That’s where his body had been found. He’d been chopping wood behind his house and had apparently suffered a heart attack. If Lizzie hadn’t become worried because he wasn’t answering her calls, it could have been months before anyone found him. As it was, his body lay on the ground for nearly two weeks before the sheriff drove out and checked, giving the bugs and the animals plenty of time to take what they wanted. Needless to say, it was a closed casket funeral.
Being the only one Owen kept in contact with, Liz had inherited his house. At first she thought she’d sell it, but after spending a week there going through his things, she found she liked the solitude. She thought if she did a little redecorating, and lost the survivalist theme, his place would actually be nice.
Back in Denver, she had worked out a deal with her firm to work remotely from Montana.
It didn’t take much to convince her bosses that it was a good idea. She did great work, but was a bit of an oddball in their view, kind of a loner who had a paranoid streak in her. She, of course, would have said the description fit her brother, not her, but she never really had been good at seeing the truth about herself.
At the end of summer, she moved permanently to Montana, and settled into her new life. The only times she saw anyone in the months that followed were on the two occasions she’d gone to town for supplies. No one ever visited her house, and she believed no one ever would.
It was probably for the best that she didn’t realize how soon that belief would be shattered.
The road Sanjay and Kusum had been traveling on was really no more than two rutted tire tracks running through a stretch of wilderness outside their home city of Mumbai.
Sanjay had been forced to drop their speed to a crawl, so that the front tire wouldn’t get caught in a hole and fling them both to the ground. Kusum’s arms were tight around his waist, but he knew she was only trying to hold on, not showing him any kind of affection.
Despite his protests, she’d been right when she accused him of kidnapping her. But what choice did he have? When he’d found his cousin Ayush dying in a makeshift hospital room, then learned the truth about the “miracle malaria spray” they had both been hired to help douse the city with, he’d had no other option. The spray had nothing to do with saving lives. In fact, quite the opposite. They and others hired by Pishon Chem would be covering Mumbai with the same deadly virus from which Ayush had been dying. Sanjay had stolen some vaccine, talked Kusum into joining him for lunch, then kept driving the motorcycle he’d rented until they were well out of the city.
He’d done it to save her. He had to save her. She was all he ever thought about, all he cared about — especially now that Ayush was surely dead. If that meant kidnapping her, then so be it.
When he’d stabbed the needle into her arm, and injected her with the life-saving vaccine, she had all but flown into a rage, thinking he had drugged her. He’d tried to explain what he had seen and learned, but naturally she didn’t believe him.
“I promise if I’m wrong, I will take you back and turn myself over to the police,” he told her. Finally, she had reluctantly agreed to stay with him.
As they came around a turn, Sanjay immediately jammed on the brakes. The back of the bike fishtailed right, then left, before stopping at an angle to the road.
Kusum immediately released his waist. “What’s wrong?”
“There.” He nodded at the road ahead.
A pool of water, perhaps twenty meters across, covered the road. He didn’t think it was very deep, but knew it would be better to cross it in daylight to be safe.
“We’ll stay here.”
She looked around. “Stay where?”
“Here.”
“In the jungle?”
“It’s not that much of a jungle. We’ll be fine.”
“Are you crazy?”
“It’s just for one night.”
“I’m not sleeping here.”
“Fine. You can stay awake.”
He gunned the engine, circled the bike around to the way they’d come, then turned into the wilderness and drove them back amongst the trees and bushes until he found a wide spot that would work for their camp. Killing the engine, he flipped down the kickstand, but Kusum didn’t move.
“Please,” he said. “Get off.”
“I will not.”
“Well, I’m getting off, and when I do, you’ll fall.”
She huffed in frustration then climbed off the seat, making sure her foot kicked him as she did. Once he was off the bike, he stretched, and retrieved the bag he’d strapped to the handlebars that contained the food they picked up earlier.
He sat down in the small clearing and opened the bag. “Have something to eat.”
“I am not hungry,” she said.
“You need to eat. It’s important.”
“I told you, I am not hungry.”
“All right.”
He pulled out the container of vada pav, quickly ate two pieces, then took the bag with the remainder back to the motorcycle and hung it over the handlebars so insects would be less likely to find it.
“When you get hungry, it’s here.”
He stretched out on the undergrowth and glanced at Kusum. “If you’re not going to eat, you should at least try to sleep.”
“I told you, I am not sleeping here.”
“Kusum, please. I am not your enemy. What I have done is only because I care about you.”
She glared at him, her eyes full of fire. “If you cared about me, you would have taken me home already.”
In a few days, you will see how much I care, he thought, but he said nothing, hoping he was wrong.
Hours later, he stirred, his eyes opening for just a moment. Kusum was on the ground a foot away from him. Tentatively he reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. At first she tried to pull away, but then she stopped. A moment later, she scooted back against him, and he could feel her body shake as she cried.
3
The ranch was on fire.
The dormitory, by far the smaller of the two buildings of the Resistance’s headquarters, was already well on its way to total destruction. Even if a hundred firefighters had been on site, there would have been nothing they could do.
The Lodge was a different story. Though it too was being consumed by flames, there would have still been the possibility of saving some of the structure, given its massive size. But the nearest fire crew was over seventy miles away, and they had received no emergency call.
Nor would they.
Just before ten a.m., three helicopters and several ground vehicles had been spotted rushing toward the Ranch. There was no question who had sent them, or what their purpose was. They were a Project Eden attack squad, coming to eliminate everyone there.
“Full cover,” Matt Hamilton, the head of the Resistance, had ordered.
Giant impenetrable doors had been sealed, locking everyone into the large underground bunker deep below the Lodge, and the self-destruction of the two surface buildings was triggered. The burned wreckage would block the two main entrances into the Bunker, and, Matt hoped, keep the killers above from finding a way in.
“Don’t worry,” Rachel Hamilton said. “Jon will keep him safe.” She was Matt’s sister and closest advisor, so it wasn’t surprising she knew exactly what he was thinking.
“I know,” he said, though he wasn’t as sure as she was.
“He’ll get Brandon out.”
This time Matt simply nodded.
Though most of the people who had been at the Ranch when the helicopters were spotted were safe in the underground facility, Jon Hayes and Brandon Ash had been caught outside, unable to get back before Matt was forced to seal up the Bunker. While Jon had received the training all Resistance members were given, Brandon was just a kid. To make matters worse, Matt himself had promised the boy’s father he’d watch over him.