Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 96206 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96206 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Then she was falling, down, down. Laila bit her lip to keep from screaming. Would she break a leg when she landed or simply plummet to her death?
Gravity finally hurled her out of the chute. She tumbled feet first onto the cold concrete floor with a thump, rolling to her hands and knees. But she was unharmed.
Laila stood and fought a fresh wave of impending terror. The dark down here was absolute. She held up a hand in front of her face. She couldn’t see a thing.
Her heart gonged furiously against her chest. She panted hard and fast but struggled for air. Panic surged, threatening to strangle her. She tried to tell herself she was fine. Her pursuer—and nearly anyone of any size—would struggle to fit in that chute. He hadn’t followed her down. She was free to find Trees and rescue him.
But hysteria froze her in place.
Laila shook from head to toe, her eyes wide and alert, despite the complete blackness. Every sense was on hyperalert, cataloging the cool air on her skin drifting from the chute to the sound of something scurrying—a rodent?—a few feet on her right.
Against her will, a whimper escaped. Memories of sleeping in the narrow, uncomfortable bed in Emilo’s underground compound rushed back. At first, she had appreciated the fact that sunlight never cut her sleep short. Then came that horrible night. The scraping noise of metal on metal. The footsteps. The echo of her own voice asking who was there…and the chilling silence.
Then she’d been held down, her screams muffled by a sweaty hand before a strong, cruel hand shoved her nightgown up and a man slid between her legs.
Laila shoved the rest of the memory away. That was then. Now she had to save Trees. Victor and Hector weren’t here to rape her, and she would be damned if she was anyone’s victim again. Everything she’d been through had only made her stronger, and Trees had done so much to save her physically and emotionally. She refused to let him down.
Slowly, she rose, feeling her way through the inky room until she came across something square and metal, about waist high. A washing machine? She groped her way from that one to another, then several more, all in a row.
Finally, her fingers encountered a wall, then an opening. Laila edged into what she suspected was a hallway. She desperately wanted to reach for the phone in her pocket and use the light to guide her through the blackness. But she didn’t dare alert Montilla’s guard.
She simply had to be brave.
Laila fumbled along the wall, tiptoeing and listening for noises. The sounds of the battle upstairs grew fainter and fainter as she made her way past other doors, none of which were the morgue, she supposed, because she didn’t hear Matt or Montilla’s lackey.
Finally, she reached the end of that wall and found herself in the intersection of two corridors. The pounding of something against metal—a fist?—resounded down the empty space almost directly ahead.
Then she heard a voice she’d know anywhere. “Get me the fuck out of here!”
Trees! He was still alive. Still fighting.
“Shut up, freak,” an accented voice spit at him with contempt, sounding even closer.
“You shut up. He’s not a freak,” Matt defended.
“I would love to fight you, tear you limb from limb, vaquero. If el jefe gives me the go-ahead…”
“You’re all talk.” Matt sounded annoyed.
Laila crept closer, still shaking and fighting the urge to curl up into a fetal-position ball, rock back and forth, and beg someone to turn the light on. But she would brazen her way through this and rescue Trees, even if it took all her will.
“I can hear your fucking voices. Let me the hell out!”
Trees was alone, probably in the dark, too. Was he afraid of what would happen if EM Security lost the battle? Did he even know it was going on? In this floor, in a separate wing, she could hear none of the commotion above.
“One more word, and I will come in there and kill you myself.”
“You fucking try,” Trees sneered. “You don’t have the brains or the balls.”
“Pinche pendejo,” Montilla’s man spit. “I will fuck you up.”
Suddenly, a little light flickered on at the end of the hall. Laila glimpsed the hazy outline of a dark-haired man facing the door, gun in hand. She heard the scrape of metal, then the thug yanked on the door.
Matt, weapon in hand, clamped down on his shoulder. “You’re not touching him.”
“No, I am going to kill him. Back off.”
Matt surged into the small circle of light and shoved the man. The light dropped between their feet as the sounds of curses and flying fists filled the hallway.
They were distracted. This chance would not come again.
Laila swallowed back more fear and rooted along the wall toward the morgue.