“Sloane.”
The quietness of Callan’s voice made it more of a feeling than something I could hear. A vibration against my temple where his jaw was pressed close.
It wasn’t his usual voice. Not irritated.
This was something else entirely, controlled. The kind of calm that only exists when someone is holding themselves together by force.
“When I say move,” his breath warm against my ear, “I’m going to open my truck door. And I need you to move like your fucking life depends on it.”
He paused.
“Because it might.”
My throat closed, and the moisture in my mouth evaporated. I tried to swallow. I tried to speak. My eyes werelocked on the woman as she staggered closer, that horrible dragging gait eating up the distance between us in uneven lurches.
Forty feet.
Thirty-five.
Her movements kept changing—sudden bursts of speed that made my heart seize, and that awful dragging slowness, like her body was fighting itself.
Thirty feet.
More of her was visible now. Details I didn’t want. The skin on her forearms appeared torn—not cut, but torn, like something had peeled it back in ragged strips that hung loose and swung when she moved. Underneath was dark, wet. I could see the white gleam of something that might have been tendon. Her jaw hung slightly open, slack, and even from this distance, the lower half of her face appeared misshapen. Too much of it was exposed—teeth visible where there shouldn’t have been teeth, the flesh of her left cheek hanging in a flap that swayed with each jerking step.
Twenty-five feet.
“Understand?” Callan breathed.
“Yes,” I whispered.
My voice is almost nothing, a thread of sound that barely made it past my lips.
Twenty feet.
Callan’s thumb found the unlock button on his key fob. I sensed his arm tense against me. I sensed him draw one long, slow breath.
The truck chirped.
Loud. So fucking loud. The sound bounced off the concrete walls of the aquarium behind us and ricochetedacross the empty lot like a gunshot.
The woman’s head snapped toward us.
Immediate. Direct. Her whole body pivoted, that broken neck wrenching her face in our direction with a wet snap I heard from twenty feet away.
She saw us. The slack, aimless quality vanished. Her body went taut. Her fingers curled. Her jaw stretched wider, and a sound came out of her—low, guttural, building from somewhere deep in her ruined chest.
My stomach dropped so fast I thought I’d be sick.
Callan moved.
He shoved off the truck, off me, creating space in one violent motion. His hand hit the unlock button again, and he wrenched the driver’s door open so hard the hinges screamed.
“MOVE!”
I didn’t think. Thought had left the building, and what remained was animal—pure, electric, screaming survival instinct that launched me off the side of the truck and through the open door. I dove across the seat, my hands slipping on worn leather, my knee cracking against the center console. I scrambled, clawing myself toward the passenger side, making room.
Callan threw himself in behind me. The truck rocked with his weight. He grabbed the door and slammed it shut so hard the entire frame shuddered, and my ears rang.