Chapter 7
Kara rubbed her sore fingers on her sweatpants. Now that they were out of the staircase, she felt a bit calmer, less claustrophobic.
For a split second when Matt had slipped on the stairs, she’d thought he was gone. It happened so fast, and her heart may
have stopped for a beat. Then it pounded in her chest so hard that she couldn’t hear much over the roar in her ears. Figuring
out the door had given her that moment she needed to regroup and collect her bearings.
She wasn’t lying to Matt; she did feel like a rat in a maze and someone had set up this entire building to torment them. It wasn’t simply a sick joke; they
could have died. They still could die. She could have died when the elevator fell. Or worse, broken her back at the bottom
of the shaft and slowly, painfully, died over days.
She shivered. Matt squeezed her hand. “We’re going to get out of this,” he said.
“I know,” she agreed without conviction.
They rounded the corner, and Kara saw a sign that surprised her. Maybe because it was unexpected, here in this filthy, rotting building.
Women.
Cautiously, she pushed against the door. There was no resistance.
“We need water,” she said. “The sinks might work. It might taste gross, but we’re not going to get far if we don’t have fluids.”
“I’ll stand at the door—I don’t want to risk being separated.”
Matt pushed the door all the way open and stood in the threshold, his back against the open door. The dim light from the hall
reflected off filthy broken mirrors.
Kara saw distinct handprints on the cracked glass. Slowly, she checked each of the four stalls.
“Matt, I’m going to take a minute.” If they really had been here for nearly twenty-four hours, she certainly wasn’t surprised
her bladder was full.
“Go ahead.”
She chose the one stall that didn’t have a door. The idea of being trapped again made her jittery, fueling her anxiety. She
squatted, not wanting to sit. For all she knew, the toilet would fall through the floor and she’d go crashing down with it.
She looked up at her distorted image in the dirty cracked mirror across the room. The handprints were clear.
So was a message.
The Lord is my shepherd
At the end the “r-d” were crooked as they were written over a crack. Something had dripped. Blood, she thought with a shiver.
The dust and grime were thick; how long would the words last? Weeks? Months? Had someone been trapped here during a hurricane?
Had they died here? Was there a ghost?
“Oh for shit’s sake,” she muttered.
“Kara? You okay?”
“My imagination is working in overdrive.” She stood, every joint in her body creaking. “When we get out of here, I want to soak in a very hot bubble bath.”
“I’ll join you,” he said.
“Look at the mirror.”
“I saw it.”
She walked to the sink and tried the handles.
Nothing.
“It was worth a shot,” Matt said. “Are you okay?”
She shrugged. “Physically? Other than a whopper of a headache and a sore shoulder and bruises in odd places, I’m fine. I just
really hate feeling trapped where everything is out of my control.” She glanced at his leg and frowned. “Are you bleeding?”
She squatted to inspect his injury. “Shit, Matt! This is bad.”
He looked down at the surprisingly large dark stain on his ankle. “From the stairs.”
She rolled up the leg of his sweats. He suppressed a moan when the material brushed against the cut.
“This is a deep cut.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s still bleeding.” She looked around but saw nothing they could use to put pressure on it. “There’s gotta be something
around here.” She started to take off her tank, but he stopped her.
“I don’t need your shirt.”
“I’m wearing a sports bra.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, well just keep it on for now. Down the hall there are some doors. Maybe we’ll find something to bandage
it up. But getting out of here is our first priority.”
She didn’t like the look of the cut, but he was right. She glanced down the hall. Junk littered the floor. A couple broken
chairs, a file cabinet, a lot of paper strewn about. But the center of the hall was mostly clear, as if someone had walked
through and pushed stuff up against the wall.
Maybe the person who cut their finger on the broken mirror.
The building wasn’t completely silent. Matt was right, there was a faint electric hum. That had to be a good thing, right?
“We stay together,” Matt said.
“No argument from me,” Kara said.
Cautiously, they walked down the hall. Matt picked up a folder that was wedged between trash and an upside-down chair. Dirt
fell from the front. He opened it; the pages were swollen from moisture. “Look,” he said and turned the file to Kara.
“A cannery?” There must be farms in the area. Which meant lots of land and few people.
“Look at the bottom,” Matt said.
Kara scanned the faded ink. “Georgia. We’re in Georgia?”
Matt dropped the folder. “The resort is less than two hours from the border. Catherine said Reid would have a secondary location,
and a place like this would fit. Remote, isolated, empty.”
Kara stayed within reach of Matt as they navigated the cluttered hall until they reached the end of what appeared to be a
T intersection. To their right was near-complete darkness, to the left a faint green light over metal doors.
Matt reached for her hand and squeezed it. “We stick together. Down there?” He gestured toward the eerie glow to the left.
“The green light is like a beacon, pulling us there, as if we’re being led.” She glanced right, frowned. “But I don’t like
the dark. We can’t see where we’re going, and after you nearly fell down the stairs . . .” She was torn. She hated being indecisive.
“Let’s go right, slowly, stick close to the wall, and hold hands.”
She nodded, let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. “Okay.”
The corridor stretched ahead in dark shadows, littered with the broken bones of furniture, their shoes crunching on glass and scraps of metal.
They stepped carefully, the last thing either of them needed was to slice their foot open.
They couldn’t see much, just dark shapes, so they tentatively felt their way through the maze of debris.
The previous corridor had some junk, but nothing like this, as if someone had pushed all the furniture from every office into the hall.
Matt had the depressing thought that they were in a tomb. The air thick, old, and heavy. It had a taste, like dust saturated
with mildew, like something that had been sealed in too long.
He shivered. Kara squeezed his hand tight, perhaps sensing his apprehension.
Just when Matt thought they had picked a dead end and was about to tell Kara to turn back, he saw a faint flicker of light,
like the earliest dawn. A way out? A door? A balcony? A window?
“Did you see that?” Kara asked.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice rough, his throat dry.
They had to scale what felt like a broken desk with concrete mixed in as they turned the corner. There, a dim, steady golden
light cut through the dark. It was daylight. Not the eerie, artificial glow of the elevator or odd green lighting from the
opposite hall, but outside. Freedom. It was a way out, it had to be.
Sticking close to the concrete walls, they steadily moved toward the light and discovered the source: a tall factory window,
boarded from the outside. Light filtered through a jagged crack in the planks, thin and sickly. Matt ran his finger along
the window; someone had painted the glass to block the light, but a section of the paint had been scratched off, letting in
the morning sun.
He pressed his face to the glass, trying to see out. Though his vision was blurry, he saw something . . . but it didn’t help.
“What?” Kara said.
“I see green. Fields, trees, that’s it. There’s no one out there. No buildings, no houses.”
No one to help, he thought, but refused to give up hope. If he lost hope, Kara would, too. He had to be strong.
“No way out,” Kara said.
“We’ll find a way,” he said firmly.
Matt felt around for a window latch. Maybe they could open the window—break it if they had to—pry off the boards.
“What’s that?” Kara said.
Matt looked over his shoulder, his gaze moving to where Kara had squatted only a foot behind him. At first he didn’t see anything,
but as he shifted the thin ray of light hit the floor and reflected off something shiny and metal.
Kara picked it up. “It’s a bracelet. Diamonds and gold. I don’t know, they might not be real, but it seems odd to find this
here.”
She pocketed it, looked at Matt. “Can we get out this way?”
“No,” he said. He didn’t want to give up, but this wasn’t the way out. He pushed on the latch at the bottom of the window.
It didn’t budge. “It looks like we’re three stories up. We could break the window and possibly remove the boards, but it’s
a long drop.”
“It’s worth the risk,” she said.
“Breaking our necks?”
“Just—break the window. Maybe we’ll see someone. We can scream for help.”
It was a desperate move, but they were desperate, Matt thought.
“Step back,” he said. He squatted to pick up a broken drawer. He closed his eyes, turned his head away from the window, and
hit the glass as hard as he could. He heard a crack, but it didn’t shatter—the paint offered some protection. He hit it again.
“Try this,” Kara said. She reached down and picked up what looked like a broomstick without the sweeper. It snagged on the
debris. She yanked it and Matt heard a click, so soft he wondered if he imagined it.
“Wait,” he said but it was too late. Kara had freed the stick, and at the same time a rumbling directly above them had Matt
instinctively moving away from the window.
A crunch, a pop!, and glass shattered.
“Run!”
The ceiling above groaned. Dust sifted down in lazy spirals before the floor above gave way with a deafening crash. A rotted support beam dropped like a guillotine, slamming onto the floor where Matt had just been.
They ran through the maze of debris, Matt’s calf burning, Kara swearing as she stumbled over furniture. Thick dust and chunks
of plaster fell over them as they made it back to the fork in the hall. Another groan, like the sound of machinery slowly
stopping, and more tiles fell from the ceiling behind them.
Then silence. Quiet except for his pounding heart. He grabbed Kara. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
“That wasn’t a collapse. That was triggered.”
He agreed. There was no other explanation. Not in light of what they had already been through.
Kara’s voice was borderline panicked. “Someone set this up. They’re watching. Playing with us.”
“It was a trap. I don’t think they’re watching. We moved something and then . . .” He didn’t have to finish his sentence;
Kara had lived through it with him. One saving grace of that collapse—it let in more light. That gave him a bit of hope.
“It’s a game, we’re the pawns, they’re going to kill us.”
“No. We’re going to get out.” He forced himself to sound strong though he was terrified that Kara was right. “Are you hurt?
Talk to me, Kara. Were you injured?”
“I just . . . I just need a minute. Okay?” She was shaking. He was, too.
“Take as much time as you need, Kara.”
She sat down and leaned against the wall.
Matt sat down next to her.
“I don’t want to die here,” she whispered.
“We’re not going to die. I promise you.”
“I’m holding you to that.”
“We’ll take five minutes.”
“Thank you.”
He kissed the top of her head. “I need five minutes, too.”
He needed more than five minutes, but he feared the longer it took for them to find a way out, the greater chance they would,
in fact, die here.