Explosive Attraction by Lena Diaz Read Free Book Online Page B

she’d seen in his eyes the last time they’d crossed proverbial swords in a courtroom.
    “Okay, we’ll do it your way.”
    She looked up, certain she couldn’t have heard him right.
    “I may not understand your fear, but I can see it’s real. We’ll figure outanother way.” His brows drew down. “If we have to go through the door, we’ll go through the door. We’ll have to work our way down the hall, one room at a time, until we get to the exit. But our timing will have to be perfect. We’ll have to run into the hall each time the gunman goes into a room, so he doesn’t see us. And we can’t make any noise.”
    Darby remembered the way her own hospitalroom door had squeaked when she’d opened it to go to Rafe’s room. What if one, or more, of the doors they had to go through squeaked, too? The gunman would hear it. They’d be trapped.
    She watched in silence as Rafe crossed to the tray that had been beside the bed before he’d moved the bed to block the door. He snapped off the mirror, just like she’d done in the other room. He hurried to thedoor and got down on his hands and knees, wincing but not slowing down even though his head was obviously hurting. He slid the mirror under the edge of the door.
    The man had almost been killed protecting her. And yet, here he was, willing to put himself at risk again even though he felt there was a safer option.
    All because of her stupid fear of dark, tight spaces.
    Fisting her handsbeside her, she forced herself to look up at the ceiling. That dark opening wasn’t a hole. She couldn’t think of it that way. No, it was an escape hatch. And the tiles surrounding the hole were just, what? Some kind of foam board? Rafe had already explained they were just going to crawl across the beams that supported the ceiling, not across the grid holding up the tiles. The grid wasn’t strongenough to support them. If she panicked, and had to get out, all she had to do was drop through one of the tiles. It wasn’t as if she’d really be trapped.
    There weren’t any musty, cold stone walls up there.
    Or water dripping all around her.
    Or the scurrying of rats as they brushed against her in the dark.
    She shivered and clenched her teeth together.
    This wasn’t a well.
    She wasn’t a scared little girl again, trapped, waiting, crying for help. She wouldn’t have to pull herself up the wet, slimy walls, inch by inch, grasping for holds on rocks that cut her fingers until they bled.
    She glanced down at the tiny white lines on her fingers, lines that would never let her forget. She fisted her hands together.
    This wasn’t a well.
    Muted footsteps soundedin the hallway, louder, closer.
    Darby’s gaze flew to Rafe.
    He was motionless by the door, staring into the mirror. He stiffened and jerked back, noiselessly pulling the mirror back inside the room. When he turned toward her, and she saw the grim look on his face, she knew what she had to do.
    She had to climb into that hole.
    * * *
    W HAT R AFE HAD SEEN in the hallway was thedark silhouette of the gunman, holding the gun with practiced ease in front of him, far closer to their room than Rafe had expected.
    He cursed Buresh beneath his breath for not leaving him a weapon.
    Using some oxygen tubing he’d pilfered from a drawer beside the bed, he finished securing his hospital gown tightly against his waist. It made more sense to completely strip the gowns offboth him and Darby, so the cloth wouldn’t hang down and get in their way when they climbed through the ceiling. But Darby had been so horrified when he’d suggested it that he’d settled for tying their gowns using oxygen tubing and the telephone cord.
    After lifting Darby up into the ceiling, Rafe pulled himself up after her and settled on top of a crossbeam. A noise sounded from below, a whisperof sound.
    Rafe hurried to secure the tile back in the ceiling. “Come on,” he whispered against Darby’s ear. “This way.” The tiny gaps between the ceiling tiles and