“He’s down,” Gage says, and Liam mutters something in response as I begin to scream.
“Down? Ty! Oh God, no! Please no.” The tears come so fast and furious as I pound and claw at the wall. Kick and dig at where the seam should be.
Nothing. Blocked. Left behind.
All the noises around me meld to onedroning chorus of horror—shouts and commands, shots and shrieks, cries and pleas from my own voice box.
Hiding within the walls has always been my safe space. Now, it’s a coffin. It’s as though this one snippet of time is stretched to eternity, a damnation I’ll never leave.
“Moonshine! Goddammit, answer me!”
Liam’s order blares through the din, but it’s as though my body is acting of its own accord, determined to break out of this confinement, to hold Ty if he’s shot, to stand beside him, to … I don’t even fucking know.
Sobs rack through my chest as I attempt to collect myself enough to respond, my fingers still scratching at the wall. “I can’t get out.”
“There you are. It’s okay. Listen to me—”
Unable to do what he asked, I cut him off, “Is he—is Ty dead?”
“No,” he barks as a loud bang resounds. “I need you to pull it the fuck together so we can get you both out of there.”
Gage’s booming tenor hits my earpiece. “Coming in behind.”
“What the hell was that?” I gasp. “Gage? Where?”
“Focus on my voice only,” Liam insists. “It’s you and me right now.”
Jagged breaths rush out of me as the cacophony of the battle swarms me from just beyond my captivity. “Okay, but tell me how Ty is. Tell me what you see.”
“Gage is getting Ty,” Liam says, patently avoiding my question, but so calm and controlled that it lulls me into numbness. “Sprinklers are about to go off.”
On the wordoff, water sprays from the ceiling, and all the girls ball into themselves to take cover, screaming through it.
Everything blurs—the pelting drops stinging my skin and clouding my vision mix in with the terror and anguish streaming down my cheeks. A gray overlay to the already-bleak reality I’m shackled to, but something about it strengthens my resolve toget out of here. To reach Ty. To finally find our fucking blueberry fields.
And I swear in that moment, I hear his voice.
“Ty?” I rasp.
“He needs to concentrate. I’m headed to you.” Liam’s breath pants out into the comm, proof that he’s on the move. “In less than a minute, you’ll hear a loud explosion. It’s nothing to worry about. I need you to tell me if you see a way out. There should be a vent somewhere. I hear you’re familiar with those.”
Once I swipe the sopping strands off my face and shine my small flashlight, a quick once-over of the ceiling reveals the duct work. “Yeah. I’ve got it.”
“Good,” he commends as the roar of some sort of bomb reverberates through the space, eliciting more shrieks and screams. “Can you reach it?”
“I’ll climb,” I reply, my tone flat and hollow.
“Of course you fucking will. It’s wet though. And the girls—”
“There are some chairs,” I supply, gathering that climbing isn’t necessarily an option for everyone, maybe not even for me with the water, so I move to drag the chairs to the area below the vent. “I can boost them.”
“That’s our girl,” he coos. “Always thinking. What about the cell locks?”
My wits seem to be returning. Before Ty ran out there, I was using my gun to smash the lock. “I can break them with the butt of my pistol.”
“They’re combination locks, right? You’ve got your shim.”
“Oh, yeah.” Sifting through my soaked backpack, I grab the small piece of metal, shove it down the shank of the first lock, and pop it open. “One down.”
