Never had she felt so much like an animal. Prey, making itself as tiny as possible—playing dead and begging the hunter not to notice.
“That you, darlin’? Ford Cooper wouldn’t be down here hiding from me, would he? You guys are the only two we’re missing. Nah. Ain’t his style. It’s you, Angel. I can feel it. Heard you missed the plane.” He let out a low, sad sound. “Actually, word up there is that you decided to winter-over with the others.”
Slowly, she put a foot down on the hard-packed snow. Crunch. The sound was light, barely audible, yet too loud. Another step, another, each one painting a bigger, brighter target on her back. She had to get away or he’d kill her.
What was down this way? Impossible to remember after just one visit.
Didn’t matter. She had to move, now.
With Sampson’s slowly oscillating flashlight to show her the way, she forged ahead, doing her best to remember the layout. There were holes, lots of them, cut from the ice like false starts; tunnels that were never meant to be. Some were altars that Poleys from previous years had set up as odes to their experiences working at Pole. But most were small and high and impossible to get into.
Sampson’s light drew closer and she picked up the pace, almost running down the seemingly endless white tunnel, until the darkness ahead revealed three passages. Shit, which way? Which way?
Right.
Another crossroads. She went right again. Not thinking. Not waiting to consider. Not slowing to listen, just running, slipping over the ice, catching herself on the frozen walls.
Calm down. Breathe.
Wait, there! A shadow to the left.
Suddenly, everything got brighter, which meant Sampson’s light was closer. Too close. How? How were his steps so measured and still so fast?
She pushed herself. Her breaths came out in audible puffs, as if this fear were too strong to stay inside her. It had to be out in the open, vocalized, real. Never mind that he’d hear her if she couldn’t find a way to shut up and hide.
She turned another corner. Another hall. Darker. No way to tell how deep it was, but the steps behind her seemed to fade. Maybe she’d lost him.
With no choice now, she threw her hands out in front of her and sprinted, the sound of her feet on the ice like a dog chomping on bones.
She connected with something, hard, and almost went down, only managing to grab on at the last minute. A horizontal pillar or a pipe. A pipe. Okay. The piping that brought something to the living quarters… Heating? Hot water?
Who cares?
She put a hand on it and used it as a guide.
And then, headfirst, she crashed into a wall. Dead end.
Literally.
Why did she feel like giggling? She pushed the irrational impulse down and spun, hands out.
He wasn’t far; she could feel him. The prey instinct ratcheted unbearably high.
Desperate, she scrabbled at the walls. Stuck. Caught like a rat. In a maze, no less. She ran her hands up and down, to the ground. A sob had just crested her chest, about to break through her tight throat, when right above the floor, her gloved hand met nothing but air.
A hole. So low she almost hadn’t found it. Afraid to feel even a glimmer of relief, she dropped, just as the light hit the wall opposite, and backed into the pitch-black of an unknown void.
Chapter 9
Trapped in a slot no bigger than the space under a kid’s bed, Angel counted his footsteps, trying to remember how long this section of tunnel was. Ten steps? Thirty? She’d come too far, taken too many random turns to tell. She’d been running when she’d veered down this way, but Bradley Sampson walked at the pace of a Sunday stroll.
At some point, his footsteps interwove with her heartbeats, until suddenly, she couldn’t count anymore. Couldn’t tell what was him or her or the creaking of the ice around them.
Crunch…BOOM. Crunchboom. Crunch, crunch. Closer. Closer. Careful steps, carrying out a methodical search.
“I know you’re around here somewhere, Angel, darlin’.” Crunch boom. “Wanna know how?” A long, low chuckle that would have sent shivers down her spine if she wasn’t already a shuddering, spinning mass of goose bumps, suspended here waiting. “You’re bleeding.”
Was she? She almost shifted to check the place where the door had slammed into her nose, then stopped herself. There wasn’t room to move in this hole she’d stuffed herself into. It would scrape her coat against the ice and give her away.
Something clanged. “Ow. Fuck!”
Angel went very still. He’s right here.
Was her hood sticking out? Her hands? Would he trip over her? Breathing much too fast, she resisted the desire to ease back, to curl tighter. If she shifted now, he’d hear her.
Something tickled her nose. Blood, dripping out. It stopped almost immediately, froze on her upper lip. Just as she’d managed to ignore the itch, his voice cut through their shared silence.
“Followed her into the tunnels.”
She startled, her whole body jerking so hard that the scrape of knee and boot and glove to ice might as well have been an explosion. She was so sure, in that moment, that the jig was up that she almost breathed a sigh of relief.
Almost.
But then she heard another sound, so ordinary, so completely out of place in this horror-movie moment that it almost didn’t register—the crinkle of a wrapper, followed by the crunch of a Life Savers in Sampson’s mouth. It was so clear, so loud, that she could have sworn she caught a puff of that telltale cinnamon flavor.
He was breathing hard, which struck her as almost funny. Here she was, quiet as a mouse, while he huffed and chewed and cussed his way around.
“You clean ’em up?” This time, when he spoke in that curt boss voice, she didn’t react. Didn’t move a muscle. “Yeah. Fine. I’ll be right there.”
There was a beat of silence, of stillness, and when Sampson spoke again, it sent a shiver down her spine. “Know you’re in here, Angel, darlin’. No place for you to go. No way out.” He released a long, annoyed hiss. “Why’n’t you come on out, huh? Promise I won’t hurt you.”
Yeah right. She knew better than to believe this psychopath.
“We’re about to take off and we could really use your skills where we’re going, so…” Sounding impatient, he went on. “Look. There’s no time to wait around for you to make up your mind.” His feet crunched slowly past, so close she could reach out and grab his ankle. The beam of his flashlight hurt her eyes.
“You either come with us now, or I lock you in and you’re de—” He muttered a curse under his breath, then louder, said, “Tell him to hold his horses.” Another pause, while he waited for the person on the other end to respond. “Fine, I’m coming up.” He exhaled loudly. Took a step. “Last chance, Angel.” There was a long silence this time—so complete that she held her breath with it, strained into it, hoping. Then, on a laugh, “Got you.”