Page 84 of Run for Her Life
1553.
The number was crisp. White paint, unchipped. The door itself was too clean and glossy, not collecting dust like the others. While the others were dulled by time, this one gleamed faintly in the flashlight’s beam. It stood out.
It had a different lock, too: a matte black padlock, newer than anything else around it.
Zoe stared at it, her breath catching somewhere in her chest. “Why would anyone install a new lock in a unit here?”
“Fair enough,” Aiden conceded. “What could the code be?”
Zoe stepped forward and ran her fingers over the number. The metal was cold beneath her gloves. She tried a bunch of numbers—Annabelle’s birthday, 1553, the date of the massacre, but nothing worked.
“I really thought the massacre date would do it.”
She smiled at him dryly and lifted the hem of her jeans. He blinked when she pulled out a crowbar.
“Seriously?”
“I’m always prepared.”
“Yeah, but how did you even fit that thing in there?”
Zoe didn’t answer. She was already working the lock. He sighed and stepped in to help, gripping the edge and pulling hard with her.
The lock groaned, resistant. It didn’t want to break. Zoe braced her knee against the door. “One more pull,” she said.
He nodded. “One, two…”
The lock broke free, the sound echoing down the hall like a starter’s pistol. They both froze for a moment.
Then she reached out and gripped the door handle. For a second, she didn’t move. And then—slowly, deliberately—she pulled the door open.
At first, she caught a whiff of sweat. It was the kind of air that was stale and empty, air that had been sitting too long trapped in a damp place. The room was shrouded in darkness for a few seconds before Zoe’s fumbling hands found the switch.
Light flooded the room and Zoe felt her stomach drop.
In the center of the room, a woman sat slumped in a metal chair, limbs slack like a marionette with its strings cut, her clothes damp and dirty. Straps looped around her wrists and ankles, biting into pale skin. Her head tilted slightly to the side, chin to chest, hair matted and clinging to her face in damp strands. Her shoulders rising and falling.
She was alive, just.
She wore a headset—sleek, black, wired to something humming softly in the shadows behind her. The soft blue glow from the headset pulsed faintly.
“Amy!” Zoe took a step forward when Aiden’s hand coiled around hers. “What?”
He put a finger to his lips, his eyes flickering to something on the floor. A shoeprint. Wet and brown. It was fresh.
And then there was a clang.
FIFTY-TWO
Zoe was already running.
Her boots pounded against the concrete and her breath tore at her lungs. The abandoned building groaned from rusted beams to hanging chains. And then she saw him—a hooded figure, turning around the corner.
Adrenaline pumped in her veins as she picked up speed. “FBI! Stop!”
The man hurried away. Corridors of forgotten junk towered around her. Filing cabinets, broken furniture, half-crushed boxes with numbers faded by time. It was dizzying—she couldn’t work out where she was anymore, as she followed the faint echo of footsteps scattering away like mice.
A flash of movement ahead.
