72 Hours. Dana Marton
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rushed forward, her gaze snagged on a security camera high up on the wall—not pointing at the row of antique oil paintings but at the hallway itself.
“Can they see us?” She looked around, bewildered, expecting to run into rebel soldiers any second.
“They’re not working. The rebels took out the security system when they broke in. Phones are disabled, too. I already checked.”
Where? How? She didn’t have time to ask.
Voices came from up ahead. No, no, no. A fresh wave of panic hit just when she thought she was already at max capacity for fear. They were in a long, marble-tiled hallway with a single, ornately gilded door they’d just passed.
Parker pulled back immediately and reached for the knob. Locked. He looked around, searching the corridor.
Why didn’t he just kick the door in? She was about to ask when she realized they couldn’t afford to make noise. Good thing one of them had a clear enough mind to think.
The voices neared. Parker let go of her and hurried to an ornamental cast-iron grid low on the opposite wall, pulled a nasty-looking knife and began to unscrew it.
They were never going to make it. She looked back and forth between him and the end of the hallway. Hurry, hurry, hurry. “They’re almost here.”
He got the heavy-looking grid off and laid it down gently, without making a sound. Then he climbed in, legs first. She was practically on top of him. But he didn’t move lower to make room for her. “Get on my back,” he said.
“What? I can’t. It’s—” She didn’t have time to argue. The rebels were coming.
She went in, legs first like he did, feeling awkward and uncomfortable at having to touch him, having to hang on to him, being pressed against his wide back. He was all hard muscle just as he’d always been. She snipped any stray memory in the bud and kept moving. When she had her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist as if he were giving her a piggyback ride, she stopped, barely daring to breathe. She wasn’t crazy about dark, tight places.
And they weren’t in some storage nook as she had thought, but in a vertical, chimneylike tunnel with a bottomless drop below them.
But just when she thought things couldn’t get more dangerous, he let go with his left hand and reached for the cast-iron grid to lift it back into place. Boots passed in front of their hiding place a few seconds later, people talking.
The men stopped to chat just out of sight. Oh God, please just go.
They didn’t. They stayed and stayed and stayed. Her arms were aching from the effort. She could barely hold herself. She couldn’t see how Parker was able to hold the weight of two bodies with nothing but his fingers.
An eternity passed. Then another. She distracted herself by organizing her half-million questions about his sudden appearance and his complete personality change.
“Hang on,” he whispered under his breath and moved beneath her.
She barely breathed her response. “I think we should stay still.” No need to take any unnecessary chances, make some noise and draw attention.
“Can’t. We’re slipping.”
All her questions cleared in the blink of an eye, replaced by a single thought. They were going to die.
Chapter Two
Kate braced a hand against the wall and realized at once why they were slipping. The brick was covered with slippery powder. She could make out some cobwebs in what little light filtered through the metal grid. She didn’t want to think of the number of spiders that would be living in a place like this. She put the hand back around Parker’s neck.
He slipped another inch.
Oh God, oh God, oh God. Please, please, please. She held her breath, expecting a fall any second. How high were they? And what was waiting for them at the bottom? Too dark to tell.
“Parker?”
“Relax,” he whispered; he could probably feel the tension in her body.
She loosened the death grip she had around his neck. Whatever he was doing to save them, he could probably do it better if she didn’t cut off his air supply.
He was slipping even though he had both hands and feet braced on the side walls. But they had a slow, controlled descent; he was able to achieve at least that much. After the first few moments of sheer panic, she unfolded her legs from around his waist and stuck them out, hoping to take some of her weight off him and help to slow them even more. The less they slipped, the shorter their climb would be back to the opening once the rebels moved away.
She succeeded, but only marginally. They were still steadily going down.
At least they weren’t crashing. She concentrated on the spot of light that was getting closer and closer, coming from the next cover grid on the floor below them. An eternity passed before they reached it.
Hanging on to the cast-iron scrolls, Parker was able to halt their downward progress temporarily.
They listened, but could hear no voices from outside.
“Can we get out?” she whispered.
“Maybe.” He waited a beat. “Looks deserted out there. We still have to be careful. I’m sure they secured every floor.”
“They can’t have people in every hallway.” At least, she really hoped they couldn’t.
“They don’t. They’re set up in strategic control positions.” Parker pushed against the grid, his muscles flexing against her.
The metal didn’t budge.
“Want me to get your knife out of your pocket?” she offered, although his pocket was the last place she wanted to be moseying around.
“Screws are on the outside. Can’t get to them.” He made another attempt at rattling them loose without success. “The offer is tempting, but I’ll pass for now.”
She bit back a retort at his teasing. She could and would let things go. She had learned over the years. “What do we do now?”
“Get to the bottom and find another way up.” He didn’t seem too shaken by their situation.
She, on the other hand, was going nuts in the confines of the tight space. “What is this place?” Her muscles tensed further as they began sliding again.
“The building used to belong to some nobleman back in the day. This is where the servants pulled up the buckets of coal from the basement for the tile stoves that heated his parlors.”
“And you know this how?”
He couldn’t shrug in their precarious situation, but made some small movement that gave the same effect.
Their shoes scraped on the walls that were less than three feet from each other, but the old coal dust muted the sound. She let go with one hand again and tried to find support. Carrying their combined weight had to be difficult even for a man as strong as Parker.
“I think I can do this on my own.” She’d seen rock-climbing done at the gym before, how those climbers supported their weight with nothing but the tips of their fingers and toes.
“We came from the second floor. With the twenty-foot ceilings these old palaces have, the drop to the basement could be fifty feet or more,” he said. “You stay where you are. If you slip, you die.”
She was perfectly clear on the hundred and one ways she could die in their given situation. She was trying hard not to think of them, thank you very much. “What can I do to make this easier?”
“Stop moving.”
She stilled and kept silent for a while before she realized she could probably move her lips.
“How did you get