Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 76572 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76572 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
He’s panting in front of me. Despite all those muscles, days of drugs, minimal food, and water wore him down. I try to ignore the pang of guilt in my chest. “Fuck.” His voice is barely audible against the clap of our feet on the painted concrete floors. “I’d give my left nut for a goddamn stairwell right about now.”
We keep running, and it’s like a funhouse. I should have led him back the way I knew toward my room. But we’d have been trapped at the end, where the guards stay between shifts. No telling how many might be here sleeping.
There’s a door up ahead, and I squeeze his hand and point. His shoulders seem to relax as we race toward it, only to stop two feet from the knob, with a guard who just rounded the corner staring open-mouthed.
Ivan drops my hand and steps forward. I’m behind him and can feel the menace rolling off him. The guard falters backward for a moment, and it’s exactly the opening Ivan needs to slam him against the cinderblock wall hard enough to knock him out.
Ivan lets the man slide to the floor and then braces his hand on the wall while he breathes heavily for a moment. Shit. Is he going to make it?
His eyes slide to mine, his pupils pinpoints in the bright light after being caged in darkness for days.
He takes my hand again, deliberately wrapping his fingers through mine, and leads me toward the door. “Are you ready to get the hell out of here?”
I can only nod, my heart so high up my throat that he has to see it in my eyes.
The door, thankfully, isn’t locked. It opens quietly, and we step into a stairwell. Ivan grabs the door so it closes softly, then creeps to the banister to look up. We are on the bottom floor, and it won’t be long before someone notices our disappearance.
He turns and places his finger over his lips. Quiet. I can do quiet. I nod and let him lead me silently up the flights of stairs. He stops at a couple of doors to peek into the small window.
On the third set of stairs, we stop again, and this time, he slowly opens the door and tugs me through, releasing my hand so I can go in front of him. “Stay quiet and right beside me. We have to be quick about this.”
I nod and wait for him to lead. He wraps his hand around my waist and bends so we are both stooped, creeping through a garage I didn’t even know existed. Every time I leave the house, a car is brought to the front door for me. But I guess it makes sense with so many people working here they’d need a place to put the cars.
Lost in thought, I stumble, but his arms are under my elbow, and he keeps me upright and moving until we stop next to a beat-up Mercury of some kind. “This is the one you want to steal?”
He tugs me to the driver’s side and bends down to the lock. With the keys he took from the guard, he waves a key that looks exactly like a house key. Weird.
It fits into the lock perfectly, and I stare open-mouthed. “Really? How the hell did you know this was his car?”
“Cheap shoes, cheap clothes, asshole. He doesn’t give a shit about his possessions. I just needed to find the worst fucking car in the garage.” He shoves me in first, and it takes some maneuvering over the console.
He settles in the driver’s seat and quietly closes the door. The car smells like sweaty socks and stale pizza, just like the guard. I cover my mouth as the scent assaults me all over again. The memories threaten to rise up along with the last meal I ate.
“Keep it fucking together, got that?” His voice is sharp, and I manage to meet his eyes and nod.
He slips the key into the ignition, and the car fires to life. I hold my breath as he pulls away. Any moment, someone is going to stop us, right? Come after us? This feels like it’s too easy, and for me, when things are too good to be true, I learn pretty quickly to regret getting involved.
We pull out of the spot, and he maneuvers us toward the ramps leading up to the street.
Of course, there’s a guard with some kind of weapon across his chest. He’s big and beefy, and I’ve never seen him before. Maybe he’s a separate outside kind of guard.
I huddle into the seat, and Ivan reaches back to grab a towel to throw over me. It covers me, and I gag at the scent of the bastard who owned it.
Ivan talks for a moment, low and insistent, but I can’t make out the words when everything inside me is screaming under the towel.