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I couldn’t catch my breath. “What are you doing?”

He did the same on the other side, yanking the neckline of my top out of the way, searching the same spot where Tim had been bitten.

“Luke.”

It was as if he couldn’t hear me. He turned my wrists over, checked my scalp and neck, dragged my zipper down and reached inside my jacket. His hands shook as they ran over my sleeves.

“I wasn’t bitten.”

His eyes rose to meet mine. “Are you sure?”

I captured his wrist and held it still. “Yes, I’m good. I’m fine. No bites or scratches, I promise.”

He dragged me against him, his arms tightening around me as his chest rose and fell against my cheek. “Jesus. You scared me.”

I clutched the back of his jacket, my heart thumping hard. “I scared me, too.”

We stood together for a moment longer, then Luke pulled back and pressed a quick kiss on my mouth. “Please don’t do that again.” He clasped my jaw in one hand and came back for a softer, slower kiss that had me leaning into him.

When he touched me like that, I couldn’t think, let alone find a way to get myself into trouble again. Standing on my toes, I stole one more kiss. “I don’t plan on it.”

The distant shuffle of another infected reminded us where we were and what we had to do.

Luke sighed and swept his thumb over my cheek before he stepped away.

He stooped and collected his weapon, and I went back to the open door to grab mine. As I bent and clutched the axe handle, I remembered the glint in the footwell.

Bracing my knee on the seat again, I reached in and hooked my finger through a silver ring on the floor. My stomach tensed as I pulled back and lifted it, shaking it so it tinkled. House keys and a miniature Hello Kitty dangled from the ring, and alongside them, a fob with a flip key.

The first trickle of hope came, and I almost smiled as I turned to Luke. “Look what I found.”

He wiped his pickaxe on the man’s body and lifted his head. When he caught sight of the keys, his eyes lit with excitement before determination set in. “Let’s push the last two cars out of the way and make sure this one works. We’ll turn it around before we head back.”

“Don’t forget there’s an infected woman in that one.” Still a little breathless, I nodded at the car directly behind the Subaru.

Luke gave me a sidelong glance as we headed for the ute at the back of the line. “I’m not the one who doesn’t check back seats.”

Half an hour later, we were returning to the office when a flash of red inside an SUV stopped me. Condensation blurred the windscreen, and my shoulders tensed as I approached the passenger window.

A woman wrapped in a plaid blanket sat inside, her long, grey hair tucked under a bright red beanie.

A wooden cross hung from the rearview mirror, and an open paperback rested upside down on her knee. Her glasses were fogged across the top of the lenses, and she looked at me with the smallest shake of her head.

I leaned forward and checked the back seat, then the driver’s seat.

“Careful,” Luke said as he stopped alongside me. He gestured for the woman to open her window.

She pressed a button on the dash, then lowered the window a crack. Her skin had a greyish hue, and the whites of her eyes were flooded with tiny red spider veins.

“I don’t think… I should get out,” she said, the effort of talking almost too much for her.

“Were you bitten?” I asked.

She raised a hand that she’d wrapped tightly with a scarf, stained red in the middle. “It happened yesterday… during all that fighting.”

“Is anyone with you?” Luke asked, checking the surrounding cars and gravel lots. “Has someone gone for help?”

“I told my daughter… to go home. We live close. Said I’d find her… if I don’t… if it doesn’t—”