Free Love in the Time of the Dead by Tera Shanley Page A

easily. In fact, if she were a betting woman, which she was on occasion, she would bet that window had been greased quite recently.
    Hooking a leg over, she panicked when one of the guards started to turn in her direction, and she flopped through the window like a beached dolphin.
    In a frozen pool of hope, she lay perfectly still on her stomach. Maybe she hadn’t made too much noise falling through the window. She lifted her face just enough to come foot to eyeball with someone’s boot. Busted.
    “Shoot,” she whispered.
    Sean Daniels sat in his office chair with an amused smirk on his face.
    He waved his hand toward the window. “Please don’t shoot my dinner guest.”
    She turned her head just enough to find three assault rifles trained in the general vicinity of her ear.
    The guard closest spoke first. “Sir, Erhard said—”
    “I don’t care what he said. At ease.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    The men lowered their weapons and withdrew from the opening. Sean stepped over her and closed the window before locking it securely in place. Laney cleared her throat and stood with as much dignity as she could muster. Which wasn’t much. She sidled around him to stand on the other side of his desk.
    “Seems like you’ve made a lot of friends while you’ve been here. Must be your accommodating demeanor.”
    She glared at him. “Your second in command is a thorn in my side.”
    “Yeah, what did you do to get him so riled up? He told me he kicked you out of the colony, so I just assumed you wouldn’t be making it to dinner.”
    She shrugged. The real reasons she took the risk would have to wait for later. “I’m hungry. I figured the food here would be better than the crap I’ve been eating. He can kick me out tomorrow.”
    “Ah, a woman driven entirely by her stomach. You remind me of my three-year-old.”
    She opened her mouth to pop off but was cut short by the office door swinging open. A solemn-faced Finn stepped in and took a post in the furthest corner of the room.
    “Glad to see you’re still keeping our guest here out of trouble,” Sean told him.
    “She doesn’t make it easy, sir.”
    Sean chuckled. “No, I don’t expect she does.”
    “I have a question,” she cut in with annoyance. “Why do you have an unlocked window, all greased up and ready for anyone who wants to mess with you or Mona or your daughter? Do you trust everyone in your colony so much?”
    A flash of concern washed over Sean’s face before his mask was firmly back in place. He looked to Finn and arched his eyebrow. “The lady poses an interesting question.”
    “You are right to be concerned, sir. We do regular window checks. I didn’t think we had a shot at finding one unlocked, but it was the only way I could think to get Laney in here. I was pretty shocked when that one actually gave.”
    Sean drummed his fingers on the desk thoughtfully before he jerked his head toward the door. “Let’s go eat.”
    She was surprised when he led her to an upstairs dining area instead of staying on the main floor. The upstairs was smaller but boasted a kitchen, dining room, and three bedrooms.
    “This is the strangest house I’ve ever been in,” she mumbled.
    “That’s probably because it wasn’t originally a house,” Sean said without offense.
    “What was it?”
    “It was a church when we found it. In fact, the original buildings and land used to belong to an extreme religious group, as far as we could tell. They were all gone before we got here.”
    “Extreme religious group? So a cult is what you are saying. Creepy.”
    “At first it was a little weird. We found an impressive cache of texts on the darker aspects of their beliefs, and if you lift up the carpet in any given room, there are strange markings in a red substance we can’t seem to clean off. But if you ignore that stuff, the extremists gave us a huge advantage.” He motioned for her to take a seat at an oak dining room table before he continued. “You see, the people