An Unyielding Desire (After The End Book 2) (36 page)

Not that he didn’t deserve it, but he wasn’t eager to stroll back into the heart of the group. “They’re going to shoot me on sight,” he said again. Her half-shrug didn’t make him feel any better.

Why was he doing this? It wasn’t too late to make her come with him. He could be sure Ty would be safe. Mina would be safe too, and at his side where he wanted her.

By his side, but h
ating him with all her might and fighting him every chance she got. He didn’t want her like that. Shane knew he had no right to try to keep her under those circumstances. If he took her now, he’d be forced to let her go once it was over. She’d be safe, at least temporarily, but then she would be left alone if Les’s group wiped out the farm, as he feared. She would have no safe haven and no one to rely upon, because she was certain to reject him. That would leave her vulnerable to all the other predators in the new world.

He had to admit it didn’t sit well with him to leave the others exposed, without any warning, but he’d been unable to figure out a way to warn them. His first plan had been wiser and more cautious. He knew this was reckless and likely to end up with him dead, but he couldn’t walk away from Mina.

*****

He had been right
about their great desire to see him dead. Everyone in the yard drew a gun the moment they left the house, which connected to the escape tunnel through the basement, and stepped outside. Everyone on the farm, minus Owen in the lookout tower, was gathered in the front yard, and Mina assumed they were about to form search parties to look for herself and Ty.

Lia was the first to notice them, and she shouted Ty’s name as she ran toward them. Mina relinquished the baby without protest, glad to have her arms free. Tony was a step behind his wife, spending a moment touching the boy’s head before turning to glare at her and Shane.

“What’s he doing here, and why do you have my son?”

Mina stepped back a little as Tony leaned over her
threateningly. “Shane was trying to—”

Tony scowled. “Shane took my son? Why the hell did he take my son, Lia?”

The vicious look on his face stunned Mina almost as much as him turning to confront his wife instead of Shane. The others were joining them now, and she saw Coop’s face tighten with rage at the sight of Shane. As much as she wanted to run to him, she didn’t dare move in case one of the many guns suddenly pointed in her direction, aiming for Shane, managed to go off without her acting as shield.

Lia’s
eyes welled with tears, and she turned just right for Mina to see the bandage on the back of her head, already soaked through with traces of blood. Shane must have hit her pretty hard.

“He’s safe. That’s all that matters,” said Lia.

“He’s not—” Shane tried to insert.

“Stop.” Tony held up a hand, looking weary. “I know, man, okay? I know he’s not my son. I just didn’t want to believe it.”
His sneer encompassed both his wife and former friend. “You two disgust me.”

“Now isn’t the time,” said Mina quietly.

Tony glared at her. “What the fuck are you doing with him?”

“I’d like to know that myself,” said Coop, coming near enough to touch her.

Her heart wrenched when he made no move to do so. “Shane came to warn us.”

“About what?” asked Coop, crossing his arms.

“That’s not true,” said Shane at the same time. “I came to take Mina and Ty out of here before you’re—”

Coop moved quickly, trying to
grab Shane as Mina moved between them. “You piece of shit. When I’m done with you this time, there won’t be enough left for you to even crawl away.”

Winn
pumped his shotgun as Mina pushed gently against Coop, touching her lover’s shoulder in an attempt to get him to calm down. “You’ll have to get at the back of a long line, Coop.”

Seeing her father’s face so contorted with rage brought home to her how devastated he must have been by her mother’s death. Mina couldn’t believe she had been so wrapped up in her own pain for so long that she’d never really spared a thought for her dad’s or her sisters’
suffering.

“I deserve that bullet, Mr. Marsden, but I need to tell you all something first.” Shane took a hesitant step forward, clearly
resolved to warn them despite his apparent certainty someone was going to shoot him any second.

“I just want to know why you and your whore had Tyler,” said Tony.

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 gu
ns turned from Shane to the breached gate.

“You didn’t ment
ion 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 shouted 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.