“Okay, okay—find the crack. When you have it, I’ll count to three then pull. But my fingers barely fit in, so I don’t know how much traction I’ll get.”
“We’ll try.” Matt ran his fingers along the door and felt the crack. “Okay. Right here. You pull, I’ll wedge, good?”
“Sure,” she said without her usual confidence. “Okay, one... two... three.” Kara pulled and Matt pushed his fingers intothe narrow space. One of his nails split, but he wasn’t going to let go. Kara grunted, and he worried that she had hurt herself.
But then his fingers went all the way in. “I got it!”
Kara stepped back a half step and Matt slowly opened the door.
The hall on the other side wasn’t as dark as the staircase. There was faint yellow light coming from around the corner, creating a murky dark gray. But not totally dark. That was a plus.
“Ready?” Matt said.
“Let’s do it.”
They stepped into the hall. The door closed behind them, followed by a clash of metal on metal. Matt pushed on it, but it wouldn’t budge.
“Rats in a maze,” Kara repeated.
Matt took her hand. “We’re going to get out of this,” he said. “Just be prepared for anything.”
7
Kara rubbed her sore fingers on her sweatpants. Now that they were out of the staircase, she felt a bit calmer, less claustrophobic.
For a split second when Matt had slipped on the stairs, she’d thought he was gone. It happened so fast, and her heart may have stopped for a beat. Then it pounded in her chest so hard that she couldn’t hear much over the roar in her ears. Figuring out the door had given her that moment she needed to regroup and collect her bearings.
She wasn’t lying to Matt; shedidfeel like a rat in a maze and someone had set up this entire building to torment them. It wasn’t simply a sick joke; they could have died. They still could die. She could have died when the elevator fell. Or worse, broken her back at the bottom of the shaft and slowly, painfully, died over days.
She shivered. Matt squeezed her hand. “We’re going to get out of this,” he said.
“I know,” she agreed without conviction.
They rounded the corner, and Kara saw a sign that surprisedher. Maybe because it was unexpected, here in this filthy, rotting building.
Women.
Cautiously, she pushed against the door. There was no resistance.
“We need water,” she said. “The sinks might work. It might taste gross, but we’re not going to get far if we don’t have fluids.”
“I’ll stand at the door—I don’t want to risk being separated.”
Matt pushed the door all the way open and stood in the threshold, his back against the open door. The dim light from the hall reflected off filthy broken mirrors.
Kara saw distinct handprints on the cracked glass. Slowly, she checked each of the four stalls.
“Matt, I’m going to take a minute.” If they really had been here for nearly twenty-four hours, she certainly wasn’t surprised her bladder was full.
“Go ahead.”
She chose the one stall that didn’t have a door. The idea of being trapped again made her jittery, fueling her anxiety. She squatted, not wanting to sit. For all she knew, the toilet would fall through the floor and she’d go crashing down with it.
She looked up at her distorted image in the dirty cracked mirror across the room. The handprints were clear.
So was a message.
The Lord is my shepherd
