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“How much farther,” she grunted.
“There . . .”
Okay, that narrowed their end zone down to absolutely nothing in particular.
Just as she was about to drop him, his hand shot out and grabbed on to a knob. With a powerful crank, he released the mechanism and threw the door wide—and then he shoved himself off of her, falling forward like a drunk, landing facedown with a bump of useless limbs.
“Shut the door—shut the fucking door,” he groaned.
Rio shot inside, but didn’t slam things—because there were people under them. Maybe above them, too. And they’d made enough noise with their footfalls.
As she carefully closed them in, instantly, everything went pitch dark, and her only orientation as she floated in space was the sound of the man’s tortured breathing. Her eyes did adjust, however, shadowy outlines of a stretch of countertop, a sink, a table on its side, and one spindle chair in the corner pulling free of the void, thanks to a soft glow around the panels that had been nailed over what she assumed were window frames.
“Dumbwaiter,” Apex said on a wheeze.
“Excuse me?” Rio lowered herself to her knees. “And what the hell is going on? Are you hurt?”
“There—it’s a dumbwaiter. Your weight will lower it down. When you’re ready, I’ll pull you back up.”
“No offense, but breathing seems like a challenge for you right now. How ’bout we focus on that first?”
“Go—I’ll be all right. I just need a minute.”
Rio looked to where he was pointing. Across the way, there was a panel in the wall that was demarcated by molding. The inset square was maybe three by three feet and it had a handle down at the bottom.
The man coughed and made her think of the patient. “Once you get down, you’ll know what you see. Do what you have to and call up the shaft when you’re ready for me to pull you up.”
“I have my gun,” she murmured, more to herself than to him.
Even though he was a disrespectful pain in the ass, she didn’t want to leave him. Still, they had a job to do, so she got up and moved across the room, chunks of plaster gritting under the soles of her feet. When she got to the dumbwaiter, she lifted the panel. It was so dark, she had to feel around to get a sense of the size.
“I need to take the robes off. I won’t fit otherwise.”
“Do what you have to.”
It was a relief to cast off the suffocating hood and take a deep, free breath. Then she put a foot into the space and grimaced as the inside of that thigh burned in protest.
“I should have gone to more yoga classes,” she muttered.
“What’s that?”
Rio glanced back. Apex was still lying there like a dead fly on a windowsill, his arms and legs curled up like they hurt.
“Are you sure you’re going to be—”
“Go.”
Rio reached in and found a lip on something that she could get a pretty good hold on. Pulling herself into the three-by-three-foot cubicle, it was alarming the way the pulley-rigged box rocked in its intra-floor track. And goddamn, as she squeezed her head to the side so her shoulders fit, the tender spot on the back of her skull hollered like a banshee.
“Please don’t kill me,” she announced as her eyes bounced around the tight interior—and could tell her nothing about the chances of her plummeting to her death.
“As long as you don’t fuck around, I won’t.”
She glared out of the dumbwaiter. “I’m not talking to you. And you were wrong, my weight’s not doing anything to move this thing. I suppose I should take it as a compliment, but it’s a problem.”
There were a couple of quick-draw inhales, and then Apex grunted and got to his feet. Dragging himself over, he braced himself against the wall.
“I’ll close the door and lower you manually.”
“How—”
He opened a flush panel in the wall. “Hang on.”
Rio closed her eyes and pushed against the walls that crowded her, like they were people she could get to move away. “It’s not me who has to do the hanging. Is this thing rated for my kind of weight?”
“We’ll see, won’t we.”
He pulled the dumbwaiter’s door shut on her.
There was a bump. And another.
Her breath was loud. So was her heart—
Squeak. Squeak. Squeak . . .
The descent was slow—and agonizing because the human body was not meant to pretzel into a space barely big enough to fit a picnic cooler. With every bump in the track and halt as Apex switched his grip, she had to fight the terror that something was going to snap and she was going to straight-shot down God only knew how many floors to egg-shatter all over—
This time, the bump was different.
“Stop,” she said, projecting her voice up the shaft.
“Shh,” was the response. But hello, he stopped.
