EMP Catastrophe - Hamilton, Grace (best books to read for beginners txt) 📗

and then nothing would change. He’d still be the mess-up, the prison brother who always did what he wanted. Never the one who saved anyone or anything.

Not anymore. He wasn’t going to let anyone else be put in danger. It was time for Max to face his consequences.

As he rolled out of bed, he stifled a groan of pain. His body hurt so much. His muscles were as hard as rocks. The bruises covering his body were sensitive, and his ribs felt like bands of hurt as he bent to put on his socks and shoes. He let out a small cry as he slipped his jacket on. Was it just stiffness that was making everything hurt? Or was there some underlying cause?

It didn’t matter. He’d have a hundred new bruises by the time Colin had seen to him. He had to think of Patton. Of Kathleen. This was for them.

He snuck out of the room, careful to close the squeaky door gently behind him. The hotel seemed eerily quiet as he stuck to the shadows. He walked downstairs, keeping an eye out for Allison or anyone else. Escaping prison, escaping home. It was all the same at this point. It was the reason for his escape that made all the difference.

The soft murmur of voices reached his ears, and he backed up against the wall, looking around the corner to see Kathleen in close conversation with Ruth. Ruth handed Kathleen a basket of some kind. His resolution strengthened when the light caught Kathleen’s face and he saw the new lines forming around her mouth, the stress and tension still hunching her shoulders. It would be worth it to do this for her. She needed her son back, and Max would make sure that happened.

Kathleen and Ruth turned and headed toward the kitchen. Hopefully, it would keep them occupied for a while, but he had a sneaking suspicion that they might be preparing a meal for everyone. If that was the case, Max needed to hurry. Who knew how long it would be before Kathleen meandered upstairs to force him to eat, stumbled on his letter, and tried to follow him to stop him? He needed to get as much of a head start as he could.

Max slipped across the parlor and out the front door of the hotel. The sunlight hit his face, nearly blinding him. He wanted to run across the grounds, but with his injuries, he figured he might collapse before he got where he needed to go. Gritting his teeth, Max stumbled down the road, hoping that no one was looking out of the windows.

Kathleen wouldn’t be pleased when she read his note, this he knew. Kathleen would be furious at him, and he would accept her anger. Once she had her son back in her arms, though, she would forgive Max’s foolishness. She would understand why Max was doing what he was doing. She wouldn’t be happy, but she would understand. And that would be the only thing that Max could give his sister to make up for everything.

He would make this right, once and for all.

27

The conversation with Max haunted Kathleen like a ghost. She heard his voice even after she left his bedroom, explaining his lies away in that wide-eyed way of his. Kathleen was always open to accepting them, and she’d started to think of herself as a big slow fish that only saw the bait dangling in front of her instead of the hook it was on. She always ate up Max’s lies—hook, line, and sinker—but this time she couldn’t do it. Her experiences had changed her. She wanted a partnership with her brother, and she couldn’t be a sucker for him anymore.

She’d hoped her confession would make it easier for him to open up to her. That he would see the way she had changed for the better, and that she demanded he change in return. They weren’t kids anymore. They were two people stuck at the end of the world, and they needed to decide if they could be a team or not. She hoped they could. It would break her heart if Max rejected her, but at least it would be a clean break.

She looked out the window as Ruth handed her a basket full of clean washcloths. The sun was sinking faster than she liked, and there was no sign of Matthew, David, or Jade. Her heart clenched in worry, but she had to trust in her husband and the others. They had a plan to save Max and Patton. She just hoped they weren’t too late.

Tears pressed against her eyes as she thought of her son. She’d tried to compartmentalize her emotions, shoving the terror and fury about Patton’s fate into a box that she could ignore for the time being. If she opened it up, thought about how scared he must be, she thought she might become catatonic from the fear. She wouldn’t be able to move, or she might do something stupid, like try to take on Colin all on her own.

She was trying to be smarter in this apocalypse. She was trying to think about the whole of the group, rather than let her own individual fears rule her emotions. Matthew had gone to get Wyatt Carpenter. When he got back, they would retrieve Patton and he would be safe. He would be safe. He had to be.

A soft touch on her shoulder jolted her out of her musings. She turned a weary smile on Ruth. “Sorry,” she said. “Lost in my own thoughts.”

“I can’t stop thinking about him either,” Ruth admitted as they walked into the kitchen. “I feel sick thinking about what Patton must be going through.”

“We’ll get him back,” Kathleen said, knowing there could be no other option. It was the mantra she repeated to keep herself sane. She couldn’t think about living in this world without her son. Nothing could happen to him, and if it did…well, Colin