Up From the Depths Read Online Free PDF Page A

Cassie said, glaring at John Mecceloni. He looked at her, she was definitely pissed off. He could tell by the way her green eyes flared at him.
    “Look, all I’m saying is we should at least consider it an option,” he said.
    “Goddamnit, John! We are not going back to Clovis and we’re sure as shit not going to Cannon!” she stated defiantly. “The last time we went to Clovis I almost lost you.”
    “I know,” Mecceloni said with a nod. “I was there, remember?”
    “Damn right I remember!” Cassie shouted. “We had to go in and save your asses.”
    “We could have made it back to the market,” Mecceloni said knowing as soon as he said it that he shouldn’t have.
    “There was no way you could have made it back there. The streets were full of infected and you had to grandstand and plow right on through them,” Cassie retorted.
    “It wasn’t like that,” he said.
    “Bullshit. It was worse,” she stated. “I saw the truck, remember? It was totally fucked up! There was body parts blasted all over the place for God’s sake! So don’t tell me what it was or wasn’t like. There’s no way in hell we’re ever going back to Clovis or even considering a return to Cannon.”
    Mecceloni looked at her. Damn . She was beautiful when she was angry. She was beautiful when she wasn’t angry. He remembered back to the first time he met her. Las Vegas, in a hotel room, after he had just eliminated a contracted target. She had walked out of the bathroom and seen him standing there; weapon in hand, body on the floor. Mentally shaking his head to clear it, he brought his thoughts back to the present.
    “We need to at least check out Cannon to see if there’s anything there we can use,” he said in an attempt to defend his plan. “It’s pretty obvious we’re going to be here a long time.”
    “John, you’re a stubborn asshole,” she said. “If, and that’s a big if , we do decide, as a group , to head back to the Air Force base to do anything , we’re not going to go through Clovis to get there.”
    “That’s reasonable. But, when not if , we go, you’re staying here,” he said.
    “Fuck you, John. We’ve been over this before. Where you go, I go,” she said, putting her hands on her hips and glaring at him. “That’s how we work and you know it.”
    “That’s not how it works. You’re staying here and that’s how it’s going to be,” he said. “I saw how you reacted when we were at Clovis and I don’t want a repeat of that.” His mind flashed the picture of Cassie perched through the open window of the surplus CUCV and firing a shotgun into the massed infected while Sharon drove. “If anything ever happened to you, I don’t know what I’d do,” he added. There, he had said it.
    “You could have gotten your ass chewed off,” he said.
    “You think so?” she asked with a smirk. “You were only concerned about my ass? I think you like more than my ass. I think you like what’s attached to my ass. You seem to like that a lot.”
    “Well, the whole package is nice. The ass is as exceptional as is what’s attached to it. That’s why I don’t want it damaged.”
    Cassie dipped her head and shot him a mischievous look.
    “Maybe you should check my ass again to make sure there isn’t any residual damage.”
    Mecceloni smirked, the argument was winding down and something else was winding up.
    “You may have something there,” he said, stepping towards her. “Some injuries can take a while before they present themselves. I’d be remiss if I didn’t do a thorough follow-up.”
    She moved into his arms and hugged him tightly.
    “I hate it when we argue,” she said into his chest. “But I love it when we make up.”
    Her lips found his. The kiss was tentative at first then more passionate as they stumbled towards the bed and collapsed onto it, their hands roaming each other’s body as they divested themselves of their clothing.
    Several levels below the lovers, Sharon Wharton was