Chapter 4
FOUR
This is so not good.
Kidnapped. Blackmailed. Sliding down the chute from hell.
All of that is bad. But this? This takes the damn cake.
I'm stuck.
Like… wedged.
My bare skin drags against the freezing metal with a squeak that vibrates through my entire pelvis. The cold bites into flesh that's already scraped raw, sending sharp needles of pain radiating up my spine.
Oh my god.
Seriously?
Wiggling violently, I curse my genetics. Stupid butt. Stupid hips. Stupid everything that makes me shaped like an actual human woman instead of a greased noodle.
"Hey! Can you hear me?" a male voice calls from somewhere that could be up, down, or sideways in this metal tomb.
My sweat turns to ice pellets. Not from the cold metal—from the sick certainty that whoever's down there heard me struggling. Heard every pathetic wheeze and squeak. He knows exactly how trapped I am.
"Stop. Do not go any farther," he orders, his tone bordering on pissed.
My first reaction? Snort.
As if I'm going to just skedaddle away. I'm a human wine cork in a square metal pipe.
No. Wait. Not square. Rectangle. Jesus, Rosalie, your brain is cataloging vent shapes while you're about to die.
This is why you don't have friends. This is exactly why— "God. Stop with the calculations," I growl at myself.
I've got bigger problems. Unconscious men don't talk. Or issue orders. And I don't know who was in that room when I kicked the sucker's nose into tomorrow.
Maybe I should have kicked harder. Or kicked them both…
I'm going to go to the gym if I live. Surviving being the imperative here.
The fuel of frustration turns up my internal Bunsen burner. Wiggling commences again. Must get out of here.
I desperately want to live. I have things to do. Places to go. People to…
Well. I don't really have people to see. But that doesn't count.
Between my squeaking rear, my ragged breathing, I'm not sure I could hear anyone even if they were pursuing me.
But that's before a new sound slices through everything—a fresh icepick to my eardrums.
The sound punches into my skull—a pulsing screech that makes my eyeballs feel like they're being squeezed in a vise.
I can feel it in my teeth. In my molars. God, is my filling vibrating?
What is that?
It's not the man. Not me. It's some kind of alarm.
A mechanical voice breaks into the sound. "Fire. Fire. Exit the building. Fire."
Oh… no.
OH NO.
"Help!" I wheeze, voice shrill as the alarm, echoing off sheet-metal. "Help me!"
I've never known true, blood-freezing panic before now.
I've presented research to rooms full of Nobel Prize winners. I've dated a man who collected knives. I've eaten gas station sushi. But this—this metal coffin with my ass wedged like a cork—this is what breaks me.
My legs flail. My butt shimmies. My everything sweats. Buckets and buckets of water.
"Why?! Why can't I be one of those stick-figures?" I cry, pushing. Squirming.
Every muscle is aching, shaking, threatening to quit.
Those kinds of girls would've slid through this duct like greased noodles. I've got hips and boobs and this vent is not made for southern curves.
"Come on, Rose, think! You're a scientist for heaven's sake. Figure. It. Out."
Sweat rolls between my boobs, soaking into the thick strap of my utilitarian bra—the one I bought specifically because the saleswoman promised it would never ride up.
Well, joke's on both of us because it's currently cutting into my ribs like a medieval torture device, and I can't even reach it to adjust.
Nice. Just what I need. A soggy bra, an industrial wedgie, and a public death.
When they find my body, I'll stink like a swamp rat and my sparkly thong will be on full display thanks to the shredded skirt bunched around my waist.
This is my life. This is it.
"I just…wanted to discover some great new mineral," I whimper, my dream going down the tube with the sweat dropping off of me.
If I wasn't so busy praying for deliverance, I might laugh.
Instead, I press my forehead against the cold metal and whisper, "Angels, if you can hear me over this stupid alarm? I need a get-out-of-jail card. Right now."
A pang of sadness hits me so hard I actually stop struggling.
If this is the end of my life, I'm kind of… sad.
Not terrified. Not furious. Just sad.
Because I had plans. Stupid plans—find that lithium deposit in Nevada, publish that paper on crystalline structures, maybe get a cat—and now I'm going to die in an air vent with my sparkly thong on display and not a single person will cry at my funeral because there's no one left to cry.
My Nan wouldn't quit. She'd rip a hole in this metal and swing out of the building on a fiber-optic cable, laughing like a mad woman the whole way down.
She'd call this "a grand adventure" and tell me to "use that big brain of yours, Rosie-girl."
God, I miss her.
The ache of it hits fresh—three years gone and I still reach for the phone to call her when something exciting happens. Except nothing exciting ever happens to me.
Or didn't. Until I got kidnapped and stuffed myself in an air vent.
Now I’m wishing for a little less excitement. But she would have loved this story. Would've made me tell it every time we were together.
Which will never happen again.
My eyes blur with tears as I squirm again. The vent screams in protest right along with my skin.
You'd think with this much sweat I'd slide. But nooo.
I'm about to start wailing in my misery when something lights up below me.
Light.
Oh god. Yes!
That means the end of the tunnel, right?
A soft, flickering beam comes creeping up from below. I can't see what it is from though—not past the boobs squashed into my face—but it reflects off the metal walls, seeping up the cracks between me and the sides.
A moment later, a thud echoes up the duct.
Then another.
There's a trapped bird inside my ribs, and it's going for a wing-flapping record of some kind.
Another thud.
Is… is that sound good? Heart pattering, I consider my next move. Like there are many options.
The next instant the fire alarm vanishes, plunging me into silence so complete I can hear my own heartbeat thundering in my ears. And my breathing is loud, ragged, too fast, the kind that's going to make me pass out if I don't slow down.
Slow down. Breathe. One, two, three—
A voice shatters the quiet.
“Hey ma’am.”
Crisp. Male. No-nonsense. American. Southern if the ma’am is any indication. But he’s not from the deep south.
“Quite the situation you’ve gotten into.”
The owner of the voice is weirdly, almost impossibly calm even though the whole world seems to have delved into chaos.
That kind of calm only comes with confidence that you’re in charge.
As in security.
Who is going to drag me back to my cell.
"Nice sparkly thong. Makes me think of a disco ball at this place in Madrid," he says. "Now, if you stop wiggling," he rumbles from below me, "I'll see if I can get you out of there."