Chapter 20 Ranger #2
“Quit rubbernecking,” Ghost grumbled. “I already know where the cameras are.”
I just nodded my head as I righted myself on my feet. But when I looked down to get my bearings, I shook my head.
“Ghost,” I said as I looked back at him.
“I know it’s not the floor from the video. Come on,” he muttered.
Everything was silent in the building. Most of the lights were off except for a few emergency lights that most likely stayed on all the time. The only thing that buzzed about in terms of sound was a literal buzzing sound that was most likely from their electrical wirings.
Footsteps caught our attention and my eyes whipped around.
“In here,” I muttered.
I gave Ghost the same treatment. The instant I slipped into the janitorial closet, I grabbed his arm and tugged him inside. The closet was cramped as fuck. I did not like the fact that his leg was in between mine. But in order to get the door closed, we had to squish in.
And that was a feat in and of itself.
“Move your elbow,” he grumbled.
“Sh,” I said as the door finally creaked closed.
The footfalls got louder.
Heavier.
More insistent.
Pretty soon, there was a shadow passing by that filtered beneath the door.
I silenced my breathing while Ghost practically held his.
Our bodies were smashed together in ways that I knew Cap would tease us for until the end of time if he ever found out.
My face shoved into Ghost’s man-tiddies.
His leg shoved in between mine. His hands, planted on the wall over my head.
My arms spread out to give his massive form a little more room.
The shadow lingered just outside the door for much longer than either of us anticipated.
But eventually, a chirp came over a radio.
“Patrol Team B, report to the lower area. Patrol Team B, report to the lower area.”
And the footsteps moved once more.
“We should follow him,” Ghost whispered.
I just shook my head. “No.”
“No? The fuck you mean, no.”
“Sh.”
Another set of footsteps echoed in the distance, and then another, and another still.
“That voice said ‘team’,” I whispered ever so softly.
All in all, there were four sets of footsteps that passed by us before all fell silent again.
“We need to get into that lower floor,” Ghost whispered.
I counted off the seconds in my head. “If we’re clear for two minutes, we can head out.”
I bobbed my head with the seconds I counted while Ghost listened out for any more of that Patrol Team B nonsense. A law firm? Needing patrols, for fuck’s sake? If there was anything that screamed guilty, it was that. The fuck was a law firm running patrols for anyway?
“You’re right,” I whispered as I reached for the doorknob after two minutes, “we need to find the entrance to that lower level.”
Ghost practically shoved me out of the way to get out of the closet. I stumbled toward the wall, catching myself as he turned his back to me. I went to go cuss him the fuck out and let him know that if either of us were to make too much noise, we’d be shot in terms of our mission.
I saw him turn his back to me and lift his mask.
I watched him for a moment as he heaved in heavy breaths.
“No cameras on this hallway,” I said as I looked up and down, making sure he was protected.
“I know,” he mumbled as he slid the mask back over his face and turned to me. “Jasmine helped me memorize this place.”
I quirked an eyebrow. “Oh? That’s a hell of a feat. Is she familiar with this place like that?”
“Yeah,” he said as he rushed a leather gloved hand through his hair. “I mean, no, she hasn’t scoured this place like I have or anything. She’s gone off the official schematics and talks me through things that jog her memory.”
“Gotcha,” I said as I looked down the hallway where all of the footsteps faded.
“Want to know the kicker?” Ghost asked.
“What’s that?” I asked as I turned back toward him.
Ghost had three pieces of paper unfolded and smoothed out. He held them in his hand, shuffling through each of them as he shook his head. I wandered behind him, peering around his body as I took a look at the hand-drawn pictures Jasmine gave him.
“Hey, those aren’t half bad,” I muttered.
“Right? Had no fucking clue she could draw like this,” he said as he handed me a page.
“What am I looking f—?”
I narrowed my eyes as I stared at the drawn map.
“Yep,” Ghost said.
I looked up at him. “Are you sure this is accurate?”
He nodded and pointed. “Yep.”
I narrowed my eyes and looked back down at the map. “What about the official schematics? Do they have—?”
“Nope.”
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
The voice over that radio talked about a lower level to this building.
But the lower levels were supposed to be the parking deck.
“Do you really think those assholes are gathering in the parking deck?” I asked as I looked at Ghost.
I could tell he grinned behind his mask. “Nope.”
I slapped the hand-drawn picture against his chest. “Let’s go find the entrance to this lower level then because something tells me the elevator in this building doesn’t go lower than the parking deck.”
He folded the pictures back up and tucked them away. “No, they don’t. Come on.”
Hope. For the first time in a long time, I had hope.
What the hell was so important that they hid it away on a level that wasn’t on the official schematics?
That in and of itself was illegal as fuck.
We moved like hound dogs, silent, with our noses to the ground.
I watched the floors and the walls, trying to find anything about this building that was similar to what we saw in the video.
I promised Marla that I’d bring her friend back.
Lizzie had to be here.
We turned down a hallway, and all we saw was more of the same sprawled out in front of us.
Jesus fuck, this building felt like a goddamn backrooms maze.
Every hallway we turned down seemed longer than the last. Every corridor we came across looked the same as the last. At one point in time, Ghost and I got caught going in circles.
Around and around.
With no cameras in sight.
“Have you been down here before?” I whispered.
“Nope,” he said with a shake of his head.
“So how do you know where camera placement and all that shit is?”
“Because there is a door in the main building with a warning sign on it on the main floor that reads, ‘No Official Cameras After This Point.’ And with the lack of cameras we’ve seen so far, I can only assume that all of this is what’s behind that door.”
“Huh,” I said as we crept around another corner.
Only for Ghost to curse as he rubbed his hand on the wall.
“Fucking hell,” he grumbled.
“What?” I asked as I watched his hand slide away.
Only to reveal a notch in the wall.
“Did you do that?” I asked.
He nodded. “I wanted to keep track of where we’d been. I knew we were walking in circles.”
He pulled out Jasmine’s hand-drawn maps again and shuffled through the pieces of paper. He shook his head, clearly frustrated at our situation.
“This place isn’t on any of the schematics she drew me, which means she hasn’t been back here,” Ghost muttered as he tucked the drawings away.
“To be fair, it’s not like those are formal schematics.”
Ghost shot me a look. “And to be fair, it wasn’t like your girl drew a formal map of the route she ran to get to us.”
“Ghost, she’s not my girl.”
“Whatever you say,” he grumbled before he took off back down the hallway we had just walked.
“Hey, where are you—?”
He came back and tugged at my arm, yanking me with him. “Shut up and come on. We need to throw open doors.”
We backtracked down the hallways, opening every door that we could. Some of them were locked, but others weren’t. Most of them were just empty offices with nothing in them. A couple of the rooms held chairs and a table, almost like it was an interrogation room.
Huh.
“Stupid fucking bitch,” I heard someone grumble.
I pressed against Ghost’s back and shoved him through the door we just opened.
“Get her water,” the man mocked. “Get her food. How about let the stupid fucking bitch starve, huh?”
My eyes widened before Ghost clamped his hand over my mouth. He eased the door shut as silently as possible before we tucked ourselves away from the door.
He had to be talking about Lizzie.
There was no fucking way in hell he was talking about anyone else.
The footsteps stormed by without even stopping, and I held my breath. Ghost’s hand slipped from my mouth as the voice and the shuffling steps faded down the hallway. And then the coast sounded clear…
“Come on,” Ghost whispered as he cracked open the door, “we’ve clearly passed where we need to be.”
We double backed down that same hallway before we threw open and closed doors again. We were getting close. We had to be. Another round of voices forced us into another tight closet space, only this time, Ghost and I were ready.
“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.