Storm (Linear Tactical #10) - Janie Crouch Page 0,1

he hadn’t made any commitments. He shrugged again this time, too. “Not sure yet.”

Her precious boy, always so serious and deliberative. Where Eva seemed not to have been too affected by the violence that had surrounded them for most of their life, the same couldn’t be said for Sam. Marilyn wasn’t sure how aware he was of everything that had happened, only knew it was definitely more than his sister.

Eva sat up. “Can we go now?”

“Well, considering it’s six-thirty in the morning, we might ought to wait until a little closer to when everyone else is arriving at nine. I don’t think we can move very much of the furniture ourselves.” Marilyn ruffled her daughter’s hair at her crestfallen look. “But we can get breakfast and get all our stuff together so we’re ready to go as soon as possible.”

Their stuff consisted of three suitcases full of clothes. So few that if they dumped every single piece out and repacked it all bit by bit, they still wouldn’t need the entire time to get all their belongings back together.

At twenty-six years old, all she had to her name was ninety-seven dollars, three suitcases, and a myriad of nagging injuries that Dr. Annie said would probably bother her to some degree for the rest of her life.

The kids jumped up and raced each other to the bathroom to brush their teeth and get dressed for the day. Their laughter and words garbled around toothbrushes floated out to Marilyn.

Ninety-seven dollars, three suitcases, a bunch of injuries, and two fantastic kids.

She’d take it.

Marilyn was able to hold Eva off until eight-thirty, then they drove over to the New Journeys building. The new New Journeys building. The old one had been a house north of town—nice, but only able to allow a total of eight people to live there at a time.

The new building was much larger—a former office building on the outskirts of town. The renovation wasn’t complete, but it was already able to accommodate more than triple the people as the old house. It would take another year or more before the building could operate at full capacity.

Plus, the building manager’s living quarters was separate from the rest of the building and wouldn’t take space away from families that needed it.

Their living quarters. Their own place. Fighting for her life in a hospital four months ago, she’d never dreamed she’d be here now.

She pulled up at the building, not surprised to see Bree Daniels already there. Bree was one of the main driving forces behind New Journeys. She was a certified computer genius and had become one of Marilyn’s closest friends. She was talking to another woman who was just as important to Marilyn—Annie Griffin, one of the doctors Marilyn had met while in the hospital in Denver.

Dr. Annie had been the one to put Marilyn in touch with New Journeys and set her on this path. Marilyn would always be grateful to her. She lived in Wyoming with her fiancé Zac, but they both were here today to help with the move. A lot of people were here to help New Journeys get its new start.

Marilyn’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel as she looked toward the other end of the parking lot. There were four men standing around the truck. They were talking and laughing with each other, but it didn’t take much observation to see that these men were not a regular moving crew.

The guys looked distinctly different from each other in size, weight, muscle mass, yet they all had some sort of similarity. An awareness. A deadly aura.

Warriors.

“You guys stay near me today, okay?” she told the kids as she turned off the engine.

“Why?” Sam asked immediately, too in tune with her emotional state to not be aware of the tightness in her voice. Damn it.

She turned and gave him a smile. “There’s going to be a lot going on and I don’t want you two to get squashed under any furniture. It might take me weeks to find you.” Sam relaxed and she winked. “Just stay near me.”

She glanced over at the men again. She knew Bree wouldn’t allow anyone here who could possibly be of any danger to her or her kids.

But still.

“There’s Bree Cheese!” Eva tapped on the window. “Can we go say hi to Star?”

Marilyn sighed at the nickname. Bree had insisted she didn’t want the kids to call her Ms. Bree, so the three of them had conspired and come up with Bree