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“So you’re planning to make a bomb? Is that what this is?”
She gaped at him. “You can’t be serious.” He raised a brow, not quite sure what he couldn’t be serious about. He was extremely serious… pretty much always. “The first aisle I turn down, and you know exactly what I am doing? How?”
If his brothers were here, they’d be roaring with laughter. “I’m a militia leader. You think I don’t know how to make a bomb?” He watched as the wheels spun in her head. “I really hope you didn’t drag me all the way out here for fertilizer.”
“Oh, because you have plenty back at the compound.”
“We have TNT,” he snapped. “Gunpowder. Ammonia. And yeah, fertilizer. Every damn thing your explosive heart could desire.” That… was unlike him. He bit the inside of his cheek, regaining his composure. “I’m sorry, I just… if you had just told me what you were planning, we could’ve saved ourselves some time and frustration.”
“Well sorry. Maybe I didn’t want to owe you any more favors.”
What the hell was she even talking about? “You wouldn’t owe me anything. There’s no payment due. I’ve offered to help you. There is no condition attached to that help.”
“Yeah right,” she scoffed. “I’ve been around long enough to know what men really mean when they offer to help.” She used her fingers to air-quote the last word.
Hayden could feel his own blood boiling, old anger rising up to the surface. But he buried that down. Logic was his friend, emotions were not.
Of course Anna didn’t understand what true help was. She’d been under the command of the UNR for her entire life, the last several months being her first taste of freedom, and most of that had been spent running and hiding. It made sense that she expected his help to be conditional.
Unfortunately, that logic only made him more angry. Angry at whoever it was that had treated her so poorly she couldn’t trust a soul. Angry at whoever made her think she had to face the evil in this world alone. Angry at Joseph Greene, for whatever he’d done to poor Anna to spark this cross-country, explosive-involving trip to kill him.
Angry at himself for not killing Joseph, his father, when he’d had the chance.
“Okay, Anna—”
A crash echoed out behind him, silencing him as he immediately reached for his weapon and lifted it. All he saw was dark, dirty aisles. Nothing looked adrift. Was it a simple shelf falling over, rotten after the lack of maintenance over the decades since the Fall? Or was it a person, sneaking around in the darkness?
“Anna,” he spoke lowly, “we need to—”
“Yeah, uh, Hayden,” she said, her voice at its normal volume, but strained. He spun around to quiet her, only to see a man behind her holding a blade to her throat, his other arm holding tightly to her abdomen. “Might need a little help here, after all,” she breathed.
He lowered his weapon, turning his body fully and holding it down so that he didn’t point it at Anna.
He stared at her face, then quickly moved his attention to the man standing behind her. The man holding a knife to her throat… if he thought about that knife, he’d be lost to the rage. The fear. The lack of control. Control, stay in control.
“This your space? We just came in to grab some supplies, but we don’t need to take anything if it’s yours. We’ll get right out of your way,” he offered. How the hell had he not noticed someone coming up from behind? How did he let this happen? All this talk about trying to help and protect her, and Hayden let Anna walk right into a fucking trap.
The man’s nostrils flared, his face reddened and angry. His hair was thin, receding, his clothes dirty. He was only a few inches taller than Anna, but much wider, and he held her with ease.
If it weren’t for that knife at her throat, Hayden had no doubt she’d have pulled herself out of his grip and dropped him to the floor in three seconds flat. Thankfully, she still had her gun on her, and he had his, which meant they were at an advantage.
Assuming he was acting alone.
“How the fuck did you find me?” Spittle flew from his mouth as he spoke.
“We just came to grab some supplies,” Anna responded. “We thought the place was empty. We can be on our way now that we know it’s not.” Her body was loose, her voice light. Hayden wasn’t sure he’d ever been so impressed by somebody.
“Like I’d let a UNR bitch walk out of here alive.”
Somehow, Hayden felt relieved by that statement. “We’re not UNR,” he explained. “We’re with the Resistance.”
The man stared at him for a long moment, which felt like hours due to the fact that there was a knife pressing into Anna’s delicate throat. Finally, he spoke. “Then why does this one have a red and black uniform on, huh?”
Hayden’s eyes went to Anna’s jacket. Her UNR jacket, that he’d told her to get rid of a thousand times.
“It’s just a disguise,” he quickly offered.
“Bullshit!” The man pressed the knife harder into Anna’s throat, the indentation making Hayden’s blood pump with fury.
