Green Fields (Book 2): Outbreak Read Free

confidence, even. The Ice Queen made a face but remained mute; otherwise stoic at Nate’s side, it was obvious why she was his second in command.  
    By then Bucky must have realized that I wasn’t buying what he was selling, but he still tried again.
    “No offense, but do you really want to stay with the people who gave you that nice temporary makeup?”
    He was referring to the bruises on my face—and wouldn’t you know it, it just took that mention to make my cheekbone and nose twinge uncomfortably, but I did my best to ignore it. It was impossible not to single out Gabriel Greene in between the scientists, and I felt my face twist into a sneer.
    “Thanks so much for your concern, but I think I’ll stay with the people who didn’t try to bash my head in,” I said, taking a step back which brought me right up to Andrej. Greene didn’t try to avoid my gaze although he did glare back, and the way his right hand twitched I wondered if he was itching to protect his junk from my knee. It was then that I realized that he still looked scared shitless, his previous sleazy demeanor crumbling under the emotional turmoil. But then, he must have known exactly that he’d been sitting on a ticking time bomb all along, and now that the shit had hit the fan, he likely had a much better grasp on what was going on than I could imagine. And I had a very vivid imagination.
    Bucky seemed confused, but he took it in stride.
    “You really sure that you want to hang with a bunch of second-rate criminals and army rejects? Because, let me assure you, they’ll sell you out as soon as they find something worth bartering for.”
    “And you won’t?” I asked. “I mean, you’re working for the people who built this fucking plague. Why should I trust you?”
    It was a wild guess at best, but the fact that all I got out of him was him gnashing his teeth was the kind of confirmation I really hadn’t needed. What was equally disturbing was that neither of the scientists spoke up, but then it made sense that—as group leaders—they’d been in the know of what their company had actually been working on. In fact, Greene was still eyeing the intersection as if he was thinking about bailing, too, but one look at Nate and he remained firmly rooted in his spot.
    Maybe it had been that exclamation, or they had just been biding their time, but four of the soldiers joined us, pointedly not looking at their comrades. One of them, a six-foot-and-then-some bear of a man with skin so dark that even in the direct sunlight it looked black nodded at Nate and Pia, and received a similar nod back. Clearly, Martinez hadn’t been the only one who’d met Nate before. Another I recognized as one of the soldiers who had run into Nate and me when we’d hightailed it out of the hot lab, and he joined Martinez, the two of them briefly bumping fists. It looked like that was all, until another soldier joined those two, who I guessed was their commanding officer. He looked about as confused and frightened as I felt, and he kept eyeing Nate with a similar kind of distrust he reserved for the bodies lying dead on the sidewalk, but he had switched sides, and that counted for something.
    Nate took a brief look over his assembled people before he turned to Bucky again.
    “Looks like we’re done here.”
    “You actually have a plan?” Bucky grunted, his tone derisive.  
    “I always have a plan,” Nate shot back. “And if Plan B goes up in flames, there’s still the entire rest of the alphabet.”
    Bucky seemed to consider, but then simply turned around, facing his people. “Move out!” Clearly, we were dismissed.
    Nate allowed himself the hint of a smile—or a wince that he only showed now that the other guy wasn’t looking at him anymore—but it froze when Dolores gave him an apologetic look and started walking toward the soldiers.
    “You know that I can’t shoot for shit, and I’m not exactly the survivalist type,” she said, sounding like she knew