As soon as I’m inside, the laughter morphs into something else.
A scream of fear.
“Wait—stop!” Aerin squeals. “I don’t want to, I don’t want to!”
Rumbles of laughter follow her panicked, slightly slurred words.
Peering through the dark, I keep low to the ground with my gun close to my chest. I can’t see a fucking thing.
It’s far too dark, and what little light there is comes from the moon high above, but even that only illuminates the broken windows, lightly drifting plastic sheets, and the puddles of rainwater gathered on the floor.
I can’t see any?—
Suddenly, every lightbulb in the warehouse with even a fraction of working wire going to it blares to life, burning my eyes and forcing them closed for a few brief seconds.
Pidge.
Some lightbulbs immediately shatter from the power surge, sending shards of glass and sparks raining down from above.
Others flicker once and die out, but enough lights remain to illuminate enough of the warehouse that I get my bearings.
“What the fuck?” barks a male voice from above me, cutting above Aerin’s panicked squeals.
I’m kneeling on a metal walkway, a sea of upturned shelves, abandoned forklifts, and broken wooden crates scattered acrossthe floor below me. To my right, rusty, warped metal stairs lead up to a higher walkway and that’s when I see her.
Aerin.
The sight of her sends my heart hammering up into my throat and a pit opens up in my gut.
She’s in the clutches of a tall man with a belly spilling over the top of his jeans.
They stand in the middle of the walkway where the railing has long crumbled from rust and age, his hands on her arms and his body forcing her to lean backward over the abyss below.
The other two, a man and a woman, are locked in an embrace kissing one another without a care in the world, while a half-drunk bottle of vodka dangles from the woman’s hand.
At a second glance, they’re both armed.
My hands tremble, and I spare them a glance.
Why am I shaking?
This is hardly the worst situation I’ve ever been in. Definitely not the most dangerous.
But my stomach’s in knots, my hands tremble, and there’s a sudden anxious bubble growing in my chest.
I have to save her.
“Stop!” Aerin screams, slapping both her hands against her captor’s shoulders. “This isn’t funny anymore, let me go!”
Her screams draw the attention of the two smooching people, and they turn to face her, laughing.
Using that as my distraction, I grit my teeth and slowly climb the stairs as delicately as I can.
Every step causes the metalwork to betray my movements with a creak or a crunch, but thankfully no one looks my way.
“Relax,” groans the woman. “Isn’t this what you wanted? To go somewhere fun and secluded, to have some real-world fun? This isrealfun.”
“Yeah,” snorts the man next to her as he loops his arm around the woman’s waist. “Think of the adrenaline rush as you fall. It’ll be the most alive you’ll ever feel.”
