Freedom.
I moved toward it, heart hammering so hard I could feel it in my throat. I had to climb through a small hole to get to the collapsed section. My shoulders barely fit, but one push and I was through and able to stand inside the cavern and see the literal light at the end of the tunnel. It was right there. A way out.
Until I realized how narrow the tunnel leading up to the sunlight actually was.
Smaller than anything so far bya lot. Smaller than the hole my shoulders had just barely fit through. Maybe eighteen inches wide at most. I would have to lie down and drag myself through, the rock pressing against my chest, my back, every inch of my body crushed between stone.
Much smaller than the closet Coop had locked me in.
Smaller than the crumpled car where I’d spent four hours screaming.
No. I couldn’t do it. There was no way.
My feet stopped moving. My flashlight shook in my hands, the beam dancing across that impossible gap, that tantalizing glimpse of sunlight I couldn’t reach.
Behind me, Oliver’s industrial strength beam of light swept across the walls. His never-ending taunting was getting closer.
I couldn’t go forward. I couldn’t go back.
I was trapped.
I pressed myself against the tunnel wall, trying to breathe, failing. The darkness pulsed at the edges of my vision. My legs wouldn’t hold me. I slid down the rock until I was sitting in the dirt, the ruined dress pooling around me.
This was where I died. In the dark, alone, unable to save myself because my own mind had become a prison I couldn’t escape.
That’s not what’s going to happen, Kitten. You’re not dying. Not today.
Imagining Coop’s voice wasn’t going to save me now. This gap was too small, and Oliver was too close, and I was too broken. No amount of pretending Coop was with me would make my body squeeze through that tunnel.
Coop was probably dead anyway. Oliver had wanted a good hunt, so he’d given me a sick hope that Coop was alive. He probably had Coop’s body in the back of his vehicle and planned to do unspeakable things to me next to his corpse.
I was alone.
“I can’t.” The words scraped out of my throat, raw and broken. Pathetic. Talking to no one. “I can’t do it.”
“Mia!Yes, you can.”
I shook my head. The voice couldn’t help me now.
“Mia. I’m here.”
I slammed my hands over my ears. I didn’t want to hear his voice, not when I was going to disappoint it by giving up. “You’re not real.”
“I sure as hell am real, Kitten. And you better get your sweet ass out to me right damned now.”
I moved my hands from my ears. That hadn’t come from inside my head.
Oliver’s light was brighter now, bouncing off the walls of the tunnel. He’d be on me in a minute.
“You’re not real,” I said again. “You’ve been in my head this whole time, and none of it?—”
“I am real. Ask me something.” His voice was low, urgent. “Something only I would know.”
My mind blanked. Oliver’s footsteps. Getting closer.
“The first time we kissed.” The voice through the gap was steady but strained, like he was fighting to keep it controlled. “You had powdered sugar on your lip from those beignets we got at that food kiosk. I licked it off. You said?—”
“That I was going to sue the beignets for assault.”
