I exhaled loudly through my nose. Everyone knew what that meant, but now he’d presented another hurdle. “Either of you get close to her?”
“Sadie did for about twenty seconds before she masked up. But neither of us touched her.”
Twenty seconds without a mask? It took as little as a minute for infection to occur. I closed my eyes and sighed. “All right. Nothing we can do about it now. I’ll carry her if you two want to move her car off the road.”
“I’ll get in,” Varesh said to Tim. “You can push.”
A small number of people were immune to Ultimus or asymptomatic, but there was no way of knowing if those statuses applied to us.
What were the chances of her catching it outside in a span of seconds?
What if it was spreading through her body right now?
I paused and said a silent prayer I’d be one of the lucky few, then slid her from the car and hoisted her against me.
Twelve
sadie
When I woke, the throbbing at the base of my skull registered first, then the ceiling fan above me. Not the sky.
I squinted, confused. My last memories were of Brynn—her coughs and laboured breaths. The blood on her cardigan.
She’d be dead by now, in a car that had become her coffin.
I let the image sit for a minute, remembering her like I’d said I would, then shifted my focus to more immediate concerns.
Where am I?
I tried to sit up, but the thudding turned into splitting pain. With a groan, I squeezed my eyes shut and lowered my head again, resting on something soft. A pillow? There was a blanket covering me, too.Strange.
“Take it easy,” a man’s voice said from the other side of the room.
“Tim?”
Footsteps came closer, then the man sat in front of me, bringing with him a disturbingly familiar scent, warm and woodsy. I cracked my lids and found Theo wearing a mask,propped on the edge of a coffee table I hadn’t seen before. “Not Tim.”
“Sorry to disappoint.” He leaned forward and touched my forehead with the back of his hand, his fingertips cool against my skin. “How are you feeling?”
“Like death.”
“Well, you’re alive, so… yay.”
I would have smiled, but there were too many questions that needed answers. “Is this your apartment?” I asked, hearing the croak in my throat. “Why am I here? How did Igethere?”
He blinked. “Yes. You hit your head. Tim texted, and I brought you home.” He paused, then added, “And I carried you up here from my car.”
“Upfourflights? Are you crazy?”
“Apparently.”
Theo’s perpetually rumpled hair was wet, and rain tapped a steady beat against the windows.
My clothes didn’t feel the slightest bit damp.
Alarm bells clanged, and I ran my hand over my hair, then felt around under the blanket and checked I was still wearing the jumper and leggings I’d left my house in.
He gave me a patient look, part frustration, part amusement. “I didn’t undress you while you were unconscious. You hardly got wet between the car and the building, so you can relax.”
