LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

and looking in Jack Stryker’s eyes, she stuck her feet into the crevice and began.

      And the darkness closed around her, squeezing her chest like a vise.

      * * *

      She went slow. She took small breaths. When she inhaled too deeply, her rib cage pressed against the stone floor and her shoulder blades squeezed against the ceiling. The uneven rocks cut her cheek and gouged her skin. Her toes searched for leverage to pull while her hands fought for handholds to push. The only sound was her thin cotton prisoner’s suit slithering over rock.

      In front of her, Jack entered the tunnel, his bare shoulders hunching to thrust into the narrow space. His skin raked along the harsh stone walls and she saw him wince. She sought out the next foothold, found a sharp edge and tried to recoil. Her knee slammed against an outcropping rock. She bit her tongue and felt her lower leg go numb right before exploding with white hot pain.

      “Easy,” Jack whispered.

      She kept wriggling along and tried not to cry as her light illuminated the long, thin welts of blood being etched onto Jack’s skin. Minute lapsed into silent minute. Progress was slow, halting, excruciating. Her foot was on fire. Her hands were scratched. Her chest was beginning to burn. She kept moving, having no idea whether she was close to the end or not. The lack of light, air, and sound disoriented her, while the whole mountain pressed in on her. For one moment, she tried to push forward and couldn’t. She was stuck. She was trapped.

      Oh God, oh God, oh God. She wanted to go home.

      Jack’s hand curled around her wrist. His fingers rubbed her hand in wordless encouragement. She felt tears trickle down her cheek, but they were soundless.

      She struggled to push herself forward. Her palm was slippery. Probably with blood.

      She lost her grip on the protruding stone and had to find another source of leverage. She still only moved an inch. Experimentally, she raised her leg. She almost immediately hit the ceiling. The tunnel was getting narrower.

      She froze. She wouldn’t fit. The tunnel was worse than the birthing canal, and this time around, there was no doctor to perform a cesarean. She wanted to go back. Definitely, definitely, it was time to go back.

      Jack’s fingers dug into her arm. “Push,” he gritted out.

      “I can’t,” she whispered. Every instinct in her demanded that she retreat and end this horrible pressure against her chest. Fresh air. She desperately needed fresh air. And to stand, and to see sunlight and to twirl around in a circle with her arms flung out to simply feel the empty space around her.

      She began to shift toward him. Jack tried to push her back with more urgency.

      “I’m outta here!” she said louder. It cost her precious oxygen, but she didn’t care. Her mind was made up. She wanted the horrible cavern back.

      “Go.” It took her a minute to make out the word. It sounded less like a command and more like a gurgle.

      She shook her head, uncertain and suddenly terrified by his tone. His face was much too pale. By the thin light, she could see his Adam’s apple bobbing…gasping…

      “Josie…can’t…breathe. Forward!”

      She moved. Panic overloaded her system, not for herself but for him. She’d forgotten how much bigger he was than her. His ribs were being compressed, shoved into his lungs, rearranging his diaphragm and cutting off his circulation. For the first time, she realized the fingers gripping hers were dangerously cold, icy cold.

      Her bloody hands pressed against small indents in earnest, and she slid herself backward like an eel wriggling through a light socket.

      Move, move, move. Get him out of here!

      Her hard hat pressed against the ceiling. She’d forgotten to take steady breaths, and dots appeared before her eyes. She was hyperventilating. She couldn’t breathe. She was trapped.

      She was suffocating.

      Move, move, move.

      Her hand slid out, too slippery to grasp the rocks. She dug in her toes, pulling, pulling, pulling, flailing like a drowning fish.

      Abruptly her feet burst free. She could taste air—cold, clean air. Wonderful air! She kicked her feet as if doing the doggy paddle and felt only vast, luxurious space. They had made it!

      And then she realized for the first time that Jack’s hand was no longer moving. He didn’t rub her hand in reassurance. He didn’t urge her forward. His eyelids had collapsed. His body was going limp.

      Panic burst. She searched vainly for a foothold, found a crevice, and dug her toes in.

      “Come on, Jack!” she cried. “Come on, you have to help me here. We’re almost there, we’re almost there.”

      But when she tried to wriggle out more, her handcuffed wrist brought her up short. Jack wasn’t moving. She was trapped with her hips and legs free, but her torso wedged into the tiny space.

      She was the worm, stuck halfway out of the ground.

      “Move, dammit! Move, Jack, or I will kill you myself. You stubborn, stubborn…”

      She ran out of air and words. She slapped him instead. Hard. His eyes, glazed and oxygen starved, fluttered open. “Come on, Jack. Move. Move. You promised. You promised.”

      And in the dark tunnel, Jack moved. He weakly pushed her forward and whispered, “Go, Josie. Go!”

      “Damn you!”

      She was crying. She didn’t feel the tears. She wrapped her bloody hands around his wrist and she pulled. She pulled so damn hard she should’ve yanked his arms out of their sockets and then she pulled some more.

      “Exhale, Jack. Now.”

      They rasped forward a few precious inches.

      “Again.”

      Her shoulders broke free. And Jack’s fingers went limp. She was losing him. She was losing him to the stone and the mountain and the thousands of pounds of rock collapsing his chest.

      Pull, pull, pull.

      Dammit, pull.

      Her neck corded. Her teeth gritted and veins popped up, and for a horrible moment, they still didn’t move. He was stuck, so tightly stuck. She squirmed, he groaned, and the minute she heard the release of air, she pulled once more.

      They moved. Slowly, horribly, painfully. She could hear the rocks grating against his skin. She could feel his icy, numb hand.

      “Come on, Jack.” One inch. She pulled harder. Two inches. Her muscles roared while lights danced in front of her eyes. The top of his head appeared, blond hair so dirty and dear. “Don’t die on me, Jack, don’t die on me. Don’t die on me.”

      She wept and she pulled and she wept.

      And then his head broke free and shoulders broke free and a minute later he slithered to the floor.

      “J-J-Josie,” he gasped.

      “Stryker, Stryker, Stryker. Damn you!”

      She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, rocking him like a baby and sobbing against his hair.

      Chapter Eleven

      Jack hadn’t been lying—you could fly a kite in the cavern. Maybe a couple of kites. The ceiling yawned above Josie so high her light bounced off distant crystals and wet rocks as if they were distant stars or the misty Milky Way. The cavern embraced the nighttime sky, took it inside the bowels of the earth and claimed it as its own. The air was rich, moist and fresh, replenished by unseen holes in the rocky ceiling. Josie inhaled deeply and greedily. She imagined she was sleeping beneath a vast awning of tree branches, feeling the cool night air on her face and listening to crickets.

      She wanted desperately

Скачать книгу