Todos los capítulos de Never Dead Twice: Reborn To Rule The Zombie Apocalypse: Capítulo 1 - Capítulo 10

I died with a stranger’s boot print on my hand.That’s what I remembered first when I woke up. Not the cold, not the screaming, but a boot, size eleven, crushing my fingers against the lip of the evacuation truck. Dominic’s boot. It wasn’t an accident, because he looked down at me while he did it.“There’s only room for one more, Row,” he’d said. Tessa was already folded into the seat behind him, her face buried in my husband’s shoulder. My half-sister. My sister. Our son on her lap.Our son. Theo had Dominic’s eyes, and I’d always thought they were mine too. In those last seconds, with snow filling my lungs, I finally understood why he’d never once called me Mom.The truck pulled away. The dead came down the road like a tide of gray wool. The last thing I felt was not fear but something worse: stupidity. I had spent seven years being useful to the people who were going to let me freeze.I sat up gasping, one hand clawing at my own throat.Warm sheets. Morning sun. The pale blue wall

I let it ring four times.Nadia Brandt had been my best friend since university. She’d held my hair at twenty-two, driven me to the hospital the night I lost Dominic’s baby, and cried real tears at my wedding. In my first life she was the one honest thing I thought I had.Don’t trust the friend who calls you today.“Take it or don’t,” Finch said quietly. “Either way, you’ll learn something.”I pressed the green button. “Hey, Nadia.”“Row! Oh, thank God.” Her voice was warm and breathless, the voice I’d run toward a hundred times. “Dominic called me. He said you walked out. Honey, where are you?”Before I’d even reached the street, my husband had phoned the one person I would run to.“Just taking some air.”“Let me come get you. I’ll bring wine. Row, this isn’t like you. Are you sure you’re thinking clearly?”There it was. I’d missed it a hundred times in my first life. Are you sure you’re thinking clearly? A seed, planted gently, so that later it could grow into a diagnosis.“I’m thin

The words hit like a slap. I had told no one about the truck.“That’s not possible,” I whispered.“It’s the only thing that is.” Cole’s eyes were dark and exhausted, with something raw underneath. “I was a freight dispatcher on your grandmother’s old route. I tried to pull you back in. Your husband’s boot got my hand first.” He lifted his left hand. Three knuckles sat crooked. “I woke up three weeks ago with a number in my eyes. I’ve been trying to stand between you and everything that killed you ever since.”The footsteps above us grew louder.“Later. Two men on the stairs, two more on the street. They work for whoever wrote that affidavit.”“Nadia?”“Nadia doesn’t work for anyone.” His voice was flat. “That’s the problem.”Every instinct from my first life screamed trust no one. But he had been right about the lobby, and the card had been right about Finch, and the stairs were running out.“Priya. Your car.”“Garage, level B.” Her nurse’s calm settled over her like armor. “Move.”We

I didn’t think. I knelt and pulled him into my arms. He was stiff for one heartbeat, then sagged against me like a puppet with cut strings.He isn’t mine, I told myself. He’s Tessa’s. He’s part of the reason I died.But he was six, and soaked, and he smelled of the strawberry shampoo I’d bought him last week. And I had taught him to tie his shoes.“How did you get here, baby?”“A lady drove me.” His teeth chattered. “She said you’d want to see me. The pretty one with the red coat. Her name’s Nadia.”Priya’s breath hissed through her teeth. Behind me, Cole went very still.Don’t trust the friend who calls you today.“Where’s your dad?”“Home. Grandma’s yelling. Everybody’s yelling.” He rubbed his eyes with a wet sleeve. “Row, are you really getting a divorce?”In the first life this child had never once called me Mom. I had always blamed shyness, or grief for a mother who’d supposedly left. It hadn’t been either. Someone had taught him, carefully, from the beginning, not to love me.An

“What kind of accident?” I asked.Gloria was already on her feet, scarf trailing, one hand at her throat. “She’s in surgery. A car. They said she ran a red light.” Her voice cracked on a note that sounded entirely real.Dominic stared at the signed petition. He looked from it to his mother, and for the first time in my memory, he didn’t have a plan.“Go,” I said.They went, all four, in a stampede of cashmere. The door swung shut, and the conference room fell silent except for the tick of Finch’s old clock.“Convenient,” Priya said.“Too convenient.” Finch tapped his pen on the mahogany. “A woman holds the same key as you, knows your countdown, and is hospitalized at the very moment her husband’s family stops being useful. Forgive an old man’s suspicion.”“You think it’s staged.”“I think someone wanted this room emptied before I opened my third folder.” He glanced at the closed door. “Whether that someone was Tessa, I cannot say.”“What’s in the third folder?”He slid it across. Insi