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“Right. And ye should know, I den’ like your gun attracting more plonkers when I can kill them quietly.”

I sighed. “What are we doing here?”

“Follow me.”

He strode through the unlocked door and stopped before a stairway just beyond the vestibule. I didn’t move from the porch. He clicked on his flashlight and looked back. “Den’ trust me?”

“Nope.”

“Smart lass.”

Was he fucking with me? “Where do the stairs go?”

“Down.” He descended into the dark.

I lifted the carbine and rubbed my cheek against the stock. My muscles relaxed, inch by inch. He was good with his sword, but he couldn’t stop a bullet. Could I shoot him if it came to that? Hell yes. I crept through the entrance and found him waiting a couple stairs down.

In the basement, we passed several closed doors until he stopped at one half way down. As he dialed in a combination on the padlock, I asked, “Isn’t this a mortuarium?”

“Too right.” He opened the door and waved his beam over the room.

My mouth hung open. Oh my.

Canned food and cereal, medicine and soap, clothing and blankets and beaucoup chocolate, cigarettes and other rare goodies stacked on rows of shelves and overflowed to the floor. I had combed grocery stores and homes from Missouri to England and never stumbled on a find like that.

The muscles under the back of his coat rolled as he dug something from a shelf, messed with it and raised it to his mouth.

“What are you doing?”

He turned with a lollypop stick protruding from his adorable smile.

“How did you find this place?”

“I knew a few blokes who knew a few blokes.”

“And these blokes are?”

“No longer blokes.”

I plucked the stick from his mouth and popped it my own. The first lick wasn’t fruity or sugary. It was better. The taste of a man’s mouth. I licked it again. His saliva. Another lick. His breath. I missed it. Christ, I missed Joel.

He watched me with parted lips, blinked. “We should hurry.”

What was I doing? Flirting with a priest. Wasting time in the bowels of a building with no look out. “I’m an idiot,” I muttered around the stick. “What do we need?”

He tossed me a large burlap bag and bent over a crate of whiskey on the floor. “I’m here for the Bushmills. Get what ye need. We’ll make one trip out.”

“Do you have a grocery list—” I slapped a hand over my stomach, which buzzed like a nest of bees. “Roark?”

His head shot up at my tone.

I spat out the candy, lifted the carbine. “Is there more than one way out?”

“Wha’ is it?”

“Aphids. A lot of them.”

The floorboards creaked above our heads. He drew his sword and pulled me into the hall by my arm. Then he dragged me the opposite direction we’d come.

Up ahead, he slammed his shoulder into a door and hustled me inside. A high window reflected light off the stainless-steel cabinets and counters. A collapsible gurney stood in the middle of the room.

He hurled an oxygen tank at the window. The glass shattered. Then he pushed the gurney under the opening. “Hop up.”

I did, and in the next moment found myself hurtling halfway through the window and face down in frozen weeds. Ow, my fucking chest. “You didn’t have to shove me.”

“Move your arse,” he bellowed behind me. I pulled said arse through the window and backed up, carbine in high ready.

He crawled through. “They’re right behind us.”

“How many?”

“Too many. To the van.”

I tailed him down the narrow alleyway between the buildings, staying a few feet behind as vibrations wreaked havoc on my insides. I rounded the corner and smacked into his back. Dozens of aphids poured in and out of the funeral home, shuffled over the front lawn and blocked our path to the truck. Some sniffed the air. Others looked at us. Roark found my hand and tugged me back down the alleyway.

“Now what?” I pulled my hand free to raise the carbine.

He stopped and looked up. An eight-foot brick wall began where the building next to the funeral home ended. He squatted and cupped his hands. “Up ye go.”

I dropped the carbine on its sling, gripped his shoulders and lifted my boot. “What about you?”

He grinned. “Aw, ye care.”

I narrowed my eyes.

“Right behind ye, lass.” He heaved me onto the wall. I straddled it. Aphids plowed into both ends of the alley. Roark jumped. One leg landed on the wall, his other leg kept the momentum, rising up and over. Then he was straddled before me, grinning even more. “Now we leg it.”

Aphids hit the wall, climbing as we dropped to the other side. We ran between the buildings and emerged on the next street over. Our feet pounded the sidewalk as we ran past lines of commercial flats crowded on top of each other. The buzzing grew louder. The space between my shoulder blades tingled as the aphids closed the distance. But I didn’t dare look back.