JAMES DIDN’T EVEN LOOK UP. He dropped the Pepsi in his hand and ran around the island, the side farthest from Kadance, toward the computer equipment.
Lyndon was already there. James threw a fist, but Lyndon blocked and slammed a hook across James’s jaw. James tried to tackle Lyndon. Lyndon stepped to the side and shoved James into the wall.
Kadance thought for sure he’d go down. James stumbled, caught himself against the wall. Then he turned and lunged at Lyndon again.
Fear for Lyndon overwhelmed her. Some part of her knew the fear was irrational, but that didn’t matter. She started around the other side of the workstation.
But Lyndon had already grabbed James and hip-threw him. James smacked to the floor with a thud that reverberated through the floorboards. His breath expelled, and he paused long enough for Lyndon to straddle him and hold his hands to the floor.
“Stop,” Lyndon commanded.
James glared up at him.
Kadance moved closer, and James glanced in her direction. Then he looked again and stared. “Kadance.”
“This is James,” she said.
“I thought we might come across him eventually. I just hoped we wouldn’t.”
She heard the sympathy deep in his tone.
Then he turned back to James, and his expression leveled into deadly. “Cut the feed.”
James, still staring at Kadance, turned back to Lyndon. James struggled, but Lyndon kneed him in the ribs with surprising force given his position. James grunted in pain.
“Cut the feed,” Lyndon growled.
James tried again to struggle.
Kadance kneeled by his head and held her knife to his throat. “I would do what he says.”
James was still, perfectly. And he stared up at her. “Kadance.” The way he said her name . . . almost like he was relieved to see her. “Kadance,” he said again. “I can convince her to include you. She has vaccinations. I’ve been working on convincing her how important you could be. You could be the military leader in our new society.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“Then we can be together again,” James said.
“What do you mean ‘be together’? Are you insane?”
“I can convince her.”
She glanced at Lyndon, at the way he was looking at her. The gentleness in his eyes. Several things made sense all at once. She felt so much hurt she wanted to curl into a ball and block out the world. All her mistakes. All the things she wanted, so desperately wanted, and could never have.
Then she looked back down at James, at his familiar face. All this time, she’d feared seeing him again, what her reaction would be. Would she be weak and let herself want him again, be with him? But she didn’t want him, and she knew she never would again.
Not like the feelings she had for Lyndon.
The realization hurt worse than being shot. Part of her would gladly go back to Iran, Yemen, anywhere but here.
She strangled her emotions and threw them into the back of her mind. She’d always tried to treat her emotions like that, like trash to be tossed aside. Lyndon had shown her she didn’t have to do that. He liked that she still cared. But now she cared too much. About something she could never have.
She focused on James, on her anger at him, on the situation. “Go ahead and convince her. Bring me to her. So I can slit her throat like I’m going to do to you.” She pressed the knife harder against his skin, and blood trickled down his neck.
“Kadance, please.” His voice was tight. “I love you.”
Peripherally, she saw as Lyndon looked at her. She couldn’t risk looking at him right now. She just had to believe that he would trust her.
“You love me?” she growled at James.
“Yes.”
“Is that why you conspired against me? The whole thing was fake.”
“No,” he barely forced out.
She eased up on the knife a fraction of an inch.
“It wasn’t fake,” he said. “Not for me.”
“It was a setup from the beginning. My father hired you to get close and turn me.”
James said nothing.
“Admit it.”
When he didn’t respond, she pressed the knife.
He grimaced and made a sound of pain. She lifted the knife just enough to stop cutting his skin.
“Admit it,” she demanded.
“It all changed,” he said. “I fell in love with you.”
She gripped the knife handle more tightly and tried to control the urge to slit his throat.
Lyndon’s quiet voice burrowed through her anger. “I think he’s telling the truth.”
She gripped the knife so hard her hand started to shake.
“He saw the same thing,” Lyndon said.
The same thing Lyndon sees. Her hand stopped shaking.
Lyndon looked down at James. “Why did you let her father come for her?”
James shifted his eyes over to Lyndon. “I don’t know why she’s so determined to bring you into the fold.”
“Answer the question.”
Kadance appreciated that Lyndon seemed to realize she needed answers and didn’t mind using their limited time on this.
James shifted his gaze back to Kadance. “I can get her to vaccinate you. You’ll rule over our entire new military.”
“If you think she wants to rule anything,” Lyndon said, “you don’t know her at all.”
James continued to focus on Kadance. “Please. I can save you.”
“Answer the question,” she said.
He paused. “He loves you, Kadance. Your father. He just wants the best for you.”
“I almost feel bad for you,” she said. And it was the truth. She realized James didn’t understand, and that meant his betrayal didn’t mean anything. He’d honestly thought he was doing the right thing. She was still angry at him, but pity muted it. A little.
Lyndon asked her, “Do you mind if I ask him something?”
She nodded toward James.
Lyndon looked down at James. “How is it you’re connected to both Kadance’s family and the attack that’s about to happen?”
“It’s a cleansing. We’re saving the world.”
“How are you connected to both?”
“It’s none of your business. None of this is your business.”
“Please answer the question.”
No response.
A part of Kadance hoped he didn’t answer. Lyndon wouldn’t put anything together yet, most likely, but she desperately wanted to keep him as far away from the realization as possible. She promised herself she would tell him eventually, but not yet, not when his focus was imperative to keeping him alive.
“If you have any hope of getting Kadance’s affection, you’ll need to give her answers.”
James focused on her. Finally, he said, “She referred me.”
“What do you mean?” Lyndon asked.
He continued speaking to Kadance, as if Lyndon didn’t exist. “She’d hired your father for a job at some point, though he’s never met her and doesn’t know her name. I guess he realized she surrounds herself with talented people and asked her if she knew anyone who could help him with a project. She gave him my name. He had the plan, how to get you back, but he needed a man you didn’t know who could handle the task. I met with him, he explained the problem and the plan, he showed me your picture, and I agreed.”
James continued to stare at Kadance. “Please,” he said. “I can save you.”
“I don’t need you to save me. We’re here to turn off the feed.”
“Please, Kadance.”
She looked up at Lyndon. “We don’t have a lot of time. I’m betting he has to check in with her regularly. Can you turn off the connection?”
“We should tie him up.” Lyndon looked around the room.
Kadance was relieved he’d let go of his line of questions for James.
Lyndon’s gaze stopped at a pile of spare cables on the workstation. Then he asked Kadance, “Will you hold him?”
“If he moves, he gets a slit throat.” She stared down at James.
James stared back at her with the oddest mixture of emotion on his face—affection, fear, and attraction. It grossed her out, which wasn’t easily done.
Lyndon let go of James, stood, and walked over to pick up several cables. Then he pulled the chair from the workstation out into the middle of the room.
Kadance stood and ordered James, “Get up.”
James slowly pushed himself up to sitting and then off the ground. He walked over to the chair and sat. Kadance stood over James while Lyndon tied his hands to the arms of the chair and his feet to the legs. While Lyndon tied his waist to the back of the chair, Kadance sheathed her knife, walked over to the small table in the kitchen, and brought a chair over for Lyndon to use.
Lyndon finished with James and came over to the workstation. “Thank you,” he said to Kadance, sat, and started typing.
“You really think that guy can hack my system?” James asked Kadance.
“Obviously, you haven’t been paying very close attention. How do you think we found you?”
James scowled as he watched Lyndon break the password on the computer lock screen. “That was the easy part.”
Lyndon kept typing as if he couldn’t hear James, too focused, but she knew he was still fully aware of everything in their surroundings.
She gave Lyndon a few minutes to work, while James continued to tell her he could save her. She could see only the side of his face, but she caught Lyndon’s slight smirk.
She moved over to Lyndon and leaned down so she could speak in his ear. “What’s the smirk about?”
He continued typing. “He thinks you need to be saved.”
She smiled a little. She knew she needed to move away from him, keep her distance, but instead, she murmured, “How’s it going?”
“It’s a little trickier than tracing the sign feed.”
She rested her hand on his arm, his bicep, and whispered, “I’m not worried.”
His hands paused for half a second before he continued working.
A loud meow, almost a bark, and scratching at the door.
“He finally got tired of being left out,” Lyndon said.
She started toward the door. “Something’s wrong.”
Lyndon stood.
“Keep him quiet,” she said over her shoulder.
Lyndon started toward James.
At the door, Kadance looked out the peephole. There was someone coming up the stairs. She cracked the door open, Mac scurried through, and she closed and locked the door. Mac stood next to her facing the door. She looked out the peephole again. It was a young man coming up the stairs, wearing a cheap jacket and jeans. As he made it to the top, she noticed he had a plastic bag in his hand. Food delivery? Though neither the bag, nor his clothes, had any logos or the name of a restaurant.
The young man knocked on the door.
She looked closely at him, at his posture, or lack thereof, and his expression, kind of bored and unfocused. She was confident he was just food delivery or something else innocuous, but she unsheathed her knife just in case.
She opened the door and smiled, while keeping her knife hidden behind the door.
“Oh, hi,” he said. “Did Jim move?”
“He’s just in the next room,” she said. “I’m his girlfriend.”
“Oh, cool. He mentioned his girl was coming to stay with him soon. Hope your trip was nice.” He held out the bag.
She took the bag. “How much do I owe you?”
He told her the amount, and she took some cash out of her pocket with her left hand, right hand, holding the knife, still hidden behind the door.
“What else did he say about me?” she asked with a grin.
He smiled. “Just that he was excited to see you. I can see why.” He took the cash and headed back down the stairs.
She closed and locked the door, sheathed her knife, and took the bag of food over to the kitchen counter.
She looked over at James. Lyndon was behind him holding a hand over his mouth. Lyndon let go and carefully took a wad of fabric out of James’s mouth. It looked like a sock. Then she noticed James’s one bare foot.
“Nice,” she said to Lyndon.
“If I was really sadistic, I’d have used my own sock.” He walked back over to the workstation.
James spit on the floor and cursed at Lyndon.
Lyndon gave no response.
She opened the bag of food. Chinese, of course—James’s favorite. She sorted through the containers and found something that was easy to eat, not noodles or rice, but something that could easily be popped into the mouth.
She walked over and set it on the table next to Lyndon, along with a plastic fork. “You haven’t eaten all day.”
“I’m all right.” He continued typing, gaze intensely focused on the screen.
Her voice was softer. “You should eat.”
His hands paused, and he looked up at her.
She walked back over to the kitchen counter. Her hands shook while she took the other containers out of the bag. You have to do better than this, Kadance. She could not let him see what was going on inside her head.
Mac jumped up on the counter and rubbed against her arm.
She petted his back. “I’ll get you some water, buddy.” She found a plastic container in a cabinet, filled it from the tap, and set it on the counter.
She let herself glance over and saw Lyndon take a bite of food. Good. Then she turned back to Mac.
“Got it,” Lyndon said.
“You’re full of it!” James said.
Kadance moved closer to the workstation. “Can you shut down facial recognition?”
“I can shut it all down—I’ll do it right before we leave. She might get some kind of alert when it goes down. And I found confirmation we’re right about how the virus will be disseminated, both at the Capitol and where the designated survivors are staying, along with pictures of the men who are supposed to do it. Well, it’s all in code, but I believe I understand it.”
James cursed several more times, which told Kadance Lyndon had deciphered the code properly.
“Can you save what you found?” she asked Lyndon. “Should we take it to the FBI?”
“It’s a complex code. And I don’t think I made a great impression the first time—I think there’s too good a chance they’d dismiss me again.”
Or maybe hold him for questioning—not worth the risk. “Can you stop them from bringing the system back online?” Kadance asked Lyndon.
“I can disable this setup, but I can’t be sure he wouldn’t be able to find another computer. Based on what I’ve seen, he’s the prepared type. I’d guess he has a backup system somewhere in the city.”
She looked over at James. “What we really need to do is put James out of commission.”
James stared at her.