He smiled at her. It was small, but it was there, and that made her feel like they just might get out of this alive.
“Five minutes,” he said.
“Tell me the truth—is anything broken? The water isn’t deep.” She inspected him, looking for blood or protruding bones. She squinted, examined his eyes, looking for signs of a concussion.
“What are you doing?”
“You hit hard.” She felt the back of his head, searching for bumps or blood.
He leaned into her and rested his head on her shoulder. “Five minutes,” he said and held her.
She forced herself to relax, tried to ignore the throbbing in her leg. For five minutes they sat there until their breathing evened out.
“Okay,” Matt said. “We go to the doors, but approach carefully.”
“I hear you,” Kara said.
They headed toward the double doors, but she started to get that bad feeling she always had when her instincts told her something was wrong. Her stomach clenched—she felt like a million tiny bugs crawled over her skin. She stopped.
“Kara?” Matt said, his arm around her waist, supporting her.
“I don’t like this.”
“We can’t stay here, you need medical attention, and we don’t know when she’s going to return.”
“The door—it’s too easy.”
He looked down at her and frowned. “It was not easy getting down here.”
“Booby traps. This is the only door we can see, you thinkthey wouldn’t have done something to it? Like the elevator? The staircase?”
“We’re on the ground floor. We can’t fall any further. With all this standing water, I don’t think there’s a sub-basement, or if there is it’s not accessible from here or it’s completely filled with water.”
“There was a charge on the elevator. Something that sparked and sent the elevator down. If something sparks and we’re standing in water? We know there’s electricity—the cameras had to have something charging them, and they can’t all be run on batteries, right?”
“There wouldn’t be enough electricity to electrocute us—it would take a real strong jolt.”
“Do you want to take that chance?” She sounded panicked, and she didn’t want to panic, she just wanted to get out. Though the factory floor was huge, she felt as if the walls were closing in on her. “I feel like I’m in the damn Zoo of Death,” she muttered. “We go through that door and a deadly spider is waiting for us. Or worse, a snake. I hate snakes.”
Matt squeezed her hand. “So does Indiana Jones, and everything turned out okay for him.”
“You’re not funny,” she said, but she smiled anyway.
“Let’s think this through logically.” Matt’s voice was calm and confident. “The killers set up this factory like a giant escape room. We were directed down halls and paths simply because that was the only way we could go. Now we have this door that’s so obviously a way out—you’re right, it could be sabotaged. There could be something dangerous on the other side, something we can’t see. So we don’t just open the door and take our chances.”
“Okay,” Kara said, beginning to feel better as her mind worked through the situation as Matt laid it out. “Logically, would this be the only exit?”
“No,” Matt said. “When we were looking last night, remember the exit on the far wall?” He gestured across the factory floor to the exit she couldn’t see because rotting equipment stood in the way. “It was blocked by fallen equipment. We could try to move it, but...”
“But that could also be a trap.”
“I’m more concerned that the door is locked or bolted and moving the heavy equipment will sap the little energy we have left. But yeah, it could also be a trap.”
“If everything’s a trap we’re stuck here.”
“No. We’re going through those doors,” Matt said.
“But—”
