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“Wake up.”
I turned my head away from the voice and groaned. “Fuck off. Just let me die in silence.”
“Please. Get up. I can’t move you. And if you’re going to do this, it needs to be now.”
My eyes ripped open at those words. The single lightbulb in this room somehow felt blinding in that moment.
So, add a fucking concussion to the list of ailments that I already had happening.
It took entirely too long for the woman in front of me to start to come into focus, and her nearly black eyes were all I could see clearly.
“Triss? How are you —?”
“No. Now, get up.”
“What do you mean no?” I asked, before I realized she was blonde.
“I need you to focus. And I need you to get up. You don’t have much time now. They’re about to rotate workers. Somebody else picked Trista up. Nate will be going after her any minute now. This is your only chance. Fucking. Get. Up.”
Somebody else picked Trista up.
I didn’t even know how I got off the floor, but I did. How my body was able to stand upright on its own was beyond any reasonable understanding after the things that Bryson had done to me the last time. I should’ve already died by this point.
“I didn’t have a way to sneak in a pair of shoes,” she said. “But here.”
I could only see out of one eye. The other was swollen shut as tight as could be, but I didn’t need to be able to see it to recognize the feel of a firearm. I tried again to focus on this woman. Everything about her was familiar when she was this close. They were the same size, the same shape, they had the same round face that looked like it was never meant to smile. Her hair was blonde now, but the dark roots underneath gave her away too.
“Why?” I asked, thinking through the things Triss had told me about her mother.
“We don’t have time for that,” she said and shoved her hand into the pocket of her jeans. “Here.”
I held my hand out when she reached for it. She dropped two more pills into my palm, and I didn’t even hesitate to down those fuckers.
“Bryson will still be in this building,” she whispered. “Out the door, to the right. There won’t be anybody back here in the hallway right now. None of the offices have windows or doors. But there are several exits once you’re in the open area on that side of the building. You’ll just also run into people once you make it there.”
“Come with me.”
Her eyes filled with tears before she shook her head.
“I wasn’t asking.”
I forced my supremely fucked up hand to function just long enough to lock it around hers so I could pull her toward the door behind me. Much to my surprise, she didn’t argue or even attempt to pull away. She never tried to kick me in the dick. So, she and Trista weren’t all that alike aside from the appearance.
“Stay right behind me,” I whispered while I cracked the door open to look into the hallway. She wasn’t wrong, there was no movement out there. I made my way out and to the right with the gun raised as best as I could. I couldn’t keep her hand in mine because my shoulder was too far fucked up and my hand was still in just as much pain. Everything everywhere hurt but that more primal part of me was in charge now to make my body just keep moving despite what my brain was demanding.
She squeezed my hips and stepped all the way against my back when we made it to the end of that hallway.
She even fucking felt like Trista.
“You need to make it to that hallway,” she whispered and pointed around me to a different door. “There are other offices back there and an exit at the end.”
The open area wasn’t really just open space. There were sections of pallets stacked from floor to ceiling and entire stations of rows upon rows of tables. The only positive thing about this setup was that if someone spotted us on our way out, all we’d really have to do was dive into this maze of madness to find cover. Alternatively, the risk of not finding a safe way back out was just as real. The room was still full of people bustling around. No one was paying obvious attention in our direction, and I had just fucking had my fill of this place so I headed for the door that would open to that magical hallway of freedom.
We didn’t make it more than a few steps before the shooting started.
There were too many people in the building to tell where it was coming from, so I pushed Trista’s mother ahead of me and told her to run for the other hallway. We both made it behind the first stack of pallets, but the longer that we waited there, the more likely it would be for us to end up stuck there.
“Keep going,” I said, forcing my body to accept that we were just going to have to fucking keep moving. “Now. Go.”
