All Chapters of The Zombies Apocalypse Brought Me Back To My Fiancee : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

They ended up in the study, the same one where she'd broken into Miriam's drive, because apparently every conversation in this house eventually circled back to the one room with decent lighting and a locked door.Adrian set his phone on the desk, screen still open to the security alert. The name beneath Isabella's photo sat there in plain, boring font, like it hadn't just upended everything.SUBJECT: DANIELA MOSS. CLEARANCE: UNKNOWN. STATUS: FLAGGED."Daniela Moss," Vanessa read aloud. "That's not a name. That's a dental hygienist.""It's an alias.""It's a boring alias. If I were faking a name, I'd pick something with flair.""Like what?""I don't know. Something with an accent in it.""That's not how aliases work.""It's how mine would work."Adrian pulled up a chair, the picture of calm focus, which only made her more aware of how not-calm she felt. "Facial recognition flagged her from the gala. Ninety-six percent match. That's not a coincidence.""Maybe she just has an identical t

Adrian didn't ask questions. He just dropped into the driver's seat, shoved the boxes into the back without looking where they landed, and had the engine running before Vanessa finished pointing."There. Gray jacket. Getting into the sedan."The man moved fast for someone trying not to look like he was moving fast. He slid into a dark blue sedan parked half a block down, and the engine caught almost before the door shut."Don't lose him," Vanessa said."I'm aware of how tailing works.""Just checking."Adrian pulled out, keeping two cars back, his eyes flicking between the road and the mirror in that same unhurried rhythm he did everything with, like panic was a language he'd simply never bothered to learn.The sedan turned left at the lights. Adrian turned with it, smooth, unbothered, a man who had done this a hundred times before and intended to make it look like none of them mattered.Vanessa's heart was going somewhere closer to a hundred and ten."He's speeding up," she said."I s

She waited until midnight, because midnight felt like the right kind of drama, and also because Victor's study light finally went dark around then, swallowed by the rest of the sleeping house.The door wasn't locked. It never was, not technically, because Victor had never believed in locks for a study he considered untouchable simply by reputation. Vanessa slipped inside anyway, careful with the handle, and shut the door behind her with the kind of quiet that came from years of sneaking out of this exact house as a teenager.The room smelled like him. Leather and old paper and the particular brand of cologne he'd worn her entire life, something woody and expensive that made her chest ache in a way she didn't want to examine too closely.She moved to the far wall first, where the painting hung, a dull landscape of hills nobody actually liked but everyone pretended to admire because Victor had bought it on some anniversary nobody remembered the reason for. Rosa's word was still echoing

For one long, terrible second, neither of them moved.Then the footsteps continued past the door. Unhurried. Heading toward the kitchen, not the study, Vanessa realized she'd been holding her breath only when it came out of her in a rush that sounded embarrassingly close to a sob."That wasn't him," Adrian murmured, listening. "Wrong gait. Too light.""You can identify my father by footstep?""I've lived in this house a long time.""That's unsettling information to have about a person.""It's useful information.""It's the same thing Rosa would say about her sheets."He didn't answer that, already crouched back over the folder, his focus snapping back to the page like the scare had cost him nothing at all, while Vanessa's heart was still trying to climb back down out of her throat."We don't have long," he said. "Whoever that was could still pass this way. Read fast."She forced herself to look back down at the page, past the organizational chart, past the redacted oversight box, to t

It started at 6:58 a.m., which Vanessa considered an act of aggression on its own.She opened her bedroom door to go to the bathroom and nearly walked face-first into Adrian, already dressed, already alert, standing exactly where a normal person would not be standing at that hour."What are you doing," she said."Shadow duty.""I'm going to the bathroom.""I'm aware.""You don't need to be aware of that.""Your father said everywhere but the bathroom. The hallway outside it is not the bathroom.""That is the most lawyer thing you've ever said.""Thank you.""It wasn't a compliment."He followed her to the bathroom door and stopped there, arms crossed, waiting with the patience of a man guarding a vault instead of a woman who needed to brush her teeth.***Breakfast went about as well as expected. He sat across from her, close enough that she couldn't reach for the jam without his elbow being somewhere in the vicinity of her elbow, both of them locked in a silent battle over the last p