An Unyielding Desire (After The End Book 2) Page 27

  Mina gasped, having to restrain the urge to dart forward and slug her brother-in-law. “I’m not his whore, you…” She trailed off, taking a deep breath to restore some calm. “Look, this isn’t productive. We’re running out of time.”

  “Time for what?” asked Coop.

  A sudden explosion at the gate made them all freeze before turning to look at the source of commotion. The metal gate had crumpled inward and toppled with a crash against the ground.

  “That,” said Shane.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  In seconds, all guns turned from Shane to the breached gate.

  “You didn’t mention explosives.” Mina glared as she took the spare pistol from the holster on the back of Coop’s waistband, wondering where Shane had left the shotgun she was accustomed to carrying around.

  “I didn’t know.” He looked sick. “Fuck. There was a supply truck for Smoky Canyon Mine dead on the freeway near our encampment. That must be where Les got the dynamite.”

  “How do you know it’s dynamite?” asked Mina.

  “What the hell is going on?” asked Coop at the same time.

  Shane lifted his uninjured shoulder in a careless shrug as he answered her while ignoring Coop. “I don’t know for certain. It’s just a guess. Dynamite is reasonably easy to find and requires no electronic components to work.”

  “Who cares what it is? What is going on?” Hector looked angrier than he ever had, the veins throbbing under his coppery skin.

  “You’re being attacked.” Shane seemed focused on the gate, as was everyone else, aside from a couple of people who glanced at him, including Mina.

  “Why?” Winn swung his shotgun from the breach to Shane. “What kind of hell have you brought down on us, West?”

  “It’s not him,” said Mina mildly. “He came to warn us.”

  Coop scoffed. “He said he came to take you.”

  She sighed. “Yeah, that was his original plan, but we renegotiated.” Avoiding filling in the details of the deal, she moved closer to Coop, conscious to avoid contact with his heavily bandaged shoulder, and scanned the area. “They want Des.”

  Desmond stiffened. “What? Why?”

  “Remember that grocery store standoff? You shot the crazy bitch and caused her to miscarry. You aren’t their favorite people.” Shane laughed harshly. “None of us are.”

  “There is no us.” Coop looked poised to turn on his former commander and disregard the threat posed by imminent attack. “There is this group on the farm, and then your murdering ass. Why don’t we just toss you out to them, since you seem to have gotten on their bad side? Maybe they’ll take you and leave.”

  When Coop glanced at her, as though gauging her reaction, Mina had none. She couldn’t actually think of a good reason why they shouldn’t send Shane out to the group of killers. The twinge of pity she felt at seeing how they had already tortured him wasn’t justification enough to keep him around, and her fiancé certainly wouldn’t appreciate her admission that she felt sorry for Shane.

  It became a moot point when the attackers fired the first shots. Mina didn’t know enough about fighting to be sure, but they seemed to be coming from a higher elevation and angling downward.

  “In the trees,” shouted Owen from the lookout tour, already in the process of sighting his first target with the sniper rifle.

  In the shuffle, Mina lost sight of most of the others as Coop dragged her to a stalled tractor that had died along with all other electronics at The End. Lia had followed them, and she held the fussing Ty tightly against her, though her focus was clearly not on the baby. Her pale complexion and trembling suggested she was in shock.

  Mina gestured to Finn, who crouched near Yu. The two teenagers approached cautiously, keeping low to the ground. When they knelt nearby, she pulled Lia closer to take the baby from her. Her sister didn’t protest even when she passed Tyler to Finn. “You and Yu take Ty through the escape tunnel. Hide out until you know it’s safe to come back.”

  “How will we—” began Finn, before Yu broke in.

  “I’m not leaving Hector.” Yu spoke so ferociously spittle flew from her mouth.

  “Yes, you are.” Mina kept her expression and voice stern. “Hector has training and can take care of himself. Ty is a baby, and he needs you to look after him.”

  She seemed torn, but finally nodded.

  “I’ll provide some cover for you. When I start firing, you two run to the house,” said Coop. “Your mission is to keep that baby safe.”

  Finn straightened his shoulders, showing glimpses of the man he would have to be too soon in their new world, as he cradled his nephew. Yu seemed resigned as she knelt beside him. At Coop’s signal, the teenagers started running as fast as they could while crouching low. Mina held her breath until they reached the porch and disappeared from sight, due to their positions. A few seconds later, the screen door opened and closed, indicating they had made it inside the house.

  She allowed a moment of weakness and leaned her head against Coop’s uninjured shoulder. “They made it.”

  He nodded. Coop had stopped firing indiscriminately to provide coverage and now appeared to be aiming for a specific target in the trees.

  Mina could see nothing in the gloom. Feeling useless, she kept searching the darkness, frowning when she caught a blur of a lighter color through a panel of wire fencing. She tapped Coop’s shoulder to get his attention, pointing the way she’d seen something. “I thought I saw…” Mina trailed off as the blur came again a few feet down.

  “Pincer attack,” said Coop, lips tight. “They’re using the distraction of blowing the gate to focus our attention there, along with a couple of shooters in the trees. They’ll be coming at us from other points on the perimeter. Probably two more groups.” Scowling, he asked, “Did Shane say how many total?”

  Mina shook her head.

  “Okay, you wait here—”

  She cried out in protest. “I’m not letting you go out there alone.”

  He held up his hand in an imperious way that would have pissed her off if there had been time to focus on such triviality. “As you told Yu about Hector, I have training and can defend myself. I’ll grab a couple of others, send another team the opposite way, and keep a couple of our people here to engage the distractions in the trees. You look after Lia.” He cast a glance at the blank-eyed woman. “She’s in no state to do it herself.”

  Mina wanted to refuse, but he made too much sense. She knew how to handle her shotgun and was moderately familiar with the pistol in her hand, but she wasn’t trained for battle the way Coop was. With a small sob, she threw her arm around his neck to drag him closer. Cupping his face with one hand, she pressed a hard, lingering kiss to his lips. “I love you. You come back to me.”

  Coop nodded. “I’ll do my best.” He brushed his hand against hers. “I love you too. Stay safe.”

  She watched until he melted into the darkness that seemed to have swallowed the last of the sun in just the past few minutes. Squinting, she thought she saw him stop near another group crouched behind the Humvee, but she couldn’t discern who broke off and went with him. A couple of others split off in the opposite direction, and she thought they stopped to pick up another couple of people, but couldn’t be sure with the absence of light.

  Time seemed to pass with agonizing slowness as she crouched near Lia, occasionally trying to shush the whimpers coming from her sister. Mina had some sympathy for the other woman, whose world had come crashing down, but it wasn’t the time to fall apart. Feeling more impatient than concerned, she finally turned away from her and resumed trying to see what was happening in the darkness.

  Someone had lit fires throughout the yard, and she vaguely remembered the soldiers having spoken about keeping the fires ready to light as a means of providing illumination in a night attack. They had been built to burn brightly for at least a couple of hours, chasing off some of the pervading inkiness surrounding them.

  Mina flinched when someone s
houted from beyond the fence. A second later, a body toppled from the trees and landed with a hard thud audible even over the gunfire. One sniper down, but how many left? Coop had estimated two, but that was just a guess. Panic encroached as she realized they had no idea how many they faced, where they were, or how well-armed. The man she loved was out there in that chaos while she huddled behind a tractor. Ridiculous.

  Ignoring the urge to act took everything she had, and Mina only held herself in check because she knew she would be more hindrance than help to her lover if she could even find him in the darkness. Lia needed her, and she tried to tamp down the surge of resentment that filled her when she looked at her traumatized sister. She wanted to slap her face and bring her back to reality. Lia’s lie had been discovered, but that was no reason to shut down.

  Her anger at Lia was merely another manifestation of her powerlessness in the situation and her worry for Coop. Forcing several deep breaths helped the emotion dissipate, and she made herself reach out to take Lia’s hand. “Come on, sis. You have to snap out of it.”

  Lia blinked at her, but said nothing.

  The fighting continued, and Mina heard shouts and grunts. She remained helplessly unaware of what was happening, frustration mounting, until the welcome sight of Coop’s group made her leap up from her vantage point despite the occasional bullet still being exchanged. Two men walked in front of Coop and Dana, with Desmond slightly off to the side.

  Coop used his gun to gesture that the two men kneel in front of the damaged gate. “You in the trees…you have thirty seconds to come down before I start shooting your comrades.”

  “Fuck you,” shouted a harsh male voice from up high.

  Though inexperienced in warfare, even Mina knew the idiot had just betrayed his position. It was no surprise to her when another body fell out of the tree several seconds after Owen swiveled the sniper rifle.

  Less than a minute later, Shane, Hector, and Tony came back from the opposite direction. She was surprised to see the two men working together, but figured they had put aside their differences long enough to keep the farm safe. The way Coop was feeling, perhaps Shane had been safer in that group than with his.

  They herded a lone stranger, his hands bound in front of him with baling wire. With more force than necessary, Tony kicked the man in the knee, forcing him to fall onto the ground beside his compatriots. “This was the only piece of shit left.” Her brother-in-law spat on the ground near the fat man he’d kicked. “The other one is dead, and we saw no further evidence of more.”

  Shane grasped a handful of the man’s greasy locks as the others moved from their defensive positions to surround the attackers. “Howard Bitman, or Hobbit, as Les calls the fucker.” Curling his lip, he said, “Hobbit has a taste for young boys.”

  Relieved that Holly had taken Kaden somewhere to hide, Mina didn’t want to know how Shane knew that. Apparently, no one else did either, because they didn’t ask as he walked over to the other two, examining them for a moment. “Pardons, a nurse. He could have been helpful in a world like this, but he fell in with a piece of shit like Les.”

  “So did you,” said Pardons, glaring as he struggled with the bindings on his hand.

  “You made me an offer I wasn’t at liberty to refuse, since I was dying from infection.” His gaze slid briefly to Emme, making Mina recall with pride that her sister had caused the hideous scar on his face with Coop’s gun. After a second, he went to the other man, whose bald pate didn’t allow him to grasp a handful of hair to draw back his down-bent head for identification. He didn’t seem to need it. “Hardy, who will fuck anything that moves—young or old, willing or not.”

  Mina took Lia’s hand and drew her closer to the others, trying to get her near Tony. He sneered at his wife and turned away, but Lia didn’t seem to notice the slight as she stared vacant-eyed into the nearest fire.

  “We can safely assume two in the trees, since they haven’t continued shooting.” Shane frowned. “That leaves three, unless Les managed to pick up some more psychos along the way.” The kick he levied at Hardy’s stomach seemed to cause Shane as much pain, judging from the way he grasped his injured leg and cursed. “Did you find any other sadistic fucks, or is it just the nine of you?” he asked through gritted teeth.

  Hardy didn’t answer, but Hobbit seemed to have no trouble spilling his guts. “It’s just us. Please don’t kill me. I didn’t want to do this.”

  Shane’s harsh laugh echoed around the yard. “I believe that, Hobbit. Not that you had any qualms about attacking a bunch of innocent people, but I’m sure you didn’t want to get off your ass and put down your bottle long enough to take an active role.”

  His mirth faded as he turned to Coop, obviously acknowledging him as the leader. “That means there are three unaccounted for, and two of them are Les and Antaya. They’re sick fuckers.”

  “I’ll defer to your expertise in recognizing your kind.” Despite his wounded shoulder, Coop reloaded his gun with cool efficiency before lifting his hand for silence. “Here’s what we’ll do. I want small groups, but no one goes alone. Mina, you take Lia into the house.”

  She glared at him. “I want to help.”

  “You’ll help by keeping your sister safe.”

  Resentment at his chest-thumping display simmered in her eyes, but she bit it back. As much as she wanted to play an active role, there wasn’t a lot for her to do. She forced herself to ignore the voice whispering at the back of her mind that she was as useless and weak as she’d ever been. No, that wasn’t true. She could take care of herself and Lia, if necessary. Coop wanted to keep her safe and was not casting subtle aspersions on her ability. “Fine,” she said with a touch of ill grace.

  Not waiting to see how he would divide the group, she tucked the pistol into the back of her pants before taking Lia’s hand to lead her to the house. They were on the porch when the screen door slammed open. She faltered, her blood running cold when she saw Yu and Finn emerge onto the porch, followed by a chubby man and a taller female with ebony skin. The pale gray of Ty’s jacket contrasted with the woman’s dark hair as she held the baby gently on her hip. Though the pose was maternal, and she seemed to be holding her nephew with care, the sight of that other woman with the baby made Mina’s heart stutter.

  So did the blood drenching Yu’s front. She met the other girl’s gaze, seeing fear there, but also a touch of feral satsifaction that indicated it wasn’t her blood. Shane had said three were unaccounted for, but Mina thought Yu might know what had happened to the other one.

  “Look at this, Antaya.” Les smirked at the group in the yard. “First they leave the back door open for us with those torn vines acting almost like a flashing neon sign to show the way in. And now, they’ve formed a little welcome party for us.”

  Her lilting giggle was far creepier than anything Mina had heard in a long time. “How convenient.” She caught Mina’s gaze. “You must be the advance party.”

  Lia let out a small cry and wrenched her hand from Mina’s. Before she could stop her sister, the other woman ran full-tilt toward Antaya.

  “Give me my baby.”

  “No, I think I’ll keep him. That one stole mine.” She pointed to Desmond coldly. “Murdered my little one, you bastard.” She rubbed her stomach. “Your bullet tore ripped apart his tiny body, and you will know how that feels soon.” The hand on her stomach moved to a sheath at her waist that seemed to cradle a large knife.

  “Fine, I’ll come with you, but leave these folks alone,” said Des.

  “No,” Emme, Winn, and Coop all protested simultaneously.

  “It’s too late for that, my friend,” said the paunchy middle-aged man pointing his gun at Finn’s neck. “You’ve offered him sanctuary, and you have a nice setup here. We’ll be needing it to raise the kid.”

  “You’re not taking my baby.” Lia seemed to have snapped out of her mental paralysis. She looked lucid as ever when she tried to snatch Ty from Antaya’s grasp. “Let go, you bitch.”<
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  It happened too quickly for Mina to even try to intercede. One second, she was trying to pull Ty from that crazy woman’s arms, and the next, Lia fell to the porch with blood spurting from her neck as the black woman wiped the blade on her pants and slid the knife back into its sheath.

  Tony let out a rasping sound, and Mina echoed it with a harsh cry of her own. She rushed toward her sister, ignoring the gun pointed in her face as she knelt by Lia. Fumbling, she stripped off her coat and folded it into a messy square, trying to staunch the flow of blood from the carotid injury.

  Lia’s lips moved, but it was impossible to guess what she wanted to say. In less than a minute, the life drained from her eyes, and she went limp. Mina continued to kneel beside her, tears blurring her vision. Reality faded for a second, and she was once again a little girl turning to her oldest sister for comfort after a nightmare. Uncaring of the blood that had poured from her neck, she laid her head on Lia’s chest and let the tears flow, wishing she had regained that closeness with her that would now be forever beyond reach.

  “Everyone will please put down their weapons,” said the man looming over her.

  “I don’t think so, Les,” said Shane. “You’ll kill us all either way.”

  “Yes, that’s true, but if you try to fight us, the babe is sure to die.” He gestured to his men on the ground. “Untie them now.” His gun didn’t waver until all three of his associates once again stood free, warily backing away from Coop and the others to melt into the shadows around the porch.

  “He looks a lot like you, Shane,” said Antaya, as she rubbed her cheek against Ty’s head, ignoring the baby’s whimpers. “I’d swear he is your son. If so, the slain mother at our feet must be the Mina whose pie you missed.” Her laugh was rich and dark, but poisonous rather than sweet.

  Shane flinched, but didn’t respond to her taunts. “I’d rather he died than be raised by you two pair of nuts.”

  “How dare you?”

  Mina looked up when Tony shouted at Shane, blinking with surprise when her brother-in-law punched him, sending Shane to his knees on the ground.