Page 12

I decided it was time to repay the sarcasm when I’d asked about the crossbow. “No. I just like to wheel it around with me. It saves carrying a bag.”

Keaton’s lips twitched. He fought it for a few seconds before giving in, the twitch becoming a smile. It was a nice smile. If circumstances were different, Keaton and I could have had ourselves some fun of the horizontal kind. I could have seen if he could put all that muscle to good use. A shame, really, but those were the breaks.

He eyed the bike suspiciously as I straddled it. It felt as good between my thighs as it had on the first day I’d ridden it, giving me a sense of power nothing else could. Not even standing in the middle of a rain-soaked courtyard with a crowd of people hanging on my every word could compare. The bike represented speed, freedom, escape, and fond memories. There was only one thing I loved more than this bike, and when that wasn’t around anymore, it would be all I had.

I turned my head when Keaton simply stood there. “Are you getting on?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know how to ride one.”

I laughed at his ignorance. “You’re not the one riding it. You don’t have to do anything except hold on and leave everything else to me.” I inserted the key and pressed the switch, kicking the stand up at the same time so the decades-old engine rumbled to life. “Make your decision, because I’m leaving. With or without you.”

Keaton gingerly straddled the bike, as if he thought it might explode into motion at any moment, which tempted me to do exactly that. I tamped down the urge. I wanted to fleece him of what he had. Not kill him. Ellsworth had been right. What about when someone uses the suppressant and goes out in the rain thinking they’re safe and they turn? Are you going to claim you’re not culpable? I ignored the voice in the back of my head that had been asking that question ever since I’d begun running this con and concentrated on Keaton, who sat primly, as far back from me as he could. “Sit like that, and you’re going to fall off.”

“How am I supposed to sit?”

Christ. It was like having a baby on the back of my bike. A big, muscley baby, but a baby nonetheless. “Shuffle forward. Close as you can. Wrap your arms around me and hold on.” The long pause said Keaton was contemplating whether that was something he really wanted to do. “Or you can get off and run behind the bike,” I suggested. “You were in the army. You must be physically fit. We could find out just how fit you are.”

He shuffled forward. His wrapping his arms around me took longer. “For fuck’s sake,” I said. “I’m not made of glass. You’re not going to break me.”

“This is fine.”

Keaton changed his mind as soon as I opened up the throttle, clinging on for dear life. A change happened within a few miles as the bike ate up the miles: a relaxation in his body that said Keaton got it. When he let out a whoop of pure pleasure, I found myself smiling, forgetting for a moment that he was a mark, and just glad to share my enjoyment of being on the road with someone else.

Every now and again, the sound of the bike would attract biters, and they’d come stumbling out of the undergrowth. They were no match for our speed and soon gave up on chasing us, even their virus-enhanced limbs incapable of going at over ninety miles an hour.

Chapter Four

Keaton

After what had been quite the exhilarating experience, Tobias brought the bike to a stop outside a large brick building. I stared at it, the red—non-brick—wall, made up almost entirely of tiny blank rectangles making little sense. I assumed that once upon a time, those squares had contained glass, but time and neglect had done their job and not a single pane remained. Like most buildings these days outside of a community, the outside resembled a jungle, plants thriving where humanity could not.

Letting go of Tobias somewhat reluctantly now we’d stopped, I swiveled around on the bike seat to face the building. “What is this place?”

“I would assume,” Tobias said, as he turned off the engine and pocketed the key, “that it used to be a fire station.”

“A what?”

He turned to give me a quizzical look. “Don’t they teach you any history in the army?”

“They mostly teach us inventive ways to kill the biters, and how not to get infected. Which, I failed at,” I added quickly, before Tobias could point it out. “What’s a fire station?”

“What’s it sound like?”

“A place where they kept fire.”

The look Tobias gave me was nothing short of scathing. “Why would you need to keep fire anywhere?”

“I don’t know. You asked me to guess, and I guessed.” Tobias muttered something under his breath, whatever it was too quiet to hear. I assumed it wasn’t complimentary. “Are you going to educate me?”

He swung off the bike in one easy move, forcing me to get off before it tipped and I found myself sprawled on the cracked concrete. “I don’t have several millennia available.”

“Ouch.” Truth be told, I was more amused than offended. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d met someone as interesting as Tobias Breeze, his pretty face—and it was pretty, all long lashes and cheekbones—at odds with how proficient he was at survival. So far, anyway. Perhaps appearances were deceiving, and he’d fall to pieces at the first sign of trouble.

Tobias reached up to perform a neck stretch, his shirt rising with the motion to reveal a couple of inches of pale abdomen. I noticed, but I didn’t look. Honest. He repeated the gesture with the other side, and I kept my gaze resolutely fastened on his face.

Neck crick apparently dealt with, he waved a hand at the building. “In the olden days, people would call for help when they had a fire, and these guys would come to their rescue in their big red fire engine and put it out.”

“How do you know this stuff?”