“Hey,” someone hissed. “Wake up.” Groggy and still working off the effects of his last torture session with Dr. Giggles, 2-Stroke stirred. “Neo! Wake up!” It was a female voice, clearly stressed, keeping her words in a low tone.
He finally snapped awake and turned to look toward the bars of his cell. There was a woman standing there…an amazon from the looks of her. He wasn’t sure if he was hallucinating or she was really there. The key turned in the lock with a grating sound, and he finally realized she was standing outside his cell, and better yet, she was here to rescue him.
He rose. “Who are you? CIA?”
“No, ATF.” She looked over her shoulder, then back at him.
ATF? What the hell—
She must have seen the confusion on his face, and she shook her head. “We don’t have time for introductions or explanations. I drugged Darko, and he’s not going to be out long. Your friends are on the way.” The door swung open with a squeak, and he pushed to his feet, gasping as his muscles cramped.
She pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket. “Here’s a map out of here. Your team will be coming in from the south. Head that way.” She pointed to the paper, trailing along the maze out of the compound.
He was overjoyed to hear that the team was on the way, but there was one problem. An insurmountable one. “Where’s Chry?”
“I haven’t found her yet. That’s my next task. Now, move.”
Her voice sounded far away, like she’d dropped into a hole. He stood his ground, grabbing her arm. She paused and looked back at him. “I’m not leaving without Chry.”
“You won’t have to. I’m going to find her and get her out.” She shoved a bottle of water into his hands and two power bars. He opened the cap and drank, then started on the power bars. “You leave and rendezvous with your team. Those were my instructions. I’d say it was an order.”
“I don’t think I made myself clear,” he said, narrowing his eyes and dropping his voice. “I’m not leaving without Chry.”
She sighed and said under her breath, “Alpha males.” Reaching down, she grabbed the sidearm off the dead guard. “Here. Let’s go.”
He checked the magazine and chambered a round, releasing the safety. They moved down the hall, his fatigue replaced by the spike in his adrenaline and the calories from the food keeping his emotions at full throttle. Their escape was close, so close he could almost feel it, touch it. It was there, the distant pulse of freedom, the driving force of it, the chaos barely discernible beneath the beat.
But to leave without Chry and put her life in someone else’s hands—he couldn’t. He’d left her once, probably when she needed him. He’d left because it was going to be too hard for him. Too hard for her. But all he wanted right now was to see her face, see that she was whole and sane.
They had both been receding into the darkness.
The hallways went on and on, and he was beginning to feel like a rat in a maze. Voices would echo eerily then seem to disappear or recede. He shivered in his threadbare clothes, his feet like ice against the uneven and broken floor.
“Where are we?” he whispered.
She paused before the corner that led down another corridor with more cells in complete disintegration, doors missing or hanging from their hinges. Plaster, concrete, and rubble dotted both inside the cells and outside, graffiti on what remained of some of the walls. And the smell. He’d noticed it the moment he awoke in that cell. Death. The stench of it had seeped into the structure like smoke. It lingered here, coating his nostrils and the back of his throat.
“Croatia. We’re in an abandoned prison on an island off the coast, right on the Adriatic Sea.” She did a quick peek around the corner, then said, “He’s left everything in ruin, except for your bank of cells. He has a sumptuous living area that is hidden in all this rundown mess. Gorgeous wood and glass, velvet furnishings, and bedrooms complete with silk and satin. He’s spared no expense.” She ducked around the corner and he followed. “No one would ever think to look for him here. It’s a brilliant hideout and doubles as a good place to hold you hostage.”
She looked at her watch. “They’re landing soon. Can I talk you into leaving to find them?”
He shook his head. “No, let’s get to Chry, and we can all go together.”
“Stubborn and loyal. I hope it doesn’t come back and bite us on the ass.”
“I’d rather die trying to save her than run away and leave her to these fuckers.”
“Fair enough,” she murmured. “I recently lost some colleagues. It’s devastating.”
Chry was more than a colleague. More than a friend. He couldn’t define what she was to him, but it would kill him to leave her to this…evil.
“It took everything I had not to overdose Darko, that bastard. But I’m no assassin.”
“He was to blame?”
“Yes, he gave the order.” They heard voices and crouched down in the dark, listening intently.
He could hear her breathing, slow and steady, and he had to wonder if she knew something about combat breathing. She was a cool cucumber, and he wished like hell that she was somewhere else. He couldn’t handle another person getting killed because of him.
“What is your name?” he whispered as the voices receded.
“Aella Mikos.” She rose and searched down the hall. “Let’s go.”
They moved steadily down the ruined hall. Most of the walls had been at least partially destroyed. He tensed when she swore under her breath and stopped. She was sweating in the cool air, her skin glistening in the dim light from the moonlight that was filtering through a broken part of the roof. She crouched down again and turned to him. “My instincts are telling me that this is too easy. She’s up ahead in her cell. But my senses are screaming.”
“We have to chance it.” He leaned around Aella and spied Chry, or what looked like a ragged bundle lying on the floor of the cell. “You said the team was landing. The sooner we get Chry and get to them, the safer we’re all going to be. We have no choice. I’m not leaving without her.” His hands ached to touch her, hold her, and his chest was tight as hell. He wanted to get to her, feel the warmth of her body, know that she was alive. From here, he couldn’t see if she was breathing.
“Okay, let’s do this.”
They rose and started moving again, but a few yards before they reached Chry, Zasha came out of the shadows and pulled Chry up from the floor by her hair. Before the two of them could react, she was against Zasha’s chest, a gleaming knife against her throat.
Zasha grinned like a demon, her eyes looking sunken, the whites ghostly in the filtered light. “Rats don’t get to leave the maze until I say so,” she said.
“Neo!” Chry shouted, and things whooshed out of focus.
Neo! Suddenly he could smell blood. He tried to breathe, but his chest wouldn’t cooperate. His father had held the knife to Riley’s throat and there was nothing that 2-Stroke could do to stop him from dragging it across his neck and throwing him aside like he was trash.
2-Stroke was sweating now, his hands shaking, his stomach protesting, the horror and agony wound tighter as everything whooshed back into the present. It had been so real, the smell, the sounds, the fear. Riley’s blood pumping over the asphalt, wet and red. He gasped now, his breathing out of control, still reeling from the sudden burst of shock, pain, and raw emotion that had seared itself across his brain.