EMP Catastrophe , Hamilton, Grace [crime books to read txt] 📗

could only hope that Allison would still love her after everything they’d been through. She hoped Allison would continue to see her as a nurturing person and that their relationship and history would win over violence that, while it had lasted minutes at most, had damaged them both.

But oh, they were so close to home Kathleen could taste it. Even better, it felt as if she and Allison were stepping back into their old mother-daughter groove. They no longer screamed or yelled at each other, no longer offered soft apologies or tearful explanations and reasonings. It was as though a weight had been lifted off of them. Kathleen couldn’t wait to ride to the hotel’s front door and see Patton fling the door open and leap into her arms. She wanted to plant a fat, wet kiss on Matthew and hold the rest of her family close. She wanted to erase everything that had happened and go back to how things were before. She dreamed that it could be so.

The three-mile landmark was a gentle slope in the road followed by a secondary switchback before the climb really began. Kathleen breathed heavily as she pedaled hard and then coasted down the slope. Her eyebrows drew together in new concern when she saw a white delivery van parked on the side of the road.

The back doors were flung open. Motorcycles surrounded it, shining black, some with red-painted flames. A few were parked in the middle of the road, effectively blocking anyone or anything from getting by. Some men leaned against their handlebars. The muted murmur of their conversation filled the air. Allison slowed down and looked at Kathleen in alarm. Kathleen slowed down too, and realized they couldn’t continue to coast as far as they could up the hill. The mountain road had already begun to incline steeply and slowing any further would bring them to a complete standstill. Plus, she couldn’t exactly scoot around the motorcycle gang without dismounting her bike as it was.

A tattooed man stepped out of the back of the van with a head of lettuce between his hands. Bouncing on the van’s bumper, he held the lettuce over his head and smashed the produce against the ground. As the lettuce head split in half and began to roll down the hill, he roared with laughter. The rest of the gang echoed him.

“Mom?” Allison asked in a low voice as both she and Kathleen came to a complete stop. “What should we do?”

“Not much we can do,” Kathleen said under her breath as she dismounted. She hesitated and briefly wondered if they should risk abandoning their bikes and veer into the woods to hide. At the same time, her hands gripped her handlebars. The bikes were a treasure in this world that had been turned upside down. It seemed like a terrible idea to drop them when they’d needed them so much on their journey. They should keep them at all costs unless it became necessary to get rid of them.

Rhonda’s warnings echoed in her mind. Stay away from enclosed spaces. Stay away from crowds.

Kathleen had learned one lesson the hard way on her journey: don’t trust anyone.

She pulled up close to Allison and took a couple of deep breaths to calm her thundering heart. Her lungs burned from the trek, and she knew her cheeks were bright red from exertion. “We should try to get around them without instigating any problems,” she said. “We’ll just act confident and walk around them as much as we can. They have no reason to want to engage with us.”

“Where’s the gun?” Allison asked in a low voice, tilting her head closer to Kathleen.

Kathleen wanted to cry, but cleared her throat instead. She hated that her daughter’s first reaction was to wonder about their safety and ask about the weapon Kathleen had used to protect them. “In the holster around my waist, still.”

“Good,” Allison said.

Kathleen looked at her with incredulity. “I promise I won’t hurt anyone.”

“If you have to, you should.” Allison glanced at her mother, and Kathleen saw the glimpse of a much-older Allison who’d been hardened by experience and was practical down to her roots. A wave of unexpected relief flowed through Kathleen. Finally, it felt as if they were in this together and that Allison had her back as a partner and not just as her daughter.

Even so, Allison was still Kathleen’s child, and Rhonda’s other warning rang through her mind. Protect your daughter at all costs.

“If this looks like it will turn into another situation like before,” Kathleen said, “I want you to run into the woods.”

“I’m not going to abandon you with a group of hostile bikers,” Allison snapped. “I won’t let someone put their hands on me or you like that again.”

“That’s not…” Kathleen’s throat felt parched. Her braid lay in a sweaty tangle over her shoulder. Did Allison see herself as weak for not fighting Andrew and his men more? Was her silence and crying not because she’d seen Kathleen murder someone, but because she herself felt like she should’ve done more? Kathleen put her hand on Allison’s arm. “Honey, you were in a terrible situation. You did everything you could.”

Allison tilted her chin up as if holding back tears. “Not such a great time to talk about our feelings, Mom.”

“Then promise me if things get bad here, you’ll run into the woods. I don’t want to have to worry about you. The hotel is a mile or two north of us. All you have to do is keep climbing upwards. This is the only road to the hotel, so you can follow it from the woods to get back home.” Kathleen’s legs shook with a sudden weakness now that her garden of hope had been dug up and scorched. She didn’t want to be separated, but she had to keep Allison safe. At all costs. “Promise me,” she said and this time even she could hear the steel in her tone.

“I’m not