“Yes I did. I felt trapped. I hate feeling like I have no way out, like a rat in a maze. I panicked. You didn’t waiver. You were calm, you were there. I don’t know how to explain it. But I felt... like we were going to make it. Together. I just wanted you to know.”
He kissed her. “I wasn’t calm on the inside. I’ve been in a lot of dangerous situations, but the last few days have been the worst.”
“Ditto,” she said with a half smile.
Nathan came into the living room with a grocery bag of water bottles and food. “Where’s your mom?” Matt asked.
“She went upstairs to get blankets.”
“I’ll help her,” Kara said and got up.
“You can’t go up and down stairs with that bum leg,” Matt said. “You and Nathan go out to the oak tree. We’ll meet you there.”
“It’s you and me, kid,” Kara said and steered Nathan toward the door.
Matt’s foot hit the first stair just as the whole house groaned, a low, hungry sound that filled him with dread. The floor tilted under his feet. A sharp crack echoed somewhere in the basement, support beams splintering. He froze for a half second, heart hammering.
Crunch.
The sound came from below, deep and sickening, acrunch crunch crunch. The stairs pitched and shuddered. Matt grabbed the railing for balance. The old wood flexed unnaturally beneath his hand.
“Lily!” he shouted as he ran halfway up the stairs, needing her to hear him. “Get down here now!”
In a gut-punch moment, it all clicked: the chemical tang he’d smelled in the basement, the steady drips that he’d dismissed as water. Another trap, just like Garrett and his partner had done in the factory. A chemical solvent dissolving the old wood of the support beams. Acid or lye, something that worked slowly over time until the house collapsed.
He feared turning off the electricity had accelerated the collapse. Or their captor had noticed the cameras were down and somehow set off the chain of events. Either way, they had to get out now.
“Lily!”
Lily appeared at the top of the stairs, blankets bundled in her arms, face pale and panicked.
“Drop it! Hurry!” He reached out his arm, urging her to run down the stairs.
The house lurched again, sharper this time, like a boat slamming against the dock. Lily stumbled forward, blankets spilling from her arms, as she tumbled down the stairs.
The banister snapped under her weight and she fell. Matt tried to catch her, but she rolled over the edge into the hall.
He rushed over to Lily and helped her up. The floor shifted again. The boards in the old wood floor visibly separated beneath their feet. Matt grabbed her around the waist as the house continued to fall apart around them.
He heard Kara screaming for him, and he prayed she had left with Nathan, that she didn’t come back inside, that she didn’t risk her life. He wasnotgoing to die in here.
Behind them, the stairs caved in with a thunderous crash, an entire section folding in on itself.
The house had gone crooked, like it was being swallowed sideways into the basement. He heard nothing except the screaming of wood, glass, metal. Every step was a fight uphill. Walls buckled. The floor dipped then rose. A cabinet fell in the kitchen with a deafeningbang, hitting him in the shoulder and causing him to lose his grip on Lily. The table slid across the scarred linoleum floor.
“Keep going!” Matt shouted above the noise of destruction. He reached out for Lily again, sparing a glance behind him when he couldn’t feel her.
She tripped and went down hard on one knee. She screamed and reached out.
“I got you!” he said as he yanked her up just as the table slammed into his side, knocking the wind out of him. He barely held on to her wrist. He would not let go.
The windows blew out one by one all around them, glass bursting inward. The sting of shards slashed his cheek, but he didn’t stop. He saw the light from the open front door. It was higher than it should be as the center of the house was falling down into the basement...
And then he smelled it.
Gas.
It hit him like a wall: thick, raw, metallic. The stove. He looked—just a glance—and saw the pipe ripped loose from the wall, the stove askew.
