She realized that there weren’t any more sounds coming from upstairs. That was made substantially easier, she had to admit, by the lack of crazy going on inside her head. She didn’t dare hope that maybe the director had calledcutfor the day, because that would mean someone on the crew had forgotten they’d dropped her down into hell.
She could hear something dripping. It might have been her tears. She didn’t want to think about whether or not it could have been blood from some dead body she might or might not have been sharing her cell with.
The faintest of lights appeared above her, slowly, as if it had been dawn breaking. She looked up and held her breath as the grate was lifted off silently and carefully. It occurred to her that she probably shouldn’t have been looking upward, on the off chance that someone was only lifting the grate to dump something foul on her, but she was honestly too destroyed to care.
A hand was suddenly there in the semidarkness, reaching down toward her.
She didn’t have to think twice. She grabbed that hand with both hers and jumped. She hooked her leg over the lip of the pit only to realize that she had been standing in the same place for too long and her feet were asleep. Her rescuer, if that’s what he was, grabbed her before she collapsed back into the hole, then held her steady until she nodded.
Her rescuer Nathaniel MacLeod, that was. She would have staked her life on it.
He put his finger to his lips and looked at her pointedly. Well, she wasn’t about to argue with that. She nodded and tiptoed with him past snoring guards and through the great hall that was equally full of snoring guys in rustic kilts.
They almost made it.
Someone stepped in front of them right by the door. Emma would have cursed, but she was too busy wondering if theremight be a sword she could fall on instead. She listened to Nathaniel banter in a friendly whisper with the man there, listened to a bit of negotiation, then didn’t object to the ogling the man did of her before Nathaniel winked at him and pulled her out the front door.
He was silent until they reached the eaves of the forest.
“Can you run?” he said, so quietly she almost missed it. Fortunately for her, he said it in English.
She tried to answer, truly she did. It came out as more of a sob, but she supposed she didn’t need to apologize for it. She was damned lucky to just be alive, she suspected.
He was fast, she would give him that, but she was motivated by terror. She ran with him as if every terrifying creature from every decent horror movie ever made was behind her, just waiting for her to slow so they could finish her off.
Someone leaped out in front of them. Nathaniel drew the sword from the scabbard on his back and ran that same blade right through the gut of the man standing there. The man gurgled something, then fell. Nathaniel pulled his sword free, wiped it on the man’s clothes, then resheathed it.
Emma turned and threw up. She thought it might have been the most sensible thing she’d done in at least a week.
She was still heaving when Nathaniel took her hand and pulled her back into a stumbling run. She didn’t argue, because she suspected that might be what saved her life. She ran with him until she felt something shift as surely as if it had been a barrier she’d run through. She continued to run until she saw her house there in front of her.
Nathaniel slowed, stopped, then leaned over and sucked in air. She was gasping, but she supposed that was less from running than it was from horror. She realized she was also still dry heaving.
She wasn’t sure how long they both stood there, breathing and heaving respectively, before she thought that if she didn’t get in the shower, she would really lose it.
“Thank you,” she managed.
He didn’t say anything, but she honestly hadn’t expected him to. He walked with her to her door, pulled her keys from under a rock, then opened her door for her. He reached in and turned on the lights.
Her phone was on the table. She didn’t remember havingleft it there, which meant someone had found it and put it there for her. She suspected she might know who that someone might be.
Nathaniel handed her the keys to her house as he eased past her. He built a fire in her stove, then turned and walked over to the door.
“Lock up,” he said without looking at her. Then he left her house and pulled the door shut behind him.
She supposed she deserved that. After all, she’d been the one to shut the door in his face the day before. Or had that been two days before? That she didn’t know was more alarming than she wanted to admit.
She stood in her kitchen and shook until she couldn’t shake any longer. She stripped, opened her door long enough to throw her clothes outside where she wouldn’t have to either look at them or smell them, then went and got in the shower.
It had been a dream. She’d been caught up in a terrible dream that was now made only marginally better by standing in a shower and trying to get rid of the smells that clung to her.
By the time she got out she was warm and pruny, which she thought was a vast improvement over cold and smelly. She dried her hair, put on her pajamas, then went to stand in front of the stove. She considered tea, but decided she wasn’t up to it.
She heard her phone beep at her. She turned and looked at it. The number of people who had that number were two—Nathaniel and Patrick—unless she wanted to count that weird local number that ended in 1387.
She laughed a little in spite of herself, then stopped immediately when she realized how unhinged she sounded.
1387. Was that where she’d gone? Wasthatwhere Nathaniel went? If that was the case, no wonder he didn’t like dates.
