“We have to try. Find out the location,” Jax said, lips tightening into a white line. “You two do your thing in the lab and update me later. We go at midnight.”
Tace shook his head. “We won’t know who’s with us until tomorrow.”
“Small group, then. Wyatt, me, and Sami, if she stays. I’d like to take Raze and see what he can do.”
“What about me?” Tace asked.
“Can’t lose you, Doc. You’re too important.” Jax sighed. “We need to get a few more medical personnel somehow.”
“No problem. I’ll order a couple up on the Internet,” Tace said.
“Asshole,” Jax muttered without heat, moving toward the other corridor. “And, Lynne?” he asked, turning.
She turned her head. “What?”
“I have neither the time nor manpower to keep a guard on you at all times. Promise me that for at least the next twenty-four hours, you won’t try to make a break for it.” His eyes darkened to the color of warmed whiskey.
Her shoulders went back. He trusted her? “What makes you think I’ll keep a promise?”
He lifted one broad shoulder. “Gut feeling.”
She breathed out, her chest heavy with a sweet warmth she didn’t want to examine. “I promise.”
His grin flashed a dimple she hadn’t noticed before. “Thank you.”
With that dimple, with that trust, she suddenly felt bound to Jax Mercury with stronger ties than when he’d been thrusting inside her.
Chapter Eleven
The inevitable conclusion for our species doesn’t mean we won’t fight—and fight hard to survive the unsurvivable.
—Dr. Franklin Xavier Harmony
Jax jogged into the combat infirmary, his gut swirling. Three new victims had succumbed to Scorpius somehow, and right now they thrashed uncontrollably in makeshift beds in the inner hospital. They had to get more vitamin B, stat.
Darkness climbed across the sky, and his nerves settled as he planned the midnight raid.
He hustled around the corner to see Lynne and Tace in the makeshift lab, papers and graphs spread out before them. Discarded paper plates and bowls showed they’d spent all day working.
His mind had gone to her several times during the day, and he needed to knock that shit off. When he’d first found her on the deserted highway, so brave and alone, he’d instantly been drawn to her, but he hadn’t considered that he’d genuinely like her.
If she was lying to him, if she was playing him, she was a master at it.
And she’d pay.
She glanced up from a graph, and her pretty green eyes focused on him. “What’s the frown about?”
Tace reached for the gun at his side to check the clip. “That’s Jax’s normal expression. Haven’t you noticed?”
She shrugged.
Jax settled his stance. “Tell me you found Myriad.”
“Not yet.” Lynne pushed back from the table and shoved hair from her eyes.
Damn it. He glanced at Tace. “Update me with what you do know.”
Tace gave a mock salute. “Of course. We’ve mapped out known B manufacturing plants in California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington. Some are under the radar, but Lynne knew about them, and if they still have stock, we have a chance to replenish our coffers. Baker and Baker still looks like the best bet.”
Jax straightened. “If they don’t?”
“We’re screwed,” Tace said simply.
Lynne fumbled through a stack of papers to give Jax a handwritten list. “Here’s a breakdown of natural foods with heavy vitamin B content. I heard you say yesterday there’s another food depot around here.”
“Yeah, but I doubt we’ll find greens or even meat,” he said slowly.
“What about wild game?” Lynne asked. “Aren’t you planning to move north at some point?”
“Not for a while unless we’re forced to move. Right now, we’re in the safest place to wait while Scorpius does its thing.” By infecting the rest of the population and either killing, turning, or changing them. “I don’t want to mess with the Mercenaries to the north, either.”
She paled. “I see.”
He wanted to reassure her, to appease the guilt flitting across her expressive face. But really, what words existed? While she’d been trying to cure the infection, the CDC had allowed the bacteria to spread. Accidental, sure. But his words wouldn’t appease her guilt. Only survival would. He bent to look at the location of Baker and Baker. “One problem.”
Tace winced. “Just one?”
“Yeah. According to this, Baker and Baker is located on the other side of Twenty territory.” Jax stretched his neck, hissing as his vertebrae popped.
“Of course it is,” Tace muttered. “Any chance they’ve already raided it?”
“Sure, but it’s in the business portion of town, and they probably haven’t gone raiding for shampoo. If we didn’t know about the B, Cruz doesn’t either.”
“Probably,” Tace said with a grimace. “If you’re heading through or around Twenty, you need every trained soldier, and that includes me. If something happens, we have another doctor now at headquarters.” He tilted his head toward Lynne.
Jax blanched. “No one knows or trusts her, Tace. Can’t leave her as the doctor, and the doctors in the middle of the compound are overworked.” Plus, he didn’t know for sure she’d stay, now did he? If something happened to Jax, Tace would have to take point with her.
The idea of anybody else with her, in her bed, punched him squarely in the chest. Not that she’d sleep with Tace. Even so, the intensity of his reaction gave him pause.
He needed to get himself under control and now. “Any other news from the CDC files?”
“Not yet.” Lynne gestured toward several boxes of papers lining the far wall. “We’ve just started going through the research. It’s entirely possible you’ll find some good information if you raid Baker and Baker. I can’t imagine the labs were this close in proximity and didn’t at least communicate with each other as well as with the CDC. To share supplies as things went bad, at a minimum.”
Tace slammed his clip back into his gun. “Did you feed Marvin?”
“Yes.” Jax tossed the paper back onto the table.
Lynne lifted an eyebrow. “Marvin?”
Amusement he didn’t have time to enjoy tickled Jax’s lips. “Marvin is a lion that apparently escaped from a zoo somewhere. We leave him meat around the perimeter, and I’m fairly certain he’s eaten more than one Ripper trying to get in.”
Lynne frowned. “A lion. Wow.”
Running boot steps echoed in the hallway outside, and Jax turned to see Red Dolan barreling toward him. He half pivoted to protect Lynne.
Red lurched to a stop, his face flushed, his eyes wide. He’d been a redneck bar owner until Scorpius hit, but the guy could shoot and had good knife skills. “The Snyder kid has gone into a fever and convulsions.”
The world narrowed in focus. Holy shit. The girl who Cruz had taken. “Cruz infected Haylee?” Jax spat out.
Red gulped. “Looks like it.”
Holy fucking damn it. Jax moved and launched into a run, acutely aware of Tace and Lynne on his heels. “Where is she?”
“The soldiers scouting the interior didn’t have time to get her to the main hospital, so they just put her here in the room by the back door,” Red coughed out. “They went back to patrolling.”
The makeshift triage area was usually used for wounded or ill soldiers. The main containment area for recently exposed victims was several blocks in, but he didn’t have time to take the kid there. Jax ran down the hallway and hustled into a room on the left.
April Snyder sat by a bed, tears streaking down her face, a fresh bruise across her neck showing where he’d choked her out earlier. She looked about eighteen, pale and wan, and not old enough to have a teenage daughter. Her hand covered Haylee’s.
The girl tossed in the fever, her cheeks scarlet, sweat pouring down her smooth skin. A series of low moans escaped her.