Page 26 of Marked for Execution
Her hand slapped me in the chest as she pulled her face away. It was splotchy from both tears and blood as she tried to wipe at her eyes.She shouldn’t be this fucking beautiful when she cried.
“Stop that; you’ll get nasty shit in your eyes. We have enough to deal with. I don’t want to be the one dragging your infected ass back to the Ashborne.”
“Ugh.” She shoved me until I released her and resituated herself back in the passenger seat. “I don’t get infected. I heal, remember?”
Fuck.What would it be like to not fear for death when everything around you would shit for the opportunity?Wait, she said people were trying to kill her.“Is that why people try to kill you? Because you heal?”
She sniffled and wiped her eyes one last time with the back of her hand. “No. Maybe. The memories break up, but…I don’t know how to explain it. Can we just get back home? Please?”
Noting her avoidance tactic, I nodded and moved the Humvee back on the path. We made it to the front gates of the community half an hour later with weapons trained at us.
Coming out of the vehicle slowly, I hollered so they could hear my voice and know it was us. “We lost track of time. Shit happened! Open the damn gate!”
“Eliseo? Where the hell were you?”
“Open the damn gate!”
He did as I commanded and I got back in the Humvee, driving us into the garage. We both jumped out of the vehicle as other residents came forth to help grab the shit from the back.
Some of the guys were malingering about and I scowled, looking around, wondering what the hell the hold up was. Fitri subtly hid behind me, and I went on high alert, trying to find the threat. Some of the younger men kept their heads down, donning the backpacks and sneaking peeks behind my back.
What the fuck?
“Get your ass in gear and go! What the fuck are you all standing around for?”
The men scattered like roaches, and I grabbed Fitri’s hand to drag her toward the southwest corner of the Ashborne. I realized she lost her cap somewhere out there, but it was too late now. Her braid was pinned tight around her head.
“Dude, what the fuck happened and where the hell is your shirt?” Samuel ran up to us, looking us over with Gunner and Reed right behind him.
“Where’s the kid?”Of course, that was Reed’s first question.It pissed me off.
“The kid is fine. Get out of my way, I need to check on something.”
Gunner stared at Fitri in my blood-soaked shirt. “Holy shit. What did you guys run into out there? Where are the other men?”
“Dead, apparently,” Samuel answered. “Glad you two made it back alive. How many were there? Were you outnumbered?”
“Something like that,” I mumbled as I continued to pull Fitri behind me. The men knew they weren’t going to get another word out of me right now, so they left us and headed back to wherever they came from.
Except for Reed.
“How about you go wash yourself up and relax? I’ll help the kid back home,” he offered.
I swung around and snarled in his face. “I’lltake care of the kid andyoucan go back home. You can talk tomorrow when we hit training again.”
Dragging her faster toward my house, I ignored anyone else calling for me and pulled her up the porch steps and through my front door, slamming it shut.
“Why can’t I go back to my house?” She asked with her little attitude creeping up again.
“Go upstairs and wash up.”
“Eliseo. What the hell is going on?”
My patience was wearing thin. “Go upstairs and wash the blood off. Then come back down and tell me everything.”
She grimaced but did what I said, stomping up the steps with her boots. I shouldn’t have my eyes trained on the way her ass swayed, but here we were.
Fuck, how fast would news of her being a girl fly through this community? What kind of other danger would she be in now? I needed to keep her out of the Doc’s radar. Didn’t he check her in when she first arrived, though? Why hadn’t he found out anything about her? Unless he was hiding shit about this, too, like he always did.