As If We Drilled It -Finn
Twenty Eight
The girls moved fast, no hesitation, just as if we’d drilled it.
They slipped down the stairs. From the roof, I caught the faint scrape of the couch shifting away from the front door, then the soft click of deadbolts easing back. Not released. Not yet.
Ready.
Holding.
Waiting on me.
Everything came down to seconds now.
I stepped back from the edge, rolled my neck once—felt the vertebrae pop. The Glock sat heavy in my right hand, familiar weight, familiar grip. The one thing in this entire nightmare that made sense, that I understood, that did exactly what I told it to.
The Suburban sat below, three houses down. Forty yards. Maybe fifty.
So close. And too damn far.
I ran through it one more time.
Shoot the window. Alarm triggers. Every dead thing on the block turns toward the sound. While they converge, I’m already off the roof—down the hall, through the neighbor’s yard, coming at the Suburban from the opposite direction.
Libby said the keys should be under the front tire.
She’d better be right.
Because I sure as hell didn’t have time to hotwire a car with a street full of things that could smell living blood from a hundred yards out.
I’d watched one work a man’s jaw loose from his skull—methodical, almost patient, the way you’d separate a drumstick from the joint.
The man had kept making sounds afterward. Wet, shapeless gurgles.
No, I needed nothing to go wrong.
I pressed my tongue flat against the roof of my mouth.
Not helpful.
Not now.
Adrenaline hit—that old familiar edge. My mouth went dry and my hands felt too light. Heart rate up but steady, the way it always got before an op. The fear was there too, coiled cold in my gut, but training had taught me what to do with fear. You don’t kill it. You use it.
I knew how to do this.
I’d trained for rooms full of hostiles, blown-out buildings, midnight raids where the difference between living and dying came down to a quarter-second trigger pull.
But not like this.
Never like this.
Not with three people downstairs who couldn’t shoot back, who couldn’t run fast enough, who I’d die for without thinking—and that terrified me more than anything shambling through those streets below.
Not with her.
I turned away from the edge.
Libby stood three feet behind me.
She hadn’t gone downstairs yet.
She just stood there, watching me. The early light catching the side of her face, painting half gold and leaving the other half in shadow. Her lips were slightly parted. Her eyes held something so raw.
She’d come back up.
Or maybe she’d never left.
I didn’t think.
Two steps and my hand slid behind her neck, fingers threading into her hair, pulling her into me.
My other arm wrapped around her waist—tight, almost too tight—as if I needed to confirm she existed.
That she had weight and warmth and substance.
That this wasn’t some fever dream I’d crafted to survive the end of the world.
I kissed her.
Hard.
This had nothing careful to it.
My mouth found hers and took—urgent, almost bruising—and the sound she made against my lips, a small, broken noise caught between a gasp and a sob—nearly undid me.
She didn’t pull away.
Didn’t hesitate.
Her body pressed against mine, warm through the thin fabric, and I could feel her breathing—ragged, unsteady, the same mess as mine—and neither of us pulled back, even though we both knew better.
And God help me, I’d never wanted anything more than another moment with this woman.
When I finally broke the kiss, my forehead dropped against hers. Both of us breathing too hard. Her fingers tangled in my shirt. My hand still cradling the back of her head like something precious, something I couldn’t set down.
Half a second.
That’s all I allowed.
I tilted her head back. “Look at me.”
She lifted her eyes.
Brown. Deep. Wet at the edges.
God.
She did.
And something gave—deep in everything I’d built to keep the mission clean.
I needed her to hear this. Every word. Needed it branded into her memory so deeply that panic couldn’t erase it.
“Listen,” I said, the words coming faster than I intended, but I couldn’t throttle them back. “I’m getting that car. I’m bringing it here. No matter what.”
I meant that.
Down to my marrow. Down to whatever piece of my soul still functioned.
Even if it killed me.
Especially if it killed me.
“I’ll get it to the stoop,” I continued. “Right to the front steps. And when I do—you remember your promise. About what happens if I get bitten.”
Her eyes didn’t waver. Not a millimeter.
“You take them and you go,” I said. “Fiona and Lily in the back. You get behind the wheel. You drive. No heroics. No circling back. No—” My throat tried to close. I pushed through it. “No stopping. Not even for me.”
My grip on her tightened—just enough that she’d feel the urgency in my hands, in my fingers pressing into her skin.
“If this is it—”
I swallowed. A painful motion.
The words had been sitting in my throat all morning. I made myself say them anyway.
“—I need to know you three are moving. You get to the coast. You find my boat or any boat, and you go.”
Libby’s head shook—small, involuntary—a refusal that lived in her body before her mind could override it.
“Finn—”
“Libby.”
“Fiona knows the water,” I pressed on, the words stumbling out. “She’ll find the island on the chart. She can get you there. She has to.”
I heard myself.
I heard myself rambling. Couldn’t stop it.
Because this—this part right here—this mattered more than anything had ever before.
She shifted. Rose up slightly on her toes. Her hands came up and framed my face—both hands, warm and steady against my jaw, her thumbs tracing the lines beneath my eyes where exhaustion and worry were permanently carved.
And she kissed me.
Soft this time.
Slow.
Her lips moved against mine like she meant it, slow and careful, the kiss you give someone you’re not sure you’ll see again. It nearly broke me.
All of it went quiet.
Just her.
Just this.
Just the impossible, unbearable sweetness of something found too late.
“I promise,” she whispered, her breath faint against my lips.
I searched her face.
Every line. Every shadow. The tear that had slipped down her left cheek without her seeming to notice. The way her chin stayed set even though her lower lip trembled.
I needed to believe it.
Needed to know she would follow through—that she’d leave me bleeding in a gutter if it meant Lily and Fiona made it to that boat.
She nodded once.
Firm.
True.
And that—that had to be enough.
She pulled away before I could say anything else. Before I could reach for her again. Before the selfish, desperate part of me could beg her to stay on this roof where I could keep her close and keep her safe and pretend the world below didn’t exist.
She turned.
Moved toward the stairs.
As she went, her hand caught mine for a moment—a brief, tight press—before she let go.
And she disappeared through the door.
Back to the girls.
Back to the plan.
I stood there.
One second.
Two.
The space where she’d pressed against me already cooling. The taste of her still on my mouth. The phantom weight of her palms still imprinted on my jaw.
The absence of her arrived without warning.
Don’t.
I locked it down.
Buried it in the same place I kept the screams and the thing with no jaw and the way Lily’s eyes had looked when she’d first understood what the dead did to the living.
Sealed it shut.
Turned back to the edge.
Gun up.
Breath steady.
Below, two of them had drifted close to the Suburban, swaying. Heads twitching. Dark fluid dripped from their chins onto the pavement.
I sighted the rear window of the little red sports car and prayed the alarm was armed.