Brandt’s Journal
I’m following Cade’s lead and keeping a journal. I can guarantee that this won’t last. I’ve never been good at these kinds of things, and I’ve never been the type of person to spill out everything I’m feeling, on paper or otherwise. This will probably end up being one of those bald-facts affairs that just tells things the way they are. And the way things are isn’t exactly the way I want them to be.
We are, figuratively, in the shit.
We made it to Tupelo, Mississippi, as safely as I expected us to make it. We’ve been in this little house for about a month and a half now, unmolested for the most part. There’s been a few incidents involving an infected or two getting uncomfortably close to where we’re hiding, but they were taken care of quickly and quietly. It’s scary how efficient we’ve gotten at this.
Cade spends most of her days either keeping watch on the roof or sitting in the living room with me and Ethan while we try to find reports on the radio. Ethan spends most of his time being the dickish guy he was when I first met him. I suspect that’s his normal personality, despite Cade’s assurances to the contrary. But I’m getting off topic. Ethan’s attitude isn’t the reason why I’m writing in this thing. I said I’d write down what happened, and that’s what I’m going to do.
So here is where we stand now:
By the fourteenth day after Atlanta’s fall (one week after I met Cade and Ethan) the entirety of the southeast was ravaged by the Michaluk Virus. There were some holdouts, mostly in small towns and cities that weren’t close to the larger metropolitan areas, but even those have since fallen. Now it’s just isolated pockets of survivors scattered across the southeastern states, struggling to live.
By the sixteenth day, the last television news station went off the air, presumably permanently. We’re not sure what happened, but my theories tend to involve the infected, so it doesn’t do to ask me about it. Cade thinks the news reporter gave up and decided to find his own place to hide out. Two days after he stopped reporting, the power in our safe house went out for good.
By the twenty-fifth day, we lost the last of the radio stations that we could pick up from our location. The final DJ went off the air with screams of terror and pain. I don’t think I will ever forget the sound.
On top of all this, none of us have seen another breathing, uninfected soul since we stopped at a gun shop in Alabama. This fact on its own is disturbing enough; the additional fact that we’ve been forced to move further away from Tupelo’s main center twice in order to get away from the ever-growing hordes of infected is downright frighte
Cade gasped. The sound broke through Brandt’s train of thought, and he dropped his pen. It rolled halfway down the sloped roof before it slowed to a stop. Brandt narrowed his dark eyes and turned his head to look at Cade accusingly, wondering what in the world she was freaking out about. But Brandt was more irritated at the fact that he would now have to get up to retrieve his pen before a gust of wind took it the rest of the way off the roof.
It was early in the morning of their third day at their third hide-out, or safe house as Brandt had mentally coined it. Cade had been out on the roof since sunrise, and Brandt had joined her soon after—partially to keep her company, but mostly to get away from Ethan. The older man had become surly and withdrawn throughout their time in Mississippi. Well, more surly and withdrawn, Brandt amended silently. Ethan had struck him as a grouchy bastard when they’d met the month before, and nothing the man had done had dislodged Brandt’s initial impression. Besides, it was much more pleasant on the roof with Cade, despite the way the air still clung tenaciously to its early spring chill. As Brandt breathed out, the air fogged before his face in the same way that it had in a dark alley over a month ago …
Brandt shook free from the dark thoughts threatening to surface and looked at the woman beside him instead. Cade was much more pleasant to think about. “What? What is it?” Brandt asked her, feeling impatient despite his determination to keep his cool.
“I thought I saw some people down there,” Cade said. She pointed down the street with a slim hand, her head nodding in the same direction. Brandt sat up straighter, suddenly attentive, and moved to one knee. He followed her finger to try to see what Cade thought she’d seen. Brandt couldn’t deny the way his heart pounded in his chest at the thought of other uninfected people there; he longed for company outside of Cade’s and Ethan’s. He liked both of them just fine, especially Cade. Who couldn’t appreciate the subtle beauty and courage and innate toughness the woman had demonstrated over the past month? Even if Cade was a total smartass, but Brandt had convinced himself that that was just part of her charm. Regardless of his growing affection for Cade, though, Brandt preferred an ever-changing environment, and the last month had offered nothing like that.
No matter how much Brandt squinted into the distance, he couldn’t see a thing.
“I think if you actually saw anything, it was probably just one of the infected,” Brandt said. He let out a sigh, his shoulders sagging. He dumped his notebook onto the roof beside him before he slid down the slope to grab his pen, careful to keep his body firmly on the roof. The last thing he wanted was to fall the two stories to the hard ground below. Brandt hissed through his teeth as one of his knuckles scraped roughly against the shingles. He stopped halfway down the roof to study his injured knuckle as Cade continued.
“I don’t know, Brandt.” Cade’s voice was heavy with doubt. Brandt looked up from his knuckle; she frowned as she kept her eyes on the street below. “I could have sworn that whoever I saw was running.”
Brandt couldn’t help the smirk that spread across his face, no matter how hard he fought it. He scooped up his pen and crawled back up to his spot beside her. “Yeah, I hear the infected can run too, you know,” he pointed out. He laughed and picked up his ragged spiral notebook, resting it on one of his knees and smoothing a hand over its battered cover. “Relax, okay?” he said. “Nothing is going to happen around here. And if something does happen, it’s not like the infected can get up onto the roof.”
Cade let out a sigh and shook her hair back from her face. She whipped out her ever-present hair elastic—Brandt still wondered where she kept those things—and started to pull her dark locks back into a tight ponytail. Brandt gave her a sidelong glance. The style into which she twisted her hair made her face appear hard, her jaw strong and more angled than before. Brandt realized, as his eyes traced her features, that Cade’s own eyes were locked onto a distant point on the street. He jammed his pen into the spirals of his notebook before he twisted to look at her full-on.
“There’s nothing down there, Cade,” Brandt said firmly. He snapped his fingers in front of her face, trying to bring her attention away from the street and onto him. “Nothing at all,” he repeated. “If there was, I’m pretty sure we would know it by now.”
A slow know-it-all smirk spread across Cade’s face as Brandt finished speaking. She gently elbowed him and stood up on the roof. “Oh, there’s nothing down there?” she asked. “Then what’s that?” Cade pointed down the street again. Brandt followed her gesture reluctantly, wholly convinced he wouldn’t see anything of significance down there.
Brandt was proven wrong as he saw two figures running down the street. One hunched under the weight of a large bag on his back, supporting the other man with one arm even as he stumbled along beside him. They were too far away for Brandt to make out any finer details. He stood up beside Cade and grabbed her rifle from the roof, aiming it in the direction of the two figures below.
Cade grabbed at Brandt’s arm as he aimed the rifle. She yanked it hard and nearly dragged the weapon out of his grip. “Brandt!” she protested, her voice horrified.
“I’m not going to fucking shoot them,” Brandt snapped as he wrested the rifle away from Cade. He rolled his eyes and studied the two figures through the scope mounted on the rifle, squinting through the tube. He watched their movements, the way they walked and gestured and helped each other along.
It was two men, as far as Brandt’s scope-assisted eyesight could discern. The brunette one appeared to be younger and was dressed in jeans and a mid-length dark coat; the older one was blond and had on some sort of dark uniform with patches on the sleeves. A dark blue canvas bag was slung over his shoulders, resting across his back. The way it bulged coupled with the way the man was bent over indicated that it was quite heavy. Brandt was honestly surprised that the man could run under the weighty load. Brandt squinted and tried to make out further details of the man’s clothes, such as the yellow words printed on one of his patches or maybe the specifics of the insignia, but the two men were too far away, and the letters were too indistinct from this distance.
“They don’t have Michaluk,” Brandt concluded. “We should get them inside. There might be infected nearby.”
“Are you sure?” Cade demanded. She took the rifle from his hands and gave him an offended look, as if she were disgusted that he had dared to lay hands on her precious weapon. Brandt had a mental image of her stroking the rifle lovingly, like someone would a dog, complete with the sweet crooning of “Who’s a good boy?” He bit back a snigger as she continued. “What if you’re wrong and they are infected?”
“Well, that’s what the rifle is for, isn’t it?” Brandt suggested. He started to climb the steep slope of the roof. He slipped in through the window, narrowly avoiding whacking his head on the frame, and then leaned out to help Cade inside. “All I know is that neither of them appears to be infected,” Brandt continued. He grasped her hand and assisted her inside. “And I cannot in good conscience leave them out there to fend for themselves when we have the ability to help them.”
Cade hesitated and looked back at the street through the window. The two men were starting to come into view, and Brandt could begin to see more details without the aid of the rifle scope. “Damn, Alton, you must have the eyes of a hawk,” he commented as he realized that she’d spotted them from a great distance without the help of binoculars or a scope. He was, in a word, impressed. “Come on, let’s get downstairs and get them in the house.”
Without another word, Brandt headed through the dark bedroom he and Cade had entered and stepped into the equally dim hallway. He debated taking out the flashlight he kept in his jacket pocket, but he’d become familiar enough with the house that he thought he could make it to the front door well enough without it. As he descended the stairs, his boots thudding heavily on each step on the way down, Brandt heard Ethan in the living room near the front of the house. Ethan was doing exactly what Brandt had left him doing earlier in the morning: pacing restlessly back and forth in front of the unlit fireplace. His arms were crossed over his chest, and he grumbled to himself, though the words were drowned out by the sound of creaking floorboards and Brandt’s hurried footsteps.
Ethan jerked his head up as Brandt darted into the room and snatched the steel crowbar from the coffee table. “What are you doing?” Ethan demanded. The only answer was the sound of Cade running down the stairs. Ethan’s expression was a perfect picture of bewilderment as he shifted his eyes from Brandt to Cade, directing his next question to her instead. “What’s going on?”
“There are people outside,” Cade explained. She reached the bottom of the stairs and circled around to the living room. Brandt strode to the front door and started to pry away the boards with which they had reinforced it. The boards came away with a loud creak of nails tearing from wood as Cade continued, raising her voice over the noise. “We’re trying to get them inside.”
“What?” Something in Ethan’s tone made Brandt pause in his work. He half-turned away from the door to look at the other man. Ethan’s voice was hard and cold, and he crossed his arms as he glared at them both. “Absolutely not. You’re not opening that door,” he said with a firm shake of his head.
As Ethan spoke, Brandt ground his teeth together in frustration. He wordlessly turned his back to the man, attacking the boards again as Cade debated with Ethan. It was better to let Cade handle the verbal part of the argument; if Ethan pushed the matter with him, Brandt might not have been able to resist the urge to turn around and hit the man across the jaw with the crowbar.
It was never a good thing for Brandt to get pissed off when he had a potentially deadly weapon in his hands. Things never turned out very well.
“Ethan, we can’t leave them out there!” Cade protested as Brandt ripped a board from the doorframe viciously. He glanced back again and saw Cade sling her rifle’s strap over her shoulder, resting the weapon against her back. He wondered if she too was trying to resist the urge to inflict bodily harm on Ethan. “It’s not right!” she continued. “They need help, and we can give it to them!”
“What kind of help can we offer them, Cade?” Ethan demanded. He started across the living room toward the woman, and Brandt felt a pang of irrational nervousness at the thought of Ethan going at Cade. “None. We’re not in control of anything here! Our supplies are limited. We’re barely hanging on as it is. It’s just too fucking dangerous to open that door!”
“Ethan Bennett, I cannot believe you’re suggesting that we leave people out there when we can offer them shelter and survival!” Cade snapped back. “If we leave them to die, we’re just as bad as those fucking infected things out there!”
A silence fell between them as Cade spoke those words. It was a heavy silence, and Brandt could feel the weight of it resting on his shoulders. The final board came free from the doorframe, effectively removing the only major barricade keeping any infected out of their safe house. Brandt dropped the board onto the floor and unlocked the deadbolt. He grabbed the doorknob with one hand and held the crowbar in the other to serve as a weapon before he looked over his shoulder at the two friends. They stood less than a foot away from each other, Ethan’s arms still crossed and Cade’s hands on her hips, their eyes locked like lasers onto each other’s faces and their expressions set in hard determination and anger.
“Debate is over,” Brandt said simply, interrupting their staring match. “Is either one of you going to give me some backup, or am I going to have to handle this alone?”
The question was enough to drag them both away from their tense scowls. Cade pulled her rifle from over her shoulder with a quick shake of her head. “I’ve got it, since Ethan’s being a jerk about this,” she snapped as she strode to the door. She gave Brandt a small smile, despite her obvious annoyance. “I’ll stand guard on the porch while you go get ‘em. You run faster than I do.”
“Oh, is that the only reason for me to be saddled with the harder job?” Brandt joked. He hefted the crowbar and made his way out to the porch, the woman close behind him, and scanned their surroundings. Brandt didn’t see any immediate dangers, but that didn’t mean they were safe, not by a long shot.
“Yes,” Cade answered with a little laugh. “Go get ‘em, tiger.” She gave him a playful punch on his bicep as she spoke, and Brandt couldn’t resist giving her a grin. She looked more relaxed and less angry than she had when she’d faced off with Ethan, and Brandt was grateful. The last thing he wanted to deal with was an angry Cade.
The porch steps creaked under his boots as only old wooden steps could, sending a chill down his spine and making his back tense. The sound made him think of ghosts and haunted houses. As if he needed anything else to creep him out nowadays. He looked around the dead street as he crossed the yard, and the frown he wore deepened considerably. He couldn’t see the two men he and Cade had spotted from the roof. He was going to have to go out into the street itself to find them, and he did not relish the idea.
Brandt glanced back at Cade for reassurance. It was a bit comforting to see the skilled woman standing at attention on the porch, her icy blue eyes on the street, constantly scanning for dangers. Still, her presence didn’t do much to reduce the sense of exposure that settled on Brandt’s skin as he moved out into the center of the street. There was movement far in the distance to his right, and he wondered if it was a massing of infected several blocks away. The idea didn’t help his nerves.
The two men were nowhere to be seen. Perhaps they had found shelter in a nearby house in the span of time it had taken Brandt to get the front door open. Or perhaps they’d been grabbed by an infected person while Brandt had pried at the boards nailed to the doorframe.
“Brandt!” Cade called softly. Brandt turned to look at her, and she pointed to his left. He looked in the direction she indicated, and there were the two men, still limping away as fast as their obvious exhaustion would allow. In the time it had taken them to get outside the safe house, the men had made it half a block down and into the yard of one of the houses across the street.
Without any further thought, Brandt darted after them. He jogged to catch up as he called out just loudly enough to get their attention. “Hey! Hey, stop!”
The two men halted in mid-step, and the older, bulkier of the two let go of the thinner one to turn and point an old revolver right in Brandt’s face. He stood protectively between Brandt and the smaller man. Brandt immediately stopped short and held up both hands defensively. The crowbar dangled, useless, by the hook over the fingers of one hand.
“Who are you? What do you want?” the blond man demanded. His grip on the revolver was so tight his knuckles had paled, but Brandt barely noticed; his attention was focused squarely on the barrel of the gun. Its opening yawned at him.
“I am so tired of having guns pointed at me,” Brandt remarked as casually as he could. He forced his gaze away from the barrel and looked back behind him, though the training that had been hammered into his head over the years screamed at him that he shouldn’t take his eyes off of the dangers in front of him. He tried to ignore the little voice. “Look, I have a hideout over there,” Brandt said. He pointed to the house in question. Cade was just visible on the porch, her rifle in her hands, and Brandt knew that she must be tense and worried as she watched the exchange on the street. “Me and two of my friends. We’re trying to offer you some shelter.”
“Why? What’s in it for you?” the man asked. His voice was hard, and he had a steely glint in his blue eyes. Brandt glanced at the gun again. The barrel shook noticeably. This man wasn’t a killer; Brandt doubted that he would squeeze the trigger. Brandt focused his eyes past the gun and took in the full sight of the man for the first time in their encounter. The man’s outfit was, indeed, a type of uniform. He wore a dark button-up uniform shirt and dark pants, and sturdy boots adorned his feet. A gold nameplate on the right side of his chest labeled him as “Carter.” Brandt’s eyes lit onto the patches on his sleeves, finally able to get a good look at them, and a slow smile spread across his face.
“Nothing. Just the idea of additional security and helping other people,” Brandt finally answered. He nodded toward Carter respectfully. “And perhaps your skills as a paramedic would come in handy too, in case we have any injuries or illnesses that we can’t cope with ourselves.”
The man hesitated; he looked as if he were torn between the decision to go with Brandt and the decision for him and his friend to find their own hiding place. As he debated, Cade called out to Brandt from the porch again. This time, her voice held a note of warning.
“Brandt, there’s infected coming this way!”
Brandt swore and lifted the crowbar defensively as he turned away from Carter. His dark eyes scanned the street around them in every direction. He couldn’t see any infected coming at them from anywhere. “Where? Where are they?”
Cade didn’t answer. Instead, she lifted her rifle and pointed it down the yard toward the empty house next to their safe house, in the opposite direction from Brandt’s position. She aimed at something Brandt couldn’t see, but the fact that she aimed her rifle at all was a solid indicator that something was about to go horribly wrong.
“Shit, if she’s actually about to fire that thing, it’s fucking serious,” Brandt said out loud. He grabbed Carter by the arm without a moment of consideration for the fact that the man had a gun pointed at him. He motioned to the brunette man, who had yet to say a word. “Come on, we’ve got to go!”
Thankfully, the two men didn’t question Brandt’s order. As Brandt moved toward the house, his battered combat boots hurrying over the pavement and then the sidewalk, the men followed him to the front porch. Cade waited at the head of the porch steps, her rifle still aimed down the street. Brandt realized that she was lining up a shot, and he sucked in a breath.
“No, don’t!” Brandt gasped as he stormed up the steps. He stopped behind Cade and motioned with the crowbar for the two men to enter the house. They bolted into the dark interior without question. “The sound of the gunshot will only draw them here.”
Cade tensed visibly and removed her finger from the trigger she’d already begun to squeeze. She nodded toward the neighbor’s yard. “They’re moving between the trees,” she said. “Hiding behind them and anything else available. Cars, fences, bushes, trash cans, whatever. They’re working to keep me from seeing them. They might be working together. Strategizing or some shit.”
Brandt caught Cade by the arm and propelled her toward the front door. “We’ll discuss this inside,” he said softly as she moved past him. He let go of her arm and followed her inside.
The younger of the two men had sat down on the edge of the coffee table, and Carter dumped the heavy bag onto the floor and knelt in front of him. Brandt’s ears registered the sound of the younger man’s breathing. It was hard and fast, his inhalations deep and wheezy; it was obvious the man was in some form of respiratory distress. Brandt wondered if he should offer to help, but the opened front door suggested otherwise. He shut and bolted the door, grabbed the nail gun, and set to work reapplying the boards he’d pried from the door. Brandt would leave the medical problems to those who knew better than he how to handle them.
“Who are you?” Ethan demanded over the loud thump of the nail gun slamming the last nail home. Brandt set the tool down on the floor and moved into the living room. Brandt was sure that if Ethan maintained the same attitude he’d had before the front door opened, there was going to be trouble.
Ethan stood in the center of the living room, his arms crossed over his chest in the familiar pose he’d taken on every time he got irritated. There was a hard look on his face as he stared down at Carter, who still knelt on the floor by the coffee table. Cade hovered by the darkened fireplace, her rifle in her hands, her shoulders straight as her wary gaze shifted back and forth between Ethan and the two men. It was obvious to Brandt that Cade didn’t know how to handle the tension in the air between the men. Truth be told, neither did Brandt.
“My name is Theo Carter,” the older of the strangers said as he rubbed his companion’s back soothingly. “This is my brother, Gray.” He didn’t add anything further as he started to unzip the bulging blue bag at his feet.
Ethan pulled his gun from its holster and pointed it at Theo. The man halted his motion, freezing and looking up at Ethan with narrowed eyes. “Is he infected?” Ethan asked sternly as he motioned toward Gray with the gun. Theo’s eyes went cold and angry, hard as diamonds, and he clenched his hands into fists.
“What the hell?” Theo said in exasperation. “No, he’s not infected! He’s got fucking asthma, and he needs his damned inhaler before he suffocates!”
Brandt had to take control of this situation before things spiraled out of hand. “Ethan, cut it out,” he ordered as he moved into the living room. Ethan’s bad mood had gone on long enough, and it was time either he or Cade reined it in. Brandt grabbed Theo’s bag from the floor before the paramedic could get into it, and dumped its contents onto the coffee table beside Gray. “You’ll excuse me if I search this thing, won’t you?” he asked. “Just as a precaution.”
Brandt didn’t bother to wait for a reply as he started to push around the pile of objects on the table. The bag had been packed with an assortment of first aid supplies, both the basic bandages and medical tape and the more advanced syringes and medications as well as a strange metal contraption in a blue canvas roll. Brandt thought it resembled some sort of medieval torture device; it was definitely not something he would want used on him. “What’s this?” he asked as he held it up.
“It’s a laryngoscope,” Theo said shortly. He snatched the inhaler to which he’d referred out of the pile and passed it to Gray without further elaboration.
“Ah.” Brandt set the roll back inside the bag. He was still completely lost as to what exactly a laryngoscope was. Rather than continue to contemplate the object, he looked up at Ethan. The older man still glared at Theo; it was obvious that Ethan was far from happy about having additional people in their safe house. Brandt wasn’t exactly thrilled with the idea either; however, he was far from willing to abandon others to the dangerous streets when he could offer them help. He stood, leaving Theo’s supplies, and moved closer to Ethan in case he did something stupid. Considering how unstable the man had acted over the past few weeks, Brandt wouldn’t have put it past him. And since Ethan seemed less inclined to take charge of the situation than usual, Brandt decided to do it himself, even though the last thing he wanted to do was be in charge of anything.
“My name is Brandt Evans,” he began. He paused as he debated telling the two men his rank and where he was from. But then he shook his head slightly and added, “I’m military. Marines. The cranky bastard to my right is Ethan Bennett from the Memphis PD.” He smirked as he dodged the swipe Ethan made at him and took a quick step to the side, out of Ethan’s reach. “And the lovely but deadly lady over by the fireplace is Cade Alton, formerly of the Israel Defense Forces.”
Theo nodded a short greeting at Cade, who had remained wordless throughout the entire discussion. She nodded back at Theo solemnly and then moved across the room to join Brandt and Ethan. “We should quarantine them,” she suggested, keeping her voice low as she glanced at Theo and Gray. “Just as a precaution, in case they’ve caught Michaluk and aren’t showing any symptoms yet.”
“How would we go about doing that?” Brandt asked. As he spoke, he watched Ethan carefully and tried to guess what was going through the older man’s mind. Brandt couldn’t be sure, but given the way Ethan’s eyes narrowed as he stared at Theo and Gray, it wasn’t anything good.
“I say we kick them out the front door and send them back where they came from,” Ethan grumbled. The man was moody, and the only thing the hardness in his voice made Brandt want to do was punch him in the mouth.
“That is not an option,” Cade snapped. Brandt was glad to see Cade dishing Ethan’s attitude back to him. Brandt knew that Ethan still didn’t trust him very much, regardless of the time they’d spent around each other and the effort Brandt had put into trying to prove himself to Ethan. As a result, the other man had been reluctant to even listen to anything Brandt had said; maybe Cade could get through to him.
“Maybe we can shut them up in one of the bedrooms and just keep an eye on them or something,” she suggested.
Brandt saw one glaring problem with her idea. “None of the bedrooms upstairs have locks on the doors,” he pointed out. “How are we going to shut them up in a room if we can’t lock the door?”
Cade didn’t speak, but her eyes slid sideways, past Brandt. Brandt turned to follow her gaze. His brown eyes landed on the nail gun he’d left by the door.
“Wait, you want to nail the door shut?” Brandt asked incredulously. “I mean … seriously? What if the house gets attacked while they’re stuck in there? We’d never get that door open in time to get them out.”
Cade rolled her eyes. “In this house? If the infected attack, we’re done for anyway, because you sealed off all the entrances when we got here. Nailing them into a bedroom upstairs would make them a hell of a lot safer than we would be in an attack. It’s our only option right now. I personally don’t want them wandering around the house if one of them is hiding an injury from us.”
A hoarse voice interrupted their discussion. “We’re not hiding anything.” Cade stopped talking, and all three turned to look at the two men. Gray stared up at them steadily, his face set in a look of determination. “We’re not injured or infected. If we were, we wouldn’t be here. We’re not bad people, and we wouldn’t bring that virus around people who aren’t sick.”
Brandt looked back at Ethan and Cade pointedly, a smirk playing at his lips. “See?” he said as he inclined his head toward the two men. “I think they’re okay.”
Cade made a disgusted face. “You’re too trusting,” she commented.
“What can I say? It’s part of my charm,” Brandt joked. He gave her a helpless shrug, even as his smirk spread into a wide grin.
Despite Brandt’s attempt to lighten the mood, Ethan still looked like he was ready to punch a hole in the nearest solid object. Brandt preferred that it not be him. “I still don’t like this,” Ethan muttered. “I still think we should just put them out.”
“Tough shit,” Brandt bit back. “I think we could use them, especially Theo. He’s a paramedic. That could come in handy, you know. Because between the three of us, all we really know is basic first aid and CPR.”
“Precisely,” Cade agreed. She wrapped her fingers around Ethan’s wrist in a white-knuckled grip, right below the knot of bone in his arm. Brandt winced involuntarily; that had to be painful. “We need to have a talk,” she said, directing her words at Ethan. “Because you’ve been acting like a royal pain in the ass, and frankly, I’m sick of it.” She waved her hand at the two men sitting in the room and added to Brandt, “You … I don’t know. Deal with them or something.”
Cade stormed out of the room, hauling Ethan toward the kitchen. She left Brandt standing in the center of the living room, watching the two newcomers and trying to figure out what in the world to do next.