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Cold spread through her veins as she looked ahead. She had seconds, no more.
She fought with the latch, but it wouldn’t open.
“Come on,” she whispered under her breath, pleading with it to open. She balled her hand into a fist and banged it underneath the latch, hissing as pain soared through her hand and down her forearm. It still didn’t budge, and she could hear the footsteps.
Ignoring the pain, she banged it once more and it lifted.
She slid into the hedge, her breath labored as she raised her weapon. This part of the hedge was a little thinner than the other and it gave her the advantage of seeing through it. She raised her weapon, her finger on the trigger. When he was right in front of her, on the other side of the hedge, she reloaded and fired two shots at his head and another at his chest as he fell to the ground.
Four down. The other wouldn’t be far away.
ANNA
Anna weighed her options and decided to exit the maze. If there was a man at the end, she’d eliminate him.
She looked behind her and paused to listen, but didn’t hear any approaching footsteps.
She grabbed the man’s feet, grunting as she dragged him into the hedge. The cavity was small and she was cursing by the time she managed to pull him in. She closed the latch behind her and swept her foot over the bloody ground, doing her best to conceal the stains with loose dirt. It wasn’t a good job, but it was all she could do.
Anna thought of the bodies she’d left on the ground farther back but didn’t have the energy nor time to move them, and she knew they wouldn’t fit in one cavity. She didn’t have the strength to drag them to multiple cavities.
She needed to move fast, exit the maze, and pay Diaz a visit.
The blood stains on her T-shirt would serve their purpose later, but she’d need to hide them once she left the maze. Thankfully she had a tank under her shirt that was appropriate to wear on its own.
She shook her head and chuckled to herself. She didn’t want to walk through the stalls in an inappropriate tank top, but she’d murdered four men in the maze without blinking.
Survival of the fittest, she reminded herself.
Anna kept to the right side of the maze, moving quickly but carefully. She listened for footsteps and voices.
She heard a female voice, followed by an older man’s voice, evident by its huskiness—or his bad cold. Anna darted toward the closest door, which thankfully opened straight away, and hid as they passed. They had entered the maze from the other end and were likely enjoying a casual stroll. Anna felt bad they’d see the horror ahead, but she could not be seen in the maze—she could not be identified by the couple, nor could she do anything right now about the dead bodies. If she had any luck today, Diaz would send someone to find them and clean them up, because the last thing he needed was anyone associated with him becoming a news story.
Anna watched through the gaps in the hedge as the couple passed, chatting merrily without an inkling a killer was hiding in the hedge.
A killer.
But she didn’t end someone’s life for her own pleasure or entertainment. She ended someone’s life to preserve her own. At least that’s how Anna justified what she’d become.
Once the couple passed, Anna slid out of the cavity and progressed through the maze, her heart pounding steadily in her chest, her finger never leaving the trigger.
Eventually, she neared the end, opened a gate, and came out the other side, avoiding having to walk out the end of the maze. She waited a moment, listening for any rushing footsteps, but all she could hear was the chatter of some of the stall vendors. She crouched low to pull her T-shirt over her head, rolled it into a ball, hid her weapon in it, and tucked it under her arm.
Hyperaware of everything around her, she weaved through the stalls back to her car.
Once her car was in sight, she slowed her pace, giving her time to look at the faces of every person who passed by. She searched for shadows that shouldn’t be there, for anyone looking a moment too long, but with every step she took, she grew more confident that the men following her were either dead in the maze or somewhere close by it, waiting for her to exit.
She strode toward her car, unlocking it at the last second. She gave it only a second to warm up before she put it in reverse and lowered her foot on the accelerator.
Anna’s eyes darted between the mirrors and the road ahead. She drove toward Diaz’s house without thinking about it. Decisions like this, she’d learned, were best not to overthink. She’d trusted her gut for years and knew this was an opportunity to teach him a lesson.
What would Anna do—Anna White, girlfriend of Diaz Smith?
Anna White would march into his house and demand to know who was following her. And right now it was more crucial than ever to keep up her role.
She was Anna White, not Anna King.
And they were two very different people.
