Extreme Danger (McClouds & Friends #5)(141)

“And faces? Jerkoff. Out.” Martina gestured with her big, protruding chin towards the door. Yuri stomped out, muttering.

The shower was ice cold. The liquid disinfectant soap stank, burned her eyes, stung in all her scrapes and sores. She was shaking too hard when it was done to towel herself off. Marina had to dry her, while Sveti shuddered, teeth chattering, struggling to stay on her feet.

The older woman ripped a lightweight cotton thing out of a plastic package. Baggy green pants, the creases from the fold still sharp. A matching shirt, huge and floppy, that reached halfway to her knees. Her hair dripped down her back. Marina wrung it out, and wrenched a comb through it, dragging it straight back off her face.

Sveti found herself, barefoot and naked beneath the green thing, still shivering, her raked scalp stinging, the cold cotton fabric clinging to her wet back. She shuffled down the corridor, through the locked door at the end, out into another corridor. One she’d never seen.





It was wider, brighter. Much cleaner than the one she knew.

Marina dragged her down the cold gray concrete floor, and elbowed her into a metal elevator. She was horrified at her own reflection. She was so white, so skinny, so small. Those big eyes, that tiny face. She barely existed, next to Marina’s imposing blond bulk. They ground slowly up. The moving chamber shuddered to a stop.

The doors sighed open into a new world. The walls were soft green. Everything glittered. It dazzled her. Lights flashed and twinkled on walls full of gleaming equipment.

Marina shoved her between the shoulder blades, sending her stumbling into the room. It was filled with people dressed in green, like herself. Their heads were capped, their mouths masked. Only eyes showed. So many eyes, looking at her. She shrank from their regard, retreating towards the elevator. Marina pushed her forward again.

A very tall masked ghost stepped forward, his cold gaze boring into her face. “Get her prepped,” he said. “Fast. We’re already late.”



Becca counted her breaths. Tried to keep them slow, deep and steady. One. Two. Three. Four. All the way up to ten.

Then she slowly counted back down again. If she kept doing this, the night would end. It was finite. The world was turning, hurtling her through space into an unknown future. Day would come. Someone would come. And they would tell her what had happened out there.

She was not going nuts. She would not break down. She wasn’t afraid of the dark, or of whatever creatures were rustling and skittering over the concrete floor around her. Rats, bats, roaches, no big deal. She was a grown-up. She could handle it. Not afraid. No, and no, and no.

She wondered if three hours had passed yet. Could have been six hours, it could have been ten minutes. Maybe Nick had already gone to meet Zhoglo. Maybe it was all over. Maybe Carrie and Josh…no.

Stop. She couldn’t think about it. She’d start screaming.

One. Two. Three. Four…

The sound of a vehicle outside made her heart practically stop in her chest. Nick? It had to be Nick. He was the only one on earth who knew where she was, at least until tomorrow when the FedEx package was delivered. Maybe he’d had a change of heart. Maybe he’d realized that she couldn’t have done what he thought she’d done.

Yeah. Hah. The cynical, grown-up realist deep inside her laughed.

She had to toughen up. She knew life was dangerous. Caring about people was the most dangerous thing of all. She’d known that brutal fact since she was twelve and nothing she’d learned since then had convinced her any different. But she’d never let herself think about how bottomless that dark pit truly was. She kept herself too busy.

The only real bottom was death. Death would stop the suffering. Death would break her fall.

She’d never understood the reasoning her mother must have gone through, as she sat on her bed staring at that pill bottle. Falling, constantly, endlessly through inner space, into the dark.

Becca understood it now. And for the first time, she could almost forgive Mom for leaving them alone. Almost.

There was a rattling groan as the heavy door slid open on the rusty runners. Light flooded in, from the headlights of the vehicle rumbling outside. Fresh air moved her hair, chilled the sheen of cold sweat on her face.

Footsteps. Thud, thud, thud. She strained to see who it was, but the complex bulk of scaffolding was in the way, blocking her line of vision. She couldn’t see the whole silhouette. Just disconnected slices, and a halo of blinding, blurring headlights behind it.

Thud, thud. Closer.

She sucked in air, forced herself to call out, in a thin, quavering voice. “Nick? Is that you?”

A flashlight flicked on, moved over her body, and settled directly in her face. Blinding her even more than the headlights had done.

Thud, thud. Not Nick. Nick would never do something like that. Even angry, he would not deliberately terrify her.

The holder of the flashlight shone it up under his own chin, grotesquely illuminating his fat, wild-eyed, grinning mask of horror.

“Charming,” came that oily, complacent voice that froze her heart. “Tethered like a goat, ey? So convenient.”

Becca hung onto consciousness. She was falling, through inner space. And all she dared to hope for now was that the death that broke her fall was a quick one.

Chapter

31

D avy flinched as Tam whipped off her microfiber tank. The woman’s tits were just too much to take in the cramped back of the surveillance van. “Jesus, Tam,” he snapped. “Could you warn us when you’re going to pull a stunt like that?”