Novels by Roqeebat Musa

A locked door only means something to the people who are outside it.Rain drummed on the windshield as Rosalie drove north through gray morning mist. Inside the SUV nobody spoke. Beside her, Xavier held a tablet showing live satellite feeds of the coast, where a dense, red tinted bank of fog hugged the edge of the sea."The weather bureau calls it warm front condensation," he said. His voice was low in the quiet cab. He enlarged a thermal map. "They are telling the public it will burn off by noon.""It will not." Rosalie kept both hands on the wheel. "It will sit in the low ground and soak into the soil. It will creep into the drains. By the time anyone figures out it is not water, the power grid will be rotting from the inside."He turned to study her profile. Rain light slid along her jaw. "You talk like someone who has already counted the bodies.""I have counted enough," she said softly. "I do not plan to be one."He did not ask the next question. He had spent a day deciding not t

The quickest way to learn who your enemies are is to see what they steal first.The site office sat just inside the mouth of the Halden mine, a steel box bolted to the salt wall with work lamps swinging overhead. Xavier followed Rosalie in, his boots loud on the metal floor. His eyes never stopped moving. He marked the exits, the support beams, the three forklifts parked by the loading bay.On a folding table lay blueprints weighed down with coffee mugs. Beside them, a crate lid stamped with a serial number caught his attention. He ran a gloved finger across it."This is military spec titanium framing," he said. "Built to survive shock from below. You did not order this for a storage unit.""I like my buildings to last, Commander," Rosalie said, not stopping."Last through what?" He leaned against the table and folded his arms. "Blast doors. Sealed shafts. Enough bio filters to scrub a city block. You are not building a home, Miss West. You are building a bunker."Rosalie turned and r

Only a fool hears a quiet sky and calls it peace.Rosalie did not look away. The autumn wind pulled dark hair across her cheek, but she stood like a post driven into rock. Behind the mine gate, a crane groaned as it lowered steel plate off a flatbed. Between her and Xavier Knight, the noise seemed to drop out, and the space stretched tight as a bowstring."A lab report," Rosalie said. "And you came here with a piece of paper instead of a team of scientists. Either the report is weak, Commander, or you do not trust it enough to act on it."Xavier did not blink. His gray eyes had a stillness she remembered from her old life, the look of a man who had walked through bad places and learned to read faces in them."Ordinary people buy air scrubbers for mold," he said. He stepped off the road and stopped two feet from her, tall enough to block the afternoon sun. "They do not order forty thousand respirator filters, a pallet of blast doors, and enough water purifier to run a small town. That

The best way to ruin a man who lives on your money is to let him believe he is robbing you.Rosalie stood in front of the mahogany desk on the top floor of Calloway Enterprises, in an ivory suit that fit her like armor. Afternoon sun poured through the glass wall. It lit up the leather chairs and the framed photos of Nicholas shaking hands at business award dinners. Her grandfather's foundation had paid for every one of those dinners.Nicholas sat behind the desk with his shoulders locked. On the couch to his left, Sera Parker pressed a silk handkerchief to her nose. Her blouse was the one Rosalie had bought her on their last shopping trip. Her eyes were red on cue."You are making a huge mistake," Nicholas said, and slapped a folder onto the desk. "You block my calls, then walk in here and demand a property split? Everything I built was for our future.""You did not build anything, Nicholas," Rosalie said. Her voice was quiet and flat. "You managed my money. Badly."She nodded at the

When your own family drains your blood to buy their way into the safe zone, waking up again is not a second chance at love. It is a loaded gun.The needle in Rosalie's arm was cold, but she hardly felt it. The numbness had already climbed past her elbows.The clinic room smelled of bleach and wet rust. Beyond the reinforced door, the Spore Fog scraped along the concrete with a soft, sticky sound, like a tongue dragged across a wall. In less than a month it had eaten three quarters of the city."Keep the line steady, Nicholas," a woman whispered. "The gate scanner checks cell density. If the blood is agitated, it may flag her."Rosalie dragged her eyes open. The fluorescent light split into two, then three. Beside her gurney sat Sera Parker in a clean white coat, her cheeks pink, her hair brushed. Nobody out here had cheeks like that anymore.For four years Rosalie had kept these people alive. She had traded her mother's jewelry for canned beans. She had stood between them and starving