Kindred Spirit - Noah Harris Page 0,37

the hallway, scrambling toward the front door and kicking it shut. It wouldn’t be long until more people came barreling into the house, or worse.

“Levi!” he called as he hurried into the kitchen.

“I’m here!” Levi’s voice shook slightly but still sounded reasonably calm.

“Good,” Jacob yelled as he twisted all the dials of the stove and opened the oven door.

Before Levi could investigate what he was up to, Jacob hurried into the bedroom. “Uh, anything you’re attached to a great deal in here?”

Levi stood by the closet, eyes wide, a random assortment of clothes on him. “Uh...yes?”

“Grab it now.”

That earned him another questioning look, but once again, Levi didn’t question it. Jacob wondered just how much Levi had gone through in his life that he took each blow to the chin with such relative ease. As extensive as the file on Levi had been, there had been plenty of gaps, and Jacob was sure there were plenty of stories in those gaps Levi could tell.

His heart sank as he watched Levi reach into the closet and pull a small box out. After a moment’s hesitation, Levi shoved it into Jacob’s bag and zipped it closed. Jacob couldn’t help but wonder how many times Levi had been faced with danger and possible death, or how many times he’d been forced to flee from a place before he was ready. Jacob had chosen his life, trained for it, but Levi had never asked for any of it, and he had to deal with it all the same.

“Forget something?” Levi asked when he caught Jacob’s expression.

Ah, how he suddenly wished he could make this all go away for Levi. He’d done nothing wrong, except for being born a little different from everyone else. It was no crime, but there were plenty of people in the world willing to say otherwise.

“No,” Jacob said with a shake of his head. He grabbed his boots, lacing them quickly. “Get ready to make a break for the forest. It’s only going to be a few minutes before someone else comes busting in here, and they’re going to be a lot more ready for whatever I might have to throw at them.”

He might conceivably be able to take a stand if he had better weapons and maybe someone else to back him up. Levi was staying levelheaded, but that wasn’t quite the same thing. Jacob strongly suspected the man had never had to take a life, let alone kill more than one person in the heat of combat. That sort of mentality took experience and a lot of training. Jacob had been honed into a weapon, a thinking, breathing weapon, but a weapon all the same. But even he had his limits, and he preferred to tactically retreat than to go down in a blaze of glory.

“You know they have to have this place surrounded,” Levi said.

“Yep, but I’m betting they’re going to send more people in than they’re going to leave outside. I’d rather have to avoid a few people’s guns than a dozen.”

“Your plan is to thin the herd but still run through bullets?”

“I mean, unless you want to call your house the Alamo, we don’t really stand a chance fighting everyone.”

“Not really...God, what is that smell?”

Jacob laughed nervously. “Yeah, don’t uh, light a cigarette or anything.”

Levi’s head jerked toward Jacob. He cocked his head in a gesture Jacob was coming to recognize as him listening to something beyond Jacob’s hearing. A second later, Levi’s eyes widened.

“Oh,” he finally said.

“Yeah,” Jacob said, standing up on the edge of the bed.

“What’re you doing?”

Not answering right away, he took the gun and gently tapped at the lightbulb. It took a few tries to hit it just right, but the bulb cracked, crumbling away onto the bed in shining shards of glass. The filament was left bare, though, and he shrugged at Levi as he hopped down from the bed.

Jacob frowned. “So, not going to ask about how you know the things you do since we’re obviously not there yet.”

“And where exactly is there?” Levi asked dryly.

Jacob ignored him. “But is there any chance you might be able to figure out how many are shaping up to come in and where the ones being left out are?”

Levi stared at him for a moment, then turned his head to the left and nodded jerkily. A frown crossed his face, and then a scowl. Once again, Jacob was witnessing a one-sided conversation, and he wasn’t sure if Levi was somehow having a