by Lili Valente
Without a word, Harley raced for the entrance to the maze pulse thundering in her ears as the crowd roared behind her, a chilling mixture of human cries and wolf-like howling that made her sprint faster, dodging around the first turn and taking a left and then a right, choosing speed over strategy.
She had to run. To run and to hide, if she could find a place, or to fight to the death if she couldn’t. Either way, she had to live to see sunup. Jasper was alive and she wasn’t going to doom him to a viewing of her dead body. She had already gotten his father killed; she wouldn’t let him lose his mother, too.
Clay. Clay. Oh, Clay.
His name echoed through her thoughts, simple lyrics to the saddest song ever written.
She should have told him that she loved him. She should have forgiven him again. Better to be played a fool a hundred times than to have truth trapped inside that can never be spoken because the one you loved is gone.
Now, the only way to honor the truth was to fight like hell to survive and get to Jasper. To Jasper, to her and Clay’s child, the only ray of light left in the darkness.
She sprinted faster, pressing deeper into the maze as the starting gun fired and the crowd let up another savage cry for blood.
Chapter Seventeen
Clay
“Shit, Hart, watch it.” Foster, a middle-aged agent with a marathon runner’s build and a nose that looked sharp enough to cut glass, braced himself on the dashboard as Clay took another turn fifteen miles over the limit. “If we get there dead, we won’t be able to help anyone.”
Clay didn’t answer; he simply urged the pedal closer to the floor, eating up the last few miles separating him from Harley. He hadn’t wanted backup, but Foster had insisted on coming along. Clay had agreed to save time arguing, but he wasn’t about to slow down.
It had only been thirty minutes. She could still be all right. She could have found a way to run or somewhere to hide. She was smart and determined and quick on her feet. If anyone could defy Marlowe and come out whole on the other side, it was Harley.
“You sure you can’t wait for air support?” Foster asked, checking the GPS on his phone. “They’re only thirty miles behind us and closing in fast.”
“This is Marlowe. You know every minute counts,” Clay said. “You can wait if you want, but I—”
“I’m not sending you in solo,” Foster said, cutting him off. “But what if she’s hurt? If the chopper’s already there, we can airlift her immediately to the nearest hospital. It could mean the difference between life and death.”
“So could a few minutes.” Clay’s fingers tightened on the wheel. “I know it’s dangerous going in just the two of us, but I can’t wait, Foster. I can’t. If she dies because I was waiting around for backup…” He cleared his throat. “I can’t do it, but that doesn’t mean you have to put yourself in danger.”
Foster was quiet for a moment before adding in a softer voice, “I don’t mind danger. I’ve got nothing left but the job, but you do. You have that little boy, and if his mama doesn’t come home, he’s going to need you.”
“He needs his mother,” Clay said, a grim smile curving his lips. Even a week ago he wouldn’t have believed the words, but now he did. He believed and he needed Harley home in one piece every bit as much as Jasper did. “Jasper would never forgive me if I didn’t do everything I could to save her.”
“All right, then.” Foster sighed and tightened his grip on the dash. “I don’t suppose you’re going to slow down in case that hut up there is occupied?”
“Nope.” Clay edged the car up to sixty, filling the car with the sound of rumbling gravel.
The guard shack had been abandoned on his way out with Jasper and it was equally abandoned now. Marlowe wasn’t as fucking clever and all-knowing as he thought he was. He was making mistakes and Clay intended to make sure he paid the price for it.
“I’m going to pull up on the lawn,” Clay said, making a sharp turn into the field where the cars were parked and barreling toward the end. “I can get as far as the rose garden before we have to stop. That takes us within a two minute run to the maze.”
“Sounds good,” Foster said, pulling his weapon from its holster. “You lead and I’ll watch our backs. But when we get to this maze, we go in together. In close quarters, you’ll need someone watching your flank and if she’s injured you won’t be able to carry her out and defend yourself at the same time.”
“All right, but keep up with me.” Clay roared past the orange cones marking the edge of the field parking and over the bumpier ground, circling around the tents. “And don’t hesitate to fire. You know what kind of people these are.”
“Some of them are people like your girlfriend,” Foster said. “Good people who got in too deep and can’t get out.”
“Those people won’t be in the maze,” Clay said, his jaw clenching tight. “It’s only monsters and victims in there and the victims will stay out of our way.”
On the far side of the yurt village, Clay slammed on the brakes, sending the car skidding to a stop beside the first concrete bed of roses. A second later he was out of the car with his gun drawn, moving swiftly and silently through the quiet garden toward the sound of shouts coming from the maze, Foster close behind him.
Hold on, Harley, I’m almost there.
He was almost there. He was going to find her and then he was going to make sure that Marlowe never hurt anyone ever again.
Chapter Eighteen
Harley
Her first instinct—after ripping off her fucking mask and tossing it on the ground—had been to claw her way through an outer wall and make a break through the woods toward the highway.
But the bushy hedgerows were impenetrable. Thirty seconds of tearing at the thick limbs with their needle-sharp leaves was all it had taken to prove she wasn’t getting out that way. Next, she’d considered climbing the dense greenery and hiding on top of the maze, where she’d have a clear view of anyone coming her way from the surrounding corridors.
She was light enough for the hedge to hold her, but if the people hunting her bothered to look up, she’d be spotted instantly. The moon was full and bright, casting a sickly yellow light down on the garden that rendered even the darkest corners of the maze a murky gray.
There was nowhere to hide and soon there would be nowhere to run.
Harley darted around another hairpin turn, sprinting away from the sound of the howls and cries behind her, but she couldn’t avoid the rest of the party forever. Eventually, she would take a turn that led back toward the entrance and she would cross paths with the people who hunted her.
The thought was barely through her head when she turned another corner and collided with a thick male figure. She bounced off his solid chest and hit the ground ass first.
Before she could spring back to her feet, the man in the bear mask was on top of her, covering her mouth with his hand while he whispered in her ear—
“It’s Lewis. I’m alone, but they’re not far behind me. Do what I say and I’ll try to help you.”
Harley nodded, her breath rushing out hot and fast as he removed his hand.
“Roll under there, in the shadows as far under the brush as you can get.” He pointed to one of the darker corners of the maze. “I’ll run ahead and call out that I’ve seen you. With any luck, Cutter and the others will have their eyes on me and run right past you without looking.”
“Why are you helping me?” she whispered as she hurried to the bend in the maze and crouched down, wedging as much of herself into the hedge as she could. His suggestion was risky, but she was running out of options and of all the people she didn’t want to run into in the maze, Cutter was near the top of the list.
Right beneath Marlowe himself.
“I’ve got two little boys. Five and three.” Lewis looked up sharply, toward the howls echoing from farther down the row. “Stay here for a few minutes and then head back the way you came. Don’t go back to the entrance before dawn. There ar
e people waiting to grab you when you’re flushed out. Marlowe’s giving half a million dollars to the person who puts you down.”
Harley wanted to thank him, to tell him how grateful she was that at least one person in this nightmare valued human life over blood money, but he was already gone, moving away from her hiding position, crying out in a booming voice, “Cutter, Eli, this way! I saw her turn the corner by the fountain.”
A moment later, heavy footsteps pounded past her hiding spot, accompanied by the smell of male sweat and alcohol fumes mixed with dirt and crushed grass rising from the maze floor. Harley ducked her head and held absolutely still inhaling the strangely familiar scent.
It was the smell of spring weekends when she was in junior high, getting drunk on stolen liquor with whatever girlfriend she was putting up with at the moment and watching the boys play flag football in the grass. It was the smell of watching boys do things, a past time she’d realized was overrated long before the rest of her peers.
By high school, she’d known that she didn’t want to sit on the sidelines and watch boys do things. She’d wanted to be the one playing the game. Or better yet, the one calling the shots, making the rules.
This night, this past year, and every year that she’d lived under Marlowe’s thumb with no way out were her personal version of hell. She was in hell, locked in a man’s game, fighting to defend her life and the life of her child because a violent son of a bitch had decided that she belonged to him.
At that moment, cowering in her dirty dress with no shoes and no underwear, hiding from people who were ready to kill her with their bare hands because the bully in charge had told them to—forced to run for her life with the knowledge that the man she loved was dead still filling her mouth with the taste of blood—her rage suddenly hit with enough force to knock the air from her lungs. She sat, open-mouthed and gasping, as the world turned red and her skin flushed hot and the need to destroy rose inside of her like a cyclone reaching toward the sky.
No more. There would be no more of this. It ended tonight and it wasn’t going to be with her death.
Some small part of her realized that she was still defenseless and vulnerable, but her spirit was ten feet tall and bulletproof. When the next person came around the corner—a man alone in a dog mask wheezing the sharp, staccato huffs of a person long out of shape—she didn’t stop to wonder if she was safer cowering in the shadows. She waited until he was just past her position and she leapt at him, locking her legs around his waist and her arm around his throat.
He gurgled in surprise, but by the time he brought his hands to her arm she’d already had him in a chokehold for a good ten seconds. Twenty seconds later, he crumpled to the ground beneath her.
She landed with a soft grunt, her ankle pinned beneath his body, but she held on for another minute. She had to make sure he didn’t wake up while she was switching out their clothes—if he died as a result, so be it.
When she was certain he was down for the count, she rolled him over, quickly tugging his jacket free from his heavy limbs. His pants—track pants that smelled like he might have pissed in them earlier in the night—were easier to get off. She peeled them off his legs and stepped straight into them, too grateful that he’d ignored the no-clothes tradition of the maze to care about the sour scent rising from the fabric. She shrugged into the jacket and reached for his mask, slipping it onto her face and disappearing around the corner just as more heavy footsteps sounded behind her.
Twisting her hair at the base of her neck as she ran, Harley then jerked the jacket’s hood over her head. She rolled her shoulders back and lifted her chin, letting her arms hang heavy and her stance widen as she became one of the hunters, instead of the hunted.
As long as she could stay on the move and avoid direct interaction with anyone else in the maze, she should be able to run right past them, hiding in plain sight until dawn. And if she happened to come across Marlowe along the way, and he happened to be alone, then she would show him her chokehold.
But this time, she wouldn’t let go until he’d stopped breathing.
Forever.
Chapter Nineteen
Clay
The group of people drinking, laughing, and fucking in the grass near the entrance to the maze didn’t notice the arrival of their unexpected guests until Clay grabbed a shorter man in a tiger mask around the shoulders and pressed his gun to the man’s head.
“Leave. Now,” he shouted as the man cried out in surprise, sending heads swiveling their way. “Now! Or I shoot every last one of you.”
There was a beat of hesitation, and the two large men closest to the maze entrance eased forward as if considering rushing him where he stood. Before they could move, Foster was beside him, leveling his gun at their chests. “Do what he says. International authorities are en route. This is your chance to get out of here before you get killed or arrested.” He nodded toward where the cars were parked. “I’d suggest you run and don’t stop running until you’re closing your front door behind you.”
As Foster finished, the clusters of people began to scatter, men and women tossing bottles and masks to the ground as they bolted toward the house. The two couples who had been rolling around naked in the moonlight grabbed their clothes hastily from the ground and followed, but the two big men by the maze stood their ground. A moment later the broader one shot his friend a narrow look and they both reached for something inside their jackets.
A beat later they each sported a hole in the center of their foreheads. They slumped to the ground, guns falling from their limp hands as they rolled onto their backs and lay still.
“We need to move fast.” Clay paused long enough to collect the men’s weapons, tucking them into the back waistband of his jeans, before nodding into the maze, where raised voices echoed from the darkness. “The people who made a run for it could be going for backup.”
“They looked more concerned with saving their own skins.” Foster reached out, gripping Clay’s shoulder before he could bolt into the hedgerows. “Watch yourself. They will have heard the gunshots. We don’t have the element of surprise anymore. Take it slow.”
Clay nodded, but when he turned, it took every ounce of his willpower to keep from bolting into the maze at a sprint.
Harley was in there, and she was alive.
Now that he was so close, he swore he could feel the vibration of her energy, the way the night felt electric with possibilities because the woman who was meant to be his was sharing the same air. He had to find her, to keep her safe, to shield her with his body and his weapon and his life until they were both out of this hell.
He turned the first corner, his gun raised and his senses on high alert, but there was no one there. His pulse leapt and then fought its way down from the sudden spike as he hurried through the shadows. Clouds were moving across the moon, but it was still bright enough to find his way without a flashlight or a torch. And when he turned another corner, nearly colliding with a masked couple holding hands as they ran back toward the maze entrance, all it took was a glance to see neither of them was one of the people he was looking for.
But that didn’t stop him from leveling his gun at the man’s chest.
“International authorities are on their way,” he said. “Drop the masks and run. If I see you in the maze again, I’ll shoot you both on sight.”
The man ripped his mask off and tossed it to the ground, lifting his hands into the air beside his face as he edged around Clay and Foster. By the time the woman threw her own mask to the ground and scurried after him with a frightened sob, he was already out of sight around the next corner.
“So much for true love,” Foster muttered, lifting his weapon, aiming in the direction the couple had disappeared, just in case. “Or manners. You would think even a sack of shit drug dealer would let his girlfriend run first.”
“Chivalry is dead,” Clay said dryly. “Stay alert, I’m pretty sure most of these people won’t be scared away so easily.” Turning,
he moved deeper into the maze, toward the sound of raised male voices. He wasn’t close enough to hear what was being said, but the loudest voice was familiar.
He’d only spoken to Cutter once, but he would never forget the voice of the man who’d taunted him with his intention to share Harley with his friends. As he and Foster rounded another turn and cut to the left, closing in on the men yelling in a guttural mix of Norwegian and English, Clay’s finger tightened on the trigger.
He should give the man the chance to run. He shouldn’t force Foster into choosing between telling the truth about what went down here tonight and covering for a fellow agent. He should think about the investigation and the evidence to be gained by interrogating Cutter and his men once they were taken into custody.
But as he circled around a thicker wall in the hedge and emerged into an open area with a fountain bubbling in the center to see Cutter kneeling in the gravel with his cock ramming down a young woman’s throat, all he could think about was how good it would feel to watch the bastard die.
“That’s right,” Cutter groaned. “Take it. Take it, bitch.”
He was fucking the woman’s mouth with such force that her whimpers were interspersed with choking, suffering sounds as she fought for breath. Behind her, one of the other goons worked between her legs, fucking her hard enough to send her scooting closer to Cutter. Her hands scrambled in the gravel, trying to claw her way backward, the need to breathe obviously overpowering the need to escape the man driving between her legs.
She was beautiful, even with tears streaming down her cheeks, and the sight of her abuse was enough to make Clay feel sick all over again, but she wasn’t Harley.
