, not Jacks, not Lily. On a three-person team, someone should be able to answer the damn phone. Unless they were in serious trouble.

Using two hands, I held my Glock extended out in front of me as I moved down the porch, constantly scanning the yard and the interior of the house for signs of movement. The house looked innocent enough. A white farmhouse with a deep porch wrapped around the first floor. An open yard with a detached garage a hundred feet away. The grass in the yard had gone wild and long even though it was only early spring. The grass shifting in the breeze was the lone sign of movement.

In this crazy world, there was one thing—one goddamned thing—that actually mattered to me. Keeping Lily safe. Why the hell couldn’t I do that one thing?

I rounded the corner onto the west side of the house and saw Stu laying in a crumpled hump on the porch. Swallowing a curse, I crossed to Stu’s side, crouched, and pressed a couple of fingers to his neck, searching for a pulse without ever lowering my weapon or diverting my gaze. I found his pulse, which was weak but steady. A quick glance and pat-down assured me that Stu had been knocked out but not stabbed or shot. The absence of a gaping hole in his chest meant we weren’t dealing with Ticks.

A flicker of movement caught my attention when I stood. Someone, a huge guy, had Jacks in a stranglehold and was dragging him through the kitchen. But where the hell was Lily?

Rage coursed through my veins, along with a healthy dose of panic as my instincts warred with my training. I knew what Sebastian would say. I had to assess the situation. Before I acted. Before I charged in there and made things worse.

But if this guy had laid so much as a finger on Lily, I was going to kill him.

I sucked in a deep breath and blew it out slowly, trying to calm down enough to think. I didn’t have a clear shot. I needed to get in the house and sneak up on the guy.

He was standing at the foot of the stairs, yelling up the stairs at someone. Probably Lily.

Who else could it be, right? He’d already taken out Stu. It must be Lily.

I sucked in another deep breath and weighed my options.

If I tackled the guy, the gun could go off. If I just shot him in the back, the bullet would go straight through Jacks.

I moved around the corner and found the door. I yanked my picks from my pocket, tucked the gun back in its holster at the back of my waist, and crouched down to get started on the lock. I was normally pretty fast with the lock pick, but there was more than one dead bolt and I had to keep pausing to shake the tremors out of my hands. I opened the door just in time to hear Lily call down an answer to something the guy had said. Relief flooded me.

I crept around the corner just in time to see her hand her bow over to a little girl and I knew she was ass deep in trouble. The guy moved the gun away from Jacks’s neck. He was gonna shoot Lily. Right here in front of me. He was going to shoot her unless I did something to stop it.

After all this time. After all the things I’d done to protect her and keep her safe. She was going to get shot.

Anger washed through me as I charged the guy. Barreling into him was like plowing head first into a brick wall, but I was fast enough and mad enough that I knocked him back a step. The gun fired a rapid spray of bullets as all three of us flew through the air and slammed into the ground.

The impact rattled my bones and my head. My ears were ringing from the gunshot. I pushed myself to my knees, shaking my head to clear my ears. For a long second, I was disoriented, the lack of hearing throwing me off balance. Then I looked up the stairs to where I expected Lily to be. She stood at the second-floor landing. For the briefest second, I was overjoyed. She was alive. I’d made it in time.

But her skin had gone a ghostly white. Her mouth was wide and gaping. Her eyes panicked. Her lips bright as blood.

I called her name. At least, I thought I did. Though her mouth was moving, I couldn’t hear her. I couldn’t even reach her in time. All I could do was watch as she sagged against the wall. Her eyes rolled back in her head as her feet slipped out from under her. Lily had been shot. That single stray bullet had hit her. She tumbled down the stairs, leaving a smear of crimson on the wall.

And in that moment, I knew what it was like to be killed by a Tick. To have my chest ripped open and my heart torn out. It was beyond pain. Beyond imagining. Shock and anguish roared through me.

The ringing mingled with the screams coming from several different places. And with my own blood pounding through my head, blocking out reason and logic and caution.

There are a lot of things I could have done to eliminate this guy as a threat.

A fist to the guy’s jaw. Over and over again. Followed quickly by solid punches to both kidneys. My forearm pressed into his windpipe to cut off his oxygen supply along with jabs to the ribs. A solid knee in the nuts.

Any one of those things would have disarmed the guy. Hell, I might have done all of them.

I don’t know. Because when I saw Lily go down, pure, blinding rage overtook me. Hot and intense. Next thing I knew, I was being pulled off the guy and pounded myself. Someone was holding me and someone else was jabbing me in the stomach. I kicked up my legs trying to break free and take out the guy using me like a punching bag, but a third guy’s fist slammed into my jaw so hard it made my teeth clatter.

The three of them together, they were going to tear me limb from limb. And I welcomed it, because if Lily was gone, then what was left?

Then I heard the unmistakable click-clack of a shotgun being primed.

Everyone froze.

The two guys who’d been hammering on me slowly turned to face the gunman, edging out of the way so that I could see him. Or rather, her.

The person holding the shotgun was a little girl. She was maybe six. Seven, at most. With long, dark hair and a thin face that looked underfed but stubborn as hell.

I looked from the man on the ground at my feet to the guys who’d pulled me off him. The gun-toting asshole had a couple of bruises already forming on his cheeks and his lip had been spilt open, but I hadn’t done any permanent damage. The three boys who’d pulled me off him ranged from about my age to a year or so younger. The guy who was holding me didn’t let go, but the other two held up their hands as though ready to surrender. Then I looked back up the stairs to the little girl.

Hell, how could she even hold the shotgun? The damn thing looked like it weighed more than she did, but she held it tight to her shoulder, like someone who’d been using it her whole life. And, well, if this family was tough enough to survive the Ticks, then maybe she had.

“Are you here to kill my daddy?” she asked.

It took me a heartbeat to realize she was talking to me. The haze of my rage was clearing along with my ears.

But Lily had been shot. I could still see her crumpled body lying on the stairs. Blood still stained her lips, which meant internal bleeding. Which usually meant death, even in the Before, in a world with ER surgeons and ambulances.

If I told this girl yes, would she shoot me?

But even I wasn’t enough of an asshole to force a little girl to execute me.

“No,” I said.

I glanced down at the other man, who was only now starting to sit up. With his legs stretched out in front of him, he rubbed his hand over his stubble-covered jaw. He glanced down at the blood on his hand.

The oldest of the boys wiped his palm on the leg of his jeans and said, “Now Danielle, you hand that shotgun over to me before someone gets hurt.”

But the girl just narrowed her eyes. When she spoke her voice was strong, but small. “I’m not putting the gun down until you go get Dawn so she can tend to Lily.”

Wait. Tend to Lily? Was she still alive? I kept my gaze pinned on her chest until I saw it rise and fall. I surged forward toward the stairs, but the guys holding me tightened their grips and I couldn’t break free.

“Danielle, you are going to be in a mountain of trouble,” her father muttered at her. He started to walk toward her, but she shifted the gun.

“Not you, Daddy, him. I’m sorry, but I know if I let any of you out of my sight, you’ll just go grab more guns and we’ll be back in trouble again.” She shifted her gaze to me. “Walk over here and set your gun down halfway between us. Then go out back to the bunker and find my sister, Dawn. And—”

“Danielle, you can’t tell him—”

“Daddy, I’m sorry, but I’m not going to let her bleed out because you’re being stubborn and mean. Besides, she said they can help us. What if they can? What if you just shot the only lady who can help us?”

I had no idea what fairy tales Lily had told this girl. But it didn’t take a genius to know that we couldn’t help her. If she was going to send me to get help for Lily, I damn sure wasn’t going to tell her she was wrong.

Slowly, begrudgingly, Danielle’s father nodded. Somehow, when he looked at his daughter, his gaze full of equal parts exasperation and love, he looked less like a psychopath and more like a man who would do anything to protect his family. I couldn’t hate him for that. But if Lily died, I would damn sure kill him for it.