The Lair by Emily McKay Read Free Book Online Page A

I’m searching the cabinets.”
    “Okay,” Stu answered through the radio. “I haven’t found another open window yet. I’ll be there in a second. Start looking for a stash of supplies.”
    “I’m going to go search upstairs,” Lily told him.
    Jacks hesitated, but finally nodded. “Don’t leave this house.”
    “Right. I’ll be careful.”
    Shining her light ahead of her, she made her way down the hall. She moved the light across the open doorway of a laundry room and moved past to the stairway going up to the second floor.
    There was no point in creeping around, so she took the stairs two at a time. At the top was a narrow hall, the door to a bathroom open at one end, and a pair of open doors on either side. Bedrooms, presumably.
    She looked through the bathroom first and found what she was looking for under the sink. She swung her backpack off her shoulder and quickly filled it with two boxes of tampons and a package of maxi pads. Not much, but it would help. And there were surely other bathrooms in the house. Still, what they needed to do was hit a store. She found no other useful toiletries. No toothpaste, no soap, no first aid kit. Sure signs that the family had made it out, but her initial sense of unease didn’t dissipate.
    The house looked too pristine. But she wasn’t sure why that bothered her. In the next bathroom she found a stash of toilet paper. Even as she loaded the rolls into her backpack, it bugged her. Why bring everything, down to the last Band-Aid, but leave five rolls of toilet paper?
    Crap. This wasn’t right.
    Skipping the rest of the rooms, she turned to head back down-stairs. Somewhere down below, she heard Stu’s sat phone ring and then him answer. And a second later, she heard a noise from one of the bedrooms. Probably a rat. But if it wasn’t a rat, she didn’t want to turn her back on the sound to blithely walk down the stairs. If there was something in this room, she wanted to face it head on and well armed. She slung her bow off her shoulder and pulled an arrow from her quiver before nudging the door open with her toe.
    Heart pounding, she pushed open the door to the bedroom the rest of the way. It had once been a child’s room. A pair of bunk beds lined one wall. A low bookcase stretched the length of the window. There was a toy box beside the door, the lid ajar with the arm of some stuffed animal dangling out. The kid’s books, the toys, the cheerfully yellow bed linens. The innocence of the room did little to banish her terror, it only made her heart twist and squirm in her chest.
    Food raids were the worst job. Ever.
    Another faint sound emanated from what must have been the closet—a sound that was neither as innocent as rats nor as ominous as Ticks. A human sound.
    If the person in the closet was a crazy, survivalist gun nut, wouldn’t they have already come out, guns blazing?
    Unless, and the thought stopped Lily in her tracks, the person in the closet was a kid.

CHAPTER SIX
    Carter
    My eyes were heavy as I drove down the mountain. The road was sharp and winding, the pavement slick. Driving should have taken my full attention. Instead, I was damn near nodding off. Maybe Lily was right. If I couldn’t stay awake behind the wheel maybe the Elites were doing too much. But what was the alternative? Send untrained, untested Greens out to gather supplies and do patrols? Christ, it’d be like sending lambs to the slaughter. And if I wouldn’t send Lily out into the field—and she at least had combat experience—then I sure as hell couldn’t ask anyone else to go.
    I briefly considered pulling over on the side of the road and taking a combat nap, but Taylor was still up on the mountain fiddling with the Romex wire and his solar panels. I’d left a couple of other Elites up there with him, so at least someone had his back, but I knew Taylor. He’d stay up there working away until I either brought him what he needed or he ran out of food. Either way, I figured I