The Maze (ATCOM)

by Jennifer Lowery

  She looked around the room that was definitely not big enough for the three of them. If that ball fell they were going to get ripped to shreds by those spikes.

  “Oh, you have to be kidding me,” she said, turning and searching more frantically for an escape route. “We need another plan.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  Her stomach clenched and precious time passed as they ran their hands over the wall and tried to get out. The low woosh-woosh of the ball grew closer. She was about to look up when he ordered, “Flat against the wall, Attie. Now.”

  * * * *

  Her back to Noah, Attie pressed against the wall. She recognized the urgency in Noah’s tone and knew better than to ignore it. She barely made it before there was a loud whoosh as the ball dropped to the ground. The cable snapped and the ball whistled through the air seconds before one of the spikes tore open the flesh of her shoulder. She cried out and flattened against the wall before any of the other spikes could tear into her. White-hot pain shot through her shoulder and warmth immediately seeped down her back.

  The ball hit the floor with a loud crack that hurt her eardrums, one of the spikes tearing her pant leg. It rolled in place like a giant steel top before coming to a stop.

  Noah came up behind her, standing close. “Don’t move,” he said, touching her shoulder where the spike had caught her.

  “I don’t think I can, the stupid ball has me pinned to the wall. I think it’s caught in my pant leg.”

  “I’ll get it. Don’t move your shoulder.”

  She heard him moving behind her. A second later he pressed something warm and soft against her shoulder. His shirt. Great, he was bare-chested. He applied pressure to stop the bleeding and she fought back a wince as sharp pain jolted through her. She felt it clear to her toes.

  “It doesn’t feel like more than a scratch,” she muttered, hoping it was true. She couldn’t afford to be seriously hurt. Instinct told her this was far from over. Experience told her she was right even if she didn’t want to admit it. They were lucky the ball hadn’t done serious damage to either one of them.

  “Are you hurt?” she asked, attempting to turn around and look at him.

  He held her in place and wouldn’t let her “I wasn’t hit,” he said. “Hold still. Your scratch needs stitches.”

  His breath teased her skin as he bent over her to inspect the wound. He lifted the shirt and gently prodded her shoulder. Attie drew in a sharp breath and distracted herself by saying, “Stitches aren’t an option unless Carlos supplies a First Aid kit.”

  “I’m sure he won’t want his prize possession out of the game this early. He’ll provide.”

  Attie scoffed as he replaced the shirt and held if firm against her shoulder.

  “I’m not a possession.”

  “You are to him.”

  Ignoring that, she said, “How bad is it?”

  “Two, maybe three stitches. Did the ball get you anywhere else?”

  “No.”

  “We need to wr—”

  The wall Attie leaned on suddenly opened up and they tumbled forward. Attie reached for something to prevent her fall and found nothing but air. Noah grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back before she tumbled head first over the ledge they now stood on.

  Regaining her balance and gritting her teeth against the pain in her shoulder, she spun around and leapt toward the door that was sliding closed.

  “Stop it from closing,” she cried, slamming her palms on the steel door. It slid closed anyway, leaving them stranded on a two-foot ledge.

  “Dammit.” She slapped the door with both palms. “That was the only way out.”

  “Not the only way. Look.”

  Carefully, Attie maneuvered around so that she stood with her back to the door, her body flush with Noah’s.

  “Below us,” Noah said, laying a hand on her shoulder and pressing the shirt to her wound. Somehow he’d managed to keep hold of it.

  Attie carefully leaned over to look over the edge and felt a chill sneak down her spine. Two feet below them was a makeshift rope bridge that stretched across to the other side of a darkened valley. It was too dark to see how far the drop was or what lie beneath. Definitely too far to jump. Carlos wouldn’t make it any less dangerous than that. The bridge looked rickety and barely intact.

  Three feet beside it, a very narrow platform led to the opposite side. The platform was barely wide enough to place both feet on. It looked sturdier than the bridge. Both avenues led to a separate door.

  “I’ll take door number one,” she mocked, not liking the situation one bit. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what they were supposed to do.

  “You’re still bleeding,” Noah said. “Lift your arm.”

  Biting back a grimace, Attie did as he asked.

  While balancing beside her, Noah quickly and efficiently rolled up his shirt and wrapped it under her arm and around her shoulder in a makeshift bandage and tied it off on top of her shoulder.

  “Test that for mobility.”

  Attie rolled her shoulder. The bandage held secure. “Feels good.”

  Noah gave a curt nod and turned his attention to the obstacle course in front of them. “Looks like we have two options.”

  “Yeah, and neither looks promising. If we take the rope bridge we have two sides to hold onto but it looks ready to collapse. I doubt it would hold both our weights, even if we went across separately. The platform looks stable but it’s narrow. If we lose our balance there’s nothing to stop us from falling.”

  “I agree. The rope bridge is shoddy. Look at the platform. It’s glossed to a high shine. My guess is it’s slipperier than hell.”

  She looked closer. “You’re right. That makes the bridge the most logical choice. We can take our chances on it.”

  “It would seem.”

  Attie glanced over at him. “You don’t think so? If we lose our footing, Kincaid, there’s nothing to prevent our fall and I don’t really feel like finding out how far down the bottom is. At least the bridge gives us something to hold onto even if it falls apart. We can still climb.”

  He was staring at the two doors, eyes narrowed.

  She reached over and gripped his forearm. “What are you thinking?”

  “Earlier Santiago made reference to a soft bed and a shower.”

  “Okay?”

  “Well, I think that behind one of those doors are a soft bed and a shower.”

  She glanced at the two doors, separated by a rock wall that went all the way to the edge. No way to get from one to the other. The only way in was to cross the bridge to one, the platform to the other.

  “All we have to do is choose the right door.”

  “Right. Santiago wants us to continue on through his maze, not get nice and comfortable in bed.”

  Attie shot him a wary glance at the double entendre. Getting comfortable in bed with Noah was the last thing on her mind right now. Making it through this alive was all she could think about. Later, when they were safe, she would think about taking refuge in his arms.

  “So you’re suggesting we take the platform? It would be the most difficult route. It would make sense to take the easiest way across…if we wanted to continue on this journey into hell. Clever. Very, very clever,” she said as realization dawned. “If we take the hardest route across we should end up in a soft bed.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Then the platform it is. How do you propose we cross this thing?”

  They studied the glossy surface together. It looked suddenly very daunting. One wrong move and…

  “Not by walking upright.”

  Attie nodded. “Definitely not.”

  “We’ll have to crawl across it.”

  “On hands and knees?”

  “Belly crawl.”

  Not an easy task, but it could be done if they were careful and went very slowly. Carlos wasn’t going to win this one.

  “If we wrap our hands and feet around the edges it sh
ould prevent us from sliding off.” He glanced at her. “Will you be able to pull across with your injured shoulder?”

  “I’ll make it.”

  “I can carry you across on my back.”

  “I said I’ll make it.”

  Noah held up a hand in surrender. “Okay, okay. Ready to do this?”

  In response, she dropped to her knees and inched over the edge onto the platform. She eased onto it and slid a few inches forward.

  If they made it out of this alive, she was going to sleep for a week straight. The adrenaline highs and lows were wreaking havoc on her nerves.

  “Nice and slow, Attie,” Noah coached from behind her as he moved into position.

  She wrapped her hands around the edge and used her arms to pull the rest of her body along. Each pull caused pain to shoot down her arm but she ignored it and trudged forward.

  All she could see below her was darkness. God only knew what was down there.

  Progress was slow and by the time they were halfway across, her shoulder throbbed. It hurt to extend her arm and to use the muscles in her shoulder to pull herself along. She could feel Noah’s shirt growing warm with blood, but it didn’t stop her. Noah’s steady presence behind her kept her going. She knew he would never give up and neither would she. Not as long as Carlos had her brother.

  Willing herself to ignore the pain, she reached up and prepared to move herself forward when a spasm shot through her neck and down her spine, paralyzing her muscles.

  She cried out as her body bucked from the shock. She lost her grip and careened over the edge.

  And screamed.

  Chapter 16

  Noah saw Attie’s body buck, heard her scream and watched her dive head first over the edge of the platform. He would never know if luck or some other force helped him grab onto her ankle, but he managed to wrap his fingers around her just before she disappeared.

  He gripped his feet firmly around the edges, his free arm straining under their combined weight to keep them in place. Her added burden tugged painfully on his shoulder and the muscles in his arm bulged under the stress, but nothing compared to the terror filled-scream echoing in his head.

  The impact of preventing her fall about tore his arm out of its socket. He ignored the numbing pain, grinding his teeth against it. He could hear her gasping for air below him.

  “Attie, we have to work fast, I can’t hold you like this very long. I need you to use my arm as a rope, double over into a sit-up position and use your upper body to pull yourself on top of me,” he instructed, clenching his jaw as she moved. He knew her abdominal muscles were strong, as was her upper body. Her wound would inhibit her movements, but she had worked through pain before. She was in good shape and as long as he maintained his hold on her she could do what he told her. It wouldn’t be easy on either of them but as a team they could pull it off.

  “Okay. Here goes.”

  Noah braced himself for the pain he knew was coming when she started to move. His arm extended over the edge was on the verge of dislocating as Attie moved on the opposite end. Her hands wrapped around his bicep as she moved into a sit-up position. The movement had to be costing her with that wound on her shoulder. He hadn’t told her how serious it was, with good reason.

  “I’m coming up.”

  “Go.”

  She got a hold on his shoulder and using him as leverage managed to pull herself up and over until she was lying on top of him, panting and gripping him so tightly he figured she’d draw blood with her nails where they dug into his flesh. She collapsed fully on top of him, her breath coming in short gasps, her body quaking.

  He wrapped his arms around the platform and prepared to slide them to safety.

  “Would have been easier if you’d accepted my offer for a ride in the beginning,” he said, trying to lighten the mood and take her mind off what had just happened. He could feel the tension in her body and smell her fear. She was shaking like a leaf and much too quiet.

  When Attie didn’t respond, he knew she was in bad shape, so he began pulling them toward the opposite side as quickly as he could. Rage simmered in his gut. He had never wanted to kill a man as badly as he wanted to kill Carlos Santiago at this moment. They had been through hell because of the bastard today and he was quickly exceeding the limit for what he could take.

  He got them to the other side and onto solid ground. Attie scrambled off him and ran to the door. She began shouting for Santiago to open the door. Rising to his feet, Noah followed her through the door as it slid open, praying that he had been right and a bed and a shower waited on the other side. He didn’t think either of them could take much more tonight.

  * * * *

  Attie walked into the room, unable to stop shaking. Adrenaline crash from her near death experience. She recognized it well and knew she had to sit down before she fell down. Her relief at seeing a bedroom was overwhelming. Noah had been right. They had chosen the most difficult path and won.

  It resembled the bedroom she had been in when she arrived and she couldn’t have been more upset to see it. She should have been happy, but she wasn’t. They weren’t being tested again. She couldn’t be grateful; she was too distraught.

  Red-hot fury ripped through her. She stopped inside the door and stared at the bed where two stacks of fatigues lay, along with a First Aid kit. A room service cart loaded with food sat in the corner, the scent of salted chicken and black beans filling the room and making her stomach turn. For reasons she couldn’t explain, the sight of clean clothes on a freshly made bed along with the scent of gourmet food pushed her over the edge.

  It could have been because of what it represented: a reward. Or the adrenaline pumping through her veins, or simply the aftershocks of what she had been through, but either way she lost it. She ran to the bed, grabbed the clothes and launched them across the room. For the first time she hated what they signified: her failure and Carlos’s fantasy. Right now she couldn’t handle either. She’d always been proud to wear the uniform as a symbol of her accomplishments but tonight they represented a madman’s fantasy and she hated him for it.

  Boots thumped and hit the wall, clothes scattered. With a strangled cry she began tearing the room apart looking for bugs and cameras. She had to remove the bastard from the room.

  She ignored Noah, who stood inside the door watching her in silence. Maybe he understood her need to lash out and release the stress that had built inside her, or maybe he was just too tired to stop her, but either way Attie didn’t let it slow her down. Only when she’d flushed the bugs did she stop and take a deep, shaky breath. She stood in the middle of the room, staring at the mess, chest heaving. The bed sheets were in a pile in the middle of the bed, the lamp overturned, their clothes scattered on the floor and the chair knocked over. And now she was exhausted with a migraine and more aches and pains than she could count.

  “You should eat,” Noah said quietly.

  She turned to look at him. She couldn’t read his expression. He didn’t look angry or tired or ready to lose it. No, he was a machine. Nothing like her. He wouldn’t give in to such weakness. He didn’t let his temper get the best of him when he felt it closing in on him. Hell, she didn’t even know if he had a temper. She’d never seen it. He never allowed that show of emotion and it made her want to shake him until he let go of his damned control. She wanted to see the human side of him instead of the machine. He never wavered, rock steady. That was Noah and it made her crazy at the same time she craved it.

  Food held no appeal right now. All she wanted to do was take a shower and go to sleep. She doubted she’d have to worry about the nightmares that had plagued her for the past year because she had a whole new set of nightmares to keep her company tonight. Through the pounding in her head she doubted she’d hear Seth whispering to her. Which suited her, because she wasn’t up to trying to save him in her dreams tonight.

  Her eyes dropped to Noah’s arms. Arms that had prevented her fall and withstood her weight long enough t
o save her life. The impact must have been astounding, yet he never let it show, never wavered, just calmly bore her weight and instructed her how to survive.

  A new set of mixed emotions rushed through her. They scared her more than nearly falling to her death. She didn’t want to deal with her feelings for Noah right now. She wasn’t sure she could handle them.

  Feeling suffocated, she took a deep breath, only to have it catch in her throat. She had to get out of here. Get away from him before she gave in to temptation. His arms would feel good wrapped around her right now and that was dangerous.

  “I’m going to take a shower,” she announced and spun around toward the bathroom.

  “Attie.”

  She stopped but didn’t turn around. “What?”

  “Let me remove the necklace first.”

  He was beside her and searching for the lock before she could answer. She pretended not to notice how close he was or how strong his hands were as they worked the necklace. It took all of her strength not to look at his bare chest, a mass of muscular planes and contours. Before this was over she was going to be a nut case. How much more was she supposed to endure?

  Suddenly the necklace fell off into Noah’s hands. Stunned, Attie backed up a step and stared at it as if it were a poisonous snake, slowly shaking her head. He had done what she’d never been able to do.

  Once again saving her and making it harder to stay strong. Her feelings for him were changing with each passing second. She had known him for four years now, but never allowed her feelings to rule her actions where he was concerned. Before now they had been bound by rules and their careers, but things were different, they were different. She wanted to lose herself in him, let him take away her past and forget the present. In his arms that would happen. She wanted it more than her next breath, but she could have neither because a giant wall stood between them.

  “How?” she murmured.