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Chapters (37)
  1. Praise
  2. Also by
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright Page
  5. Dedication
  6. PART I
  7. CHAPTER ONE
  8. CHAPTER TWO
  9. CHAPTER THREE
  10. CHAPTER FOUR
  11. CHAPTER FIVE
  12. CHAPTER SIX
  13. CHAPTER SEVEN
  14. CHAPTER EIGHT
  15. CHAPTER NINE
  16. CHAPTER TEN
  17. CHAPTER ELEVEN
  18. CHAPTER TWELVE
  19. CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  20. CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  21. CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  22. CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  23. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  24. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
  25. CHAPTER NINETEEN
  26. PART II
  27. CHAPTER TWENTY
  28. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
  29. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
  30. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
  31. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
  32. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
  33. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
  34. CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
  35. AUTHOR’S NOTE
  36. Teaser Chapter
  37. About the Author

Something let go inside him. “Some of them still are, Em! Would you rather we be dead than them? Would you prefer that I didn’t shoot, and that asshole up there raped you?” He didn’t dare to look at her in the darkness. He didn’t want to see her, and it wouldn’t have mattered. “’Cause you know what? I’m sure there’ll be other opportunities in the future. This is exactly what I’ve been warning you about. This is the new normal. Try to be nice. Try to be reasonable. But know that the other guy might see niceness as weakness, and that’s when you have to be prepared to defend yourself and everybody you care about.”

“I don’t need a goddamn lecture!” Emma shouted. “We just killed people!”

“Yes, we did. And, yes, you do need a lecture. I am not the enemy. I’m not even the bad guy. I’m the victim. And so are you. I can’t have you thinking otherwise.”

“Or else what?”

Adam thumbed the selector lever on his M4 to SAFE and repositioned the muzzle so it was pointing toward the floorboard. He’d lost his temper, and now he needed to rein it back in. “It’s not like that,” he said. “There’s no ultimatum. I’m just saying that we’ve had to do awful things, and we will probably have to do more awful things just to survive. There are millions of potential enemies out there. I need you to be my one guaranteed friend.”

Emma fell silent for long enough to draw Adam’s attention. “This is going to kill us all, isn’t it?”

“I don’t want to talk about that. Yeah. Maybe. Probably. I don’t know. And neither do you or anyone else. This is a one-day-at-a-time kind of thing.”

More silence.

“I don’t know what I can promise you and what I can’t,” Emma said finally. “I don’t know how well I’m going to be able to fight. I don’t know if I’m going to freeze next time. But I promise that I’ll try hard not to panic.”

Well, that’s something, Adam thought.

“And one more thing,” Emma added. “I promise I’ll always understand that you’re trying to do the right thing.”

She reached her hand across the center space and Adam took it.

“That’s all I ever want,” he said.

Finally they made it to the T intersection with the main roadway. To the right lay the past, to the left the future.

Adam spun the wheel to the left and stomped on the gas.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE