Ranger #3
“You go up, I go down?” I whispered.
He simply nodded before I crouched down and he hunched over me, his hands pressed into the wall.
I mean, I didn’t like the fact that I was basically by his crotch.
But it was better than us getting caught.
Every time we heard a sound, we ducked and covered. And every time the sound passed us by, we noticed one thing.
All of it came from the same direction.
After slipping out of the closet and closing the door, we practically rushed down the hallway. And for the first time since stepping into the fucking building, we hit a dead end.
Just a door at the end of the hallway and nowhere else to turn but around.
Ghost placed his finger to his mask before I nodded.
I kept my head on a swivel, looking out for anyone and listening for any sort of sounds.
I heard the doorknob turn before the locking mechanism creaked open, and the cool air that blasted us from behind the door told us everything we needed to know.
The door swung open to a massive stairwell.
“What the fuck?” I whispered.
Ghost looked up. “This shit is definitely not on the schematics.”
“Come on,” a voice said as it filtered behind us. “Bossman’s gonna be pissed if we don’t hurry up.”
“You wanna balance this food tray, asshole? Be my guest.”
“In. Now,” I commanded softly.
The stairwell had a little alcove that cast a shadow along the wall. We’d be safe there, so long as it was big enough for us to squeeze into. We slipped inside and just barely got the door latched before we heard the voices turn the corner, heading straight for us.
I yanked Ghost’s leather jacket, tugging him toward the spiraled alcove.
“Oh, you gotta be kidding me,” he grumbled when he saw how tight the space was.
“Sh,” I said as I tucked myself as deep into the corner as I could go.
I tugged Ghost in after me.
The footsteps grew closer. More insistent. I looked around to make sure there wasn’t any sort of door that we were blocking or standing against. I ran my hand along the wall, but felt nothing except cinderblock.
The walls in that video weren’t cinderblock.
Fucking hell, did we get this all wrong?
Whoever’s down there, they need us.
“Why the hell are we feeding her anyway?” a voice asked as the stairwell door crashed open.
“Because Bossman says she needs to be,” a heavier voice said.
“Need me to hold the tray while you get the door?”
“Or you could work on your gentleman skills and get the fucking door instead.”
“You’re the one who’s got the key, smartass.”
“No wonder you’re always fucking single,” the man grumbled.
I saw Ghost trying to lean out of the alcove to peek, but I tugged on his arm.
I shook my head at him, but all he did was press his finger to his lips.
He pointed to his back, and then to his face, and working with Ghost long enough, I knew that meant that those bastards had their backs turned to us.
I watched Ghost’s eyes widen.
I wanted to ask him what the hell he was looking at.
I heard a pop before something creaked, and I furrowed my brow as I realized what he was looking at.
There was a door somewhere in this stairwell.
“All right,” one of the men said as I heard liquid sloshing somewhere. “Let’s go. We’ve taken long enough.”
“I still think we should have our turns with her before tossing her into the woods.”
Ghost patted my chest over and over again.
Holy fucking hell, had we really gotten this lucky?
What came next happened so quickly that I didn’t even have a chance to react.
Ghost was there, and then he was gone. Panic gripped my throat as my hand instinctively raced to the knives on my hips, ready to draw them without a second thought.
I heard something rip. I heard something else tear.
And when I had the knives firmly in my grasp, I hopped out of the alcove and flipped them around in my fingers.
Looking for the threat.
Only for Ghost to be standing there with a cheeky grin in his eyes.
And… duct tape in his hand?
He motioned his head to the left and I came out from around the stairwell completely. His eyes were filled with pride as he nodded to the left again. I turned in the direction where he was looking, and at first, I didn’t see anything.
Until the little lip in the cinderblock wall caught my attention.
“Holy fuck, it’s a hidden door,” I whispered.
Ghost wiggled the small roll of duct tape at me before shoving it back into his pocket. Then I watched as he reached out for the cinderblock lip in the wall…
…and pulled open the door like it was nothing.
I went to ask him how he did it until my eyes fell to the latching mechanism of the door. And sitting right there, smoothed over the locking mechanism to keep it pushed down, was a piece of duct tape.
I chuckled silently and shook my head as Ghost held the door open and ushered his hand through it.
As if to say, ‘after you.’
So with a nod of my head and my footsteps silenced, I gripped the knives tightly in my hands.
I slipped into another stairwell and began the slow descent down with Ghost at my back.