Die For You: Catastrophe Series, Book 1 (4 page)

Chapter Five

Adam watched Rachel as they drove. He couldn’t stop. Every spare moment, his gaze landed back on her small form. Her full lips pressed together as she huddled against the passenger side, taking in the unrelenting tragedy of their ruined world as it passed by the window. She remained quiet in the car, biting her bottom lip, not saying a word. He understood. It was all so fucking tragic there weren’t enough words to cover it.

Adam imagined they were in an aerial shot from a satellite or a drone. The two of them the only heat signatures registering and everything else around them gray. For hundreds of miles. Two dots of color moving against a backdrop of dead, black cityscape. Fucking weird.

They’d been thrown together under horrific circumstances, two people who in real life would normally have never met. She’d been at UC Davis, studying to be a teacher. And he’d been on base in San Diego. They’d been at opposite ends of the state, doing entirely different things, leading them toward paths that would never have crossed. But here they were, spending every moment together, the only two people left at the end of the world.

And he was acting like a bastard.

He knew he was, but he couldn’t help it. His cock was always at half-mast in her presence, his body aware of her every breath, her scent, her voice, her touch. With every moment that passed, he grew more pissed off, because he couldn’t have her.

Here he had a perfectly fuckable female, and he couldn’t lay a hand on her.

It was torture.

But there was no damn way he’d go back to where he’d been a few months before. Adam knew if he started something with Rachel, he’d be in that same fucked-up place he’d been with Lori and Danny. He’d known Rachel for twenty-four hours, and he could already tell she wasn’t the type who’d be a passing fancy, the kind of woman he’d fuck once and be done with. Yes, they were stuck together, and maybe his lust was multiplied because she was the only woman available. But he knew he wanted her despite that. If he’d found a group of women on the freeway yesterday, he would’ve still chosen Rachel. He could’ve picked her up out of a line up. He could look into her clear blue eyes forever, and kiss those lips all day. Even though he’d said that shit to her last night, the truth was, she was smart. She might not be physically strong, and she was defenseless as hell, but she was adaptable. And he respected that. He could work with her, teach her what she needed to know.

He couldn’t treat this lightly. With Rachel, either he was all in or all out. And he was staying out. If he fucked Rachel, he’d think she was his…until the moment she wasn’t. Because she would eventually wise up and dump his ass. That was the pattern. And he wouldn’t know she was out until he found her leaving him for someone else, some other survivor they’d meet who didn’t get off on watching another man’s cock pounding into his woman’s pussy.

She turned and locked eyes with him. “Can you pull over? I have to pee.”

“Yeah. No problem. I could use a bathroom break too.”

Adam pulled off the silent freeway in Oxnard and drove to the back of a Costco so they could do double duty—piss
and
look for supplies. They’d stepped out of the Hummer and barely had time to close their doors when they heard a gunshot.

“Jesus H. Christ,” Adam cursed under his breath. Random gunfire in an urban setting? Shit. This was exactly what he’d feared. Assholes on the loose.

“Was that—”

“Yeah.” He snapped his fingers. “Follow me.” Two more shots echoed sharply through the empty streets. He looked around the shopping mall to get his bearings. Adjacent to Costco was another big box store. His first instinct was to get Rachel the fuck away from here, as far away from the violence as possible, but he knew he had to investigate. There might be someone who needed his help.

“You stick with me. You’re my second skin,” he told her. White-faced, Rachel nodded and stepped close. He ran in the direction of the shots, Rachel right behind. He was keeping her close and making sure he didn’t lose her, cutting through the parking lot, using abandoned vehicles as coverage. In front of them was a grocery store, behind it a city side street. This close, he could hear shouts coming from that location, as if a crowd had gathered.

“Adam, people!” Rachel gasped from behind him.

Adam stopped at the corner of the building, turned and whispered in her ear. Which brought him right up against her body, his nose in her hair, her skin almost pressed against his.
Fuck.
“We’re going to assess the situation before we do anything stupid, like talk to them,” he bit out and then faced away from her. Christ, this girl was his kryptonite.

“Okay, okay.” Rachel clutched his shirt from behind, her breath hard against his back. He held his gun up and glanced around the edge. Finding it clear, he grabbed her hand and ran to shelter behind two Dumpsters that faced the road. He hunched down and pulled Rachel with him, both of them squatting in a small space between the metal siding of the garbage Dumpsters and the wall of the store. A line of palm trees and a dense row of overgrown shrubbery blocked them from view. It wasn’t great cover. If shooting started, he’d have to fall back, but it was a good lookout position.

“Oh no,” Rachel whispered.

Adam zeroed in on the action. Across the street, a group of men had gathered in the parking lot of an office building. Men who immediately made his soldier instincts blast into biblical proportions. Gleaming Harleys were parked everywhere. The men dressed in leather cuts as if they all belonged to the same fucking motorcycle gang. Apparently, any assholes who’d survived seemed to have found each other. A moment later, the suspicious group shifted, and he could see his instincts were right. In the middle of their semi-circle, they held a man and a woman captive, both on their knees. One gang member had a gun pressed to the man’s forehead.

“Don’t shoot him,” the woman screamed, the anguish in her voice tearing a hole through Adam’s chest.

“Oh no,” Rachel repeated.

Adam cursed. Then he counted. Twenty. There were twenty fuckers over there. All of them packing. He had a lot of firepower on him, but it still wasn’t enough. Damn. Nothing good would come from this.

“See all these men?” The asshole who held the gun to the man’s head yelled to the woman. He was tall and muscular, with a deep voice that carried well across the street. “You’re going to service us, fuck us. Not him. We haven’t seen any other women since the end. You’re it. So that means none of us here have time for niceties. You’re ours and that’s it.”

“Over my dead body,” the man on his knees snarled.

There was a murmur from the group. Men shifting restlessly.

“Oh really?” the motorcycle guy said with a tone that could slice metal. “Well, let’s take care of that then.” He coldly executed the man, shooting him in the head, blood spraying in the air. The man’s limp form fell over and crashed to the ground.

Rachel whimpered and covered her mouth.

“No!” the woman shrieked. “No. No. No! Why, why did you do that? You didn’t need to kill him,” she sobbed. “I would have done what you wanted. You didn’t…need to…kill him.”

“It would’ve been a damn nuisance, having to keep him tied up while we fucked you. Easier this way. Now come on, sweet thing. Let’s get this party started.”

The men started cheering. Someone kicked the body of the guy who’d been shot.

“We have to help her,” Rachel choked out, tears flooding her eyes.

“We can’t,” Adam gritted out between clenched teeth. “I’m one against twenty. I’m not Schwarzenegger, and this isn’t a movie. In real life, one against twenty are impossible odds.”

“We can’t just leave her. They’re going to gang rape her.”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Adam started recalculating his ammo, his weapons, the distance, the kill-shot ratio—

“What is she doing?” Rachel cried.

He looked back up at the scene. The woman who had previously been on her knees was now in an epic hand-to-hand battle with the motorcycle fucker who had killed her man. Adam was surprised at her strength and her skill as she fought against the much larger man and remained standing. But, yeah, come to think of it, she did look fit and kickass—maybe she’d been a cop or a soldier before the end. If not for that, the bigger man would have knocked her down immediately. She appeared to be going for the guy’s gun, struggling with him for possession of the weapon. Why would she do that? It didn’t make sense. One woman with one gun against twenty men was suicide.

“Why is she—?” Rachel sputtered.

Adam imagined for a moment how he would react if Rachel had been shot in front of him. How psychotic he would behave in such a scenario.

Finally, the fucker sent the woman flying to the ground with a vicious right hook that probably knocked out a few teeth. “Bitch, what’re you thinking?”

Adam could see the woman had ended up on the asphalt clutching the gun. She lifted it with one hand. Men were yelling, raising their weapons.

“Don’t shoot her!” the fucker shouted. “She’s the only woman.”

“Too late,” she screamed. “I’d rather be dead than let any of you assholes touch me.” She boldly raised the gun, pressed it to her temple and shot herself in the head.

Jesus Christ.

The men were shouting and there was general chaos. Rachel was sobbing next to him. He couldn’t believe what he’d seen. It was as if he were back on the streets in goddamn Fallujah, watching the worst that humanity had to offer. “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” he grated.

Adam gently pulled Rachel to his side and they quietly exited the way they’d arrived, no one the wiser. By the time they were back in the Hummer and on the freeway racing away from the scene, Rachel was drying her eyes.

“I’d do what she did,” Rachel whispered. “I’d never let them take me. Or if they did, and I knew I couldn’t get away, I’d find a way to end myself later.”

He white knuckled the steering wheel. Something terrible ground into the pit of his stomach. A feeling that was too frightening to touch. “One of those fuckers laying hands on you would mean I was dead. You get me? They have to come through me first.”

“I do. And after what we saw back there, that doesn’t make me feel much better.”

He grunted. “We’ll get you strong so that you can be like her and at least have a fighting chance.”

She nodded. “I get it now. I do.”

Chapter Six

The car stopped and the engine rumbled to a halt. Rachel blinked and woke up, disoriented from her nap. Her brow furrowed. She glanced over at Adam and then turned her head to examine the area through the passenger window of the Hummer. Last she’d seen, Adam had been winding through a wooded coastal highway north of Santa Barbara, trying to put distance between them and that pack of assholes they’d seen earlier. But now they were somewhere unexpected. They’d parked in the curved driveway of some ridiculous sprawling mansion, some rich person’s vanity—a pink modern eyesore incongruent with the natural wooded beauty and sweeping ocean vistas that surrounded them.

Yuck.

Adam talked to her. She nodded at appropriate intervals, pretending to listen. His mouth moved—those luscious male lips—but she didn’t hear a single word.

Didn’t he understand that in order to comprehend speech after a nap she needed a Venti Caffé Americano? Double sugar. Stat.

Since that wasn’t going to happen, she stepped out of the car automatically, like a robot, her movements leaden with caffeine deprivation. He’d driven straight to this crazy place, so there must be some sort of plan. She didn’t know how he’d found it, or how he must have known it was here, nor could she muster up the energy to care. Adam’s feet crunched on the gravel as he walked around to her side of the car. He looked at her funny as he placed a hand on her elbow, guiding her toward the front entrance.

They swept in through grand double doors, their footsteps echoing throughout the spacious rooms. Cool white marble floors, sleek black-and-purple furniture and vast, expensive-looking modern paintings filled the space. She hated it. It gave her the heebie-jeebies. There was no way she was staying here. No way in hell. Not even overnight.

She followed Adam down two sets of stairs that terminated in a concrete, colorless basement area. They easily bypassed all the codes and locks now wide open due to the power outage in this area.

Adam put his hand on the handle of a thick steel door. “Okay—” he grinned at her with a dazzling smile, “—here’s the money shot. Time to see if the rumors were true.”

What was he talking about? Oh shit, maybe she should have listened earlier.

The heavy door slid open and cold air brushed against her face. It smelled canned, almost musty. What the hell? She blinked, her eyes adjusted and her icy heart stuttered back to life. Fear gripped her and shook her awake.

Adam laughed, clearly delighted by what he saw. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her forward. “Come on, let’s check this out.”

He flicked on the large flashlight he was carrying and swept the dim room with the beam, exposing a sickening collection of warfare—row after row, floor to ceiling, an endless display of big, explosive things, small deadly things and every weapon imaginable. A cavernous cache big enough to support a bloody coup, or the entire Russian mob.

No, no, no!

“Wh…what is this?” She yanked out of his grasp and stepped back, her butt connecting with the doorjamb. Hands shaking, palms sweating, stomach churning, she literally wanted to vomit again just looking at all those guns. Yesterday, she’d had the courage to put
one
gun in her hand, have
one
gun in her lap and next to her while sitting in the Lexus, but here she was surrounded by them, smothered by a mountain of guns. All of them looking at her accusingly. All of them reminding her of her failures.

“Holy shit,” Adam said reverently. “We’ve hit the jackpot.”

Rachel’s blood boiled and her mouth came back online. Fast. “I didn’t know this was here…I…I can’t do this. Adam, I can’t…” She sucked in rapid breaths, in and out, as frightening images from her childhood flashed through her mind.

Omigod. Omigod.

He turned to look at her, surprise etched on his face. “What are you—”

“I have to get out of here,” she blurted out. “I can’t stay. You don’t need me. So…so, I’ll wait in the car.” And she fled before he could respond, running away with her heart in her throat.

Her feet tapped up the stairs. She sprinted across the mansion and ran back to the Hummer. Breath ragged, hands trembling, she opened the passenger door, threw herself in and curled into a protective ball. Hot tears spilled down her cheeks as she relived her childhood shame.

He was going to find out, there was no way she could hide it anymore. Now he’d know everything. Know what a loser she really was. Rachel closed her eyes and swallowed hard.

Shit.

Adam marched back to the Hummer, pissed as hell. He wanted to stay and pick apart the weapon cache he’d found—make sure they were armed and dangerous and ready for any fuckers who might come their way—but Rachel had run off without so much as a can of pepper spray to keep her safe.

Downstairs, he’d found a stockpile of weapons that rivaled King Tut’s tomb in both size and complexity, and instead of carefully cataloguing this amazing find, he was stuck running after a girl.

He wanted to spank her goddamn ass.

“Rachel!” he roared. He threw three loaded duffle bags on the ground and jerked open the back of the Hummer.

She twisted in the front seat and tagged him with bright blue eyes, opened her mouth, shut it and turned back around, dismissing him with a flip of her hair.

Oh, hell no.

Two seconds later, he yanked her door open. “Get out,” he ordered.

“Why are you yelling at me?” She glared at him and crossed her arms. “What did I do now?”

“You have to ask? You’re out here by yourself and unprotected. What the hell were you thinking, running off like that?”

“What does it matter if I came out here by myself?” She raised her voice. “There’s no one out here. We’re alone. We’re always alone. Remember?”

“How do you know that? How do you know we’re alone?”

She paused. He watched her face pale as she took in the meaning of his words. Her gaze darted behind him, scanning the dense redwoods that surrounded the mansion’s circular drive. “Well, I…I guess I…”

“Right, you don’t. We don’t know if this area is secure. You could be sitting out here and some random asshole, could use the opportunity to snatch you. That’s probably how the couple we saw in Oxnard ended up in that situation. Never ever run off by yourself. You hear me? We stick together for safety.”

Her lips trembled. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I wasn’t thinking. I was just so upset…”

“After seeing all those bodies today, I’m sure it seems to you like everyone’s dead, but they’re not. You know there are other survivors out there. They could be anywhere. And a lot of them will be like those men we saw today. Living a life without any laws can turn a man savage. We have to be careful.”

She nodded.

He studied her face. Her eyes were red and puffy, like she’d been crying. He took a deep, calming breath and softened his voice. “What’s wrong, Rach? Why did you run off like that?”

“I couldn’t be in that place. I couldn’t breathe in there.”

“Why?”

She licked her lips. Then she shook her head and looked away.

“Fine,” he grumbled, somehow upset over her non-answer. “Don’t tell me. What the hell do I care? I’m just the guy you’re traveling with, right? I’m nobody.”

“Adam.”

He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Get out of the car.”

“Okay, okay. Jeez.” She gingerly stepped out. Her baggy shorts rode up her thigh. His gaze trailed down and he got a peep show as her feet touched the ground. His nostrils flared. He forgot about the end of the world, about safety and secrets, and just stared, slack jawed. Rachel had perfect legs. Long, soft and sun-kissed, with slim thighs that tapered down to sculpted calves. Jesus. Why hadn’t he noticed this before?

Those damn sweats of hers, those baggy clothes always keeping her covered. She might as well be wearing a burka.

He tore his gaze away and compressed his hands into tight fists. Holy hell, what was wrong with him? He needed to stop checking her out and keep his head in the fucking game. He had no business touching this girl, in his mind, it was practically statutory rape. She was a starry-eyed innocent and he was…a man with needs she couldn’t possibly understand.

Adam cleared his throat and handed her an easy-to-use Smith & Wesson inside a holster. “Take this and strap it on. Get used to wearing it. This is the firearm you’ll use while I teach you how to shoot.”

She recoiled like he’d handed her a poisonous snake. “I’m…I’m not touching that gun,” she stammered.

His brow furrowed. Where the hell did that come from? “Look, I’m assuming you can’t shoot. You pulled a gun on me yesterday, but it was obvious you didn’t know what the hell you were doing. So I’m offering to train you. What’s wrong? Do you want to keep that piece of crap you were holding me up with? Is that it?”

“No, I don’t want a gun at all.”

He inhaled and rubbed the top of his head, frustrated as hell. “Do you understand that I just found a fucking badass home arsenal down in that basement? The best I’ve ever seen, and believe me, I’ve seen a lot. Every type of weapon I’ve ever dreamed of having, we have. We’ve got forty-six thousand rounds of ammunition and counting. You can go shopping in there and arm yourself with any type of rifle, any pistol you want to keep yourself protected…and you’re telling me you don’t want a damn thing?”

“I don’t want a gun,” she yelled.

Eyes hard, he leaned into her. “You’d rather be defenseless if we run into another group of men who manage to take me out and decide they’d like to spend their free time raping and torturing you?”

“Of course not, I’m not too stupid to live. I want to learn how to defend myself. It’s the gun.” Her voice cracked. “It’s the gun… Can’t I have something else? Like pepper spray? A stun gun? A knife?”

He stilled. “What do you mean it’s the gun?”

“Adam—”

Deep-throated barks sliced through their conversation, ending it as effectively as flicking off a switch. Rachel jumped and placed a hand over her heart. Adam spun around and zeroed in on three guard dogs throwing themselves against an ornate black iron fence. He’d noticed them before and had already checked on them, planned on setting them free just before they left. He’d lost count of how many trapped, desperate, starving animals he and Rachel had rescued in the last twenty-four hours.

Too many.

“Shut the fuck up!” he bellowed.

The dogs whimpered and sat down.

Adam turned back to her, managed to control his irritation and said in a calm voice, “Talk to me.”

“I can’t,” she whispered. “You can’t handle the truth.”

He blinked. His lips twitched at her off-the-cuff movie reference. “What do you mean? Of course I can handle the truth. I’m a Marine. Do you realize how much shit I’ve seen in my life? Just tell me.”

“Okay!” She threw a hand up. “I hate guns. I can’t stand them. I can’t even touch them.”

He stood still for a moment, stunned, then burst out laughing. “That’s it? That’s the big secret? You’re fucking kidding me? What are you? Some tree-hugging NRA-hating crazy pacifist?”

“No, I don’t think so. I’ve just never liked guns.”

“What’s there to like? There’s no like or dislike, there’s just point and shoot. Have you ever shot a gun?”

“Once, when I was much younger—”

“Well, that’s the problem. This is what I was trying to tell you earlier. You’re scared of what you don’t know. I need to teach you how to shoot. We’ll start target practice tomorrow.”

“No, no, no. You don’t understand. I’m afraid of guns because…because, I had an accident with one.”

“Accident? What kind of accident?”

She looked down at her shoes. “I shot my sister, okay? I shot her…”

“What the fuck?” He put his palm up. “Hold on. You shot your sister? How old were you?”

She glanced back at him, her eyes filled with anguish. “I was six years old. She was four.”

He took a deep breath, trying not to go ballistic. “What idiot left a loaded gun for a child to pick up?”

“Um…my uncle. My aunt was watching us while my parents were out of town for the weekend.” She paused and took a deep breath.

“And?” he prompted.

“I don’t remember much. I think I’ve blocked it out. I was really young. I must have seen my uncle take a gun out from under the bed to clean. Later, I was curious. You know? Kids get curious. So I snuck in there and picked it up. My sister followed me, she was always following me. I pulled the trigger and accidentally shot her in the chest.” She blew out a breath and her blue eyes watered. “In the
chest
. I almost killed her. Luckily, I missed her heart, but she had to have so many surgeries. She was in and out of the hospital for months and eventually made a complete recovery, but she almost died. I almost killed my sister. I’ve had to live with that all these years. Can you see why I can’t touch a gun? The last time I shot a gun, I almost killed my sister.” Her shoulders slumped, her posture bent. She looked like a woman ready to be stoned for her sins, and there was no way he was throwing the first rock.

“You know that wasn’t your fault, right?” he said in a soft voice. “A responsible gun owner doesn’t leave loaded weapons under the bed with small children around. They should have been locked in a safe and out of reach. That was a disaster waiting to happen.”

She hung her head. “My brain agrees with you, but when I’m near guns, I can’t help it, I completely freak out. If I’d moved my hand an inch in the other direction, she would have died. If I even think about trying to fire a gun my palms start sweating, my heart starts racing, I feel sick. It’s like I can remember what happened. I can hear the shot. I can see the blood. Hear my sister screaming…”

He stepped close. Only inches separated them. Despite all the warning signals in his head, despite all the red flags, he had to touch her. Had to. Adam grabbed her upper arms and rubbed his thumbs along her smooth skin. “Rachel, why did you keep this from me? You should have told me this yesterday.”

Her head lolled back as she looked up at him. Tears began to roll down her soft cheeks. Shit. He needed to let her go, put some space between them, but he couldn’t.

“Are you kidding? You’re a Marine, an expert marksman. I’m a menace with a handgun. I’m already worried that you think I’m weak and useless. How could I add on to that by telling you I also have a gun phobia and I’ll never be able to really protect myself?”