Infected by Sophie Littlefield Read Free Book Online Page B

Carina, as always. He’d brought a pizza home that night, after picking up the dry cleaning. Carina had been the one to bring in the mail, and there hadn’t been anything unusual, just a couple of bills and some junk mail. Walter had gone to bed by ten since he had an early flight.
    Nothing unusual at all. At some point, Walter must have hidden the letter under the recycling can in the hall. But if he’d left her anything else, she had missed it. And this wasn’t the time to worry about it.
    “We have to keep moving,” Carina said. “Baxter and Meacham are both out there, and Sheila—”
    Depending on how determined Sheila was to find her, there could be others. How many security agents had sheseen at the edges of the crowd? A dozen? More? If they all worked for Calaveras, and if Sheila had the authority to order them around, the alley outside their hiding place could soon be crawling with people looking for them.
    Baxter had always been kind to her, but Carina knew he wouldn’t defy Sheila. She was his boss, and besides, he was a professional to the core. He wouldn’t turn away from the job he was paid to do just to help her.
    Tanner moved around the edge of the garage, pushing boxes out of the way. “There’s a bike … only one, though. Oh, flat tire. Don’t suppose a Jet Ski will do us much good—”
    “Tanner, my biggest problem is
shoes
,” Carina said.
    “Why didn’t you say so?”
    Near the door leading to the backyard was a rack containing ski boots, gardening clogs, and old sneakers. Tanner rifled through it, knocking over half a dozen shoes in his hurry. “How about these?”
    He held up a pair of women’s golf shoes with fringed tops. Carina grabbed them and tugged at the laces. “A little big,” she said, jamming one on her right foot. “But I can tie them tight and—”
    “You’d better hurry,” Tanner said urgently. “The lawn mower man’s—Oh, shit, I think he must be out of gas, he’s coming over here—”
    Carina yanked on the second shoe and fumbled with the laces. “I’m ready,” she said just as Tanner hit the garage door opener. He grabbed her arm and they dove for the door, crouching low as it slowly creaked open, the man coming toward them.
    “Hey, what the hell are you doing?” he shouted, but Tanner and Carina were already out.
    “To the right!” Carina said. Coming down the alley at a run was Meacham, closely followed by Baxter and a third man who wasn’t making any effort to hide the fact that he was talking into a radio as he jogged along. Carina recognized the Calaveras Lab’s silver-and-red logo stitched on his jacket as he spotted her and veered toward them.
    “This way,” Tanner said, pulling Carina with him. They raced through the backyard behind the garage where they’d been hiding, through the lazy spray of a sprinkler, around a pair of little kids playing on a plastic slide.
    “Gate ahead,” Carina yelled without slowing. “Gonna jump it—”
    The wooden gate was set into a fence, at least four and a half feet tall, that circled the yard. There was a latch, but if Carina took the time to unhook it, their pursuers would use those critical seconds to catch up. She hit the gate without slowing down, placing her hands over the tops of the boards, then jackknifing her body up and over, the way she’d practiced on the vault a hundred times before. The tops of her thighs scraped against the rough edge of the wood, but then her feet struck ground on the other side—a perfect landing.
    She dashed out of the way just in time to avoid being crushed by Tanner, who’d hit the gate right after her. He didn’t nail the landing as well as she had, coming down heavily and nearly falling before righting his balance. She waited to make sure he was unhurt; then they both took off running down the street as someone slammed into the gate.
    Their pursuers apparently lacked the dexterity and strength to clear the gate the way she and Tanner had. She heard