“Buck!” he yelled as he ran through the kitchen and into the dining room. Hatcher froze when he saw the legs extending past the couch and his heart stopped.
He fell to the floor next to the young man and rolled him over. “Buck!” He pressed a hand to the boy’s neck and tried to feel for a pulse. He sighed and collapsed to the floor, tears forming in his eyes as his brain collated the data and realized that the kid was still alive.
“Is he…?”
Hatcher looked up to see a haggard looking Will Stanton standing in the dining room. He nodded slowly. “He’s still with us.”
“Holy hell.” Will approached shakily and bent down, patting the boy’s cheeks. “Buck? Buck, wake up.”
Buck’s eyes fluttered open and his whole body jerked as if startled. He looked at Will then to Hatcher. “It was Simon.” He tried to sit up and pressed his hand to the back of his neck. “Son of a bitch.” He looked at his hand to check for blood then turned to Hatcher. “I swear to god, it was Simon.”
Hatcher stared at him, unbelievingly. “He’s a fucking cockroach.” He sat down hard on the carpet and tried to make sense of everything. “First we capture him, then he escapes. Then he attacks us.”
“Multiple times,” Will shook his head.
“Yeah.” Hatcher looked at Buck. “Then he’s bitten…but somehow he’s still Simon?”
Buck nodded slowly as he tried to come to his feet. “And he has a woman with him.” He groaned as he leaned on the back of the couch. He looked to Hatcher and raised a brow. “She kind of looked like a Zulu, but…not.”
“Cured,” Hatcher said as he came to his feet. “Of course.” He threw his hands into the air. “Simon gets bit just before they release a cure.”
“And now he’s in the wind.” Buck pushed off of the couch and rubbed the back of his neck as he walked toward the front door. “But something tells me we haven’t seen the last of him.”
Dr. Broussard looked at the armed guards then back to Dr. Higgins. “You can’t be serious. There are so few people left in the world, and you tell us that if we don’t perform the impossible, you’ll have us executed?”
Higgins smiled and it didn’t reach his eyes. “Not on my order, oh no, no, no.” He looked at the guards and raised a brow. “No, that order comes from much higher up.”
“Because the president and the vice president were besties,” Carol quipped.
“Yes.” Higgins took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “So, would you like to begin now or are you tired from your trip?”
Broussard glanced at Carol and she shook her head. “I’d like a little time to wrap my head around this whole mess.” She glared at Higgins. “It’s not every day that we save the human race then get told we’ll be shot if we don’t go this little extra mile.”
Broussard stepped forward. “Who on your team will be made available to us?”
Higgins shrugged. “Whomever you decide you’ll need.”
Broussard nodded. “Get me their dossiers. I need to know what their specialties are before I can build a team.”
Higgins smiled. “So you feel you are up to the challenge?”
Broussard groaned as he looked back at the men holding guns. “We have a choice?” he scoffed. “Just get me their information.” He turned and walked toward the steel door. “We’ll start first thing in the morning.”
Simon gripped the dash with his good hand and clenched his jaw as Lana ground the gears on the Ferrari’s transmission. “Easy, sweetheart. I don’t think they’re following.”
“I’d rather be safe than sorry.” She jerked the wheel, shooting them down another side road.
Simon really wished he had tried the seatbelt, regardless of how his arm felt. “Slow down.” He turned and raised a brow at her. “It does us no good to survive the Cagers only to die in a fiery wreck on the side of the highway.”
She released the death grip she had on the steering wheel and lifted her foot from the accelerator. “Fine.” She swallowed hard as she stared into the rearview mirrors. “Where are we going, Simon?”
He exhaled long and hard while he tried to think. “We head to the RV place. We find something that we can live with and…disappear.” He turned and gave her a sideways grin. “The world is ours, sweetheart. Wherever you want to go.”
She sighed and turned back onto a main road, avoiding the cars parked in the street. “I think I want to go home.” She glanced at him. “The house we just had actually felt like…like a home.”
“We can’t go back there,” his voice was low and soft, “but there are literally hundreds of thousands of houses we can choose from. Preferably far from that one.” He reached across and gripped her hand. “Home is where the heart is.”
She nodded, her face betraying her emotions. “You told that kid that you weren’t trying to kill them.” She didn’t look at him as she spoke. “So you did miss on purpose.”
Simon shook his head. “That’s just what I told the kid.” He released her hand and tried to settle back in the stiff seat. “I missed because they were moving and I’m not that great a shot—even when I’m not wounded.”
She considered his explanation and found it wanting. “I don’t think I believe you.”
He turned and stared at her, his face a mask of surprise. “Lana, I would never lie to you.” He leaned forward, trying to move further into her line of sight. “Ever.”
“Simon, they were sixty feet away.” She glanced at him then turned back to the street ahead. “Sixty. Even I could have hit them at that range.”
Simon sighed as he sat back. “You probably could have.” He turned and stared through the side window. “But I wouldn’t lie to you. I was shooting to kill, mostly because you
