Explosive Attraction - By Lena Diaz Page 0,16

I can’t.” She ran to the door.

Rafe grabbed her before she could open it. “We can’t go out in the hall,” he whispered furiously, his blue eyes blazing at her. “He’s armed. I’m not. It’s too risky. Our only chance is to go through the ceiling, but only if we do it now.”

“We can call Buresh. Maybe you’re wrong about him.”

“Buresh told me to follow SOP. That was his way of warning me he was under duress. If he could help us, don’t you think he’d be here by now?”

He didn’t wait for her answer. He pulled her toward the end of the room beneath the opening in the ceiling. “We could wait here for help, but I’m not going to bet my life, or yours, that help will arrive in time.”

As Darby stared at the small dark hole in the ceiling, her world began to spin. Black dots swirled in front of her eyes and she had to sit on the floor to catch her breath.

Rafe crouched beside her, a look of surprised understanding on his face. “You’re afraid of the dark, aren’t you?” His voice sounded incredulous. “Who would have thought a psychologist would be afraid of the dark?”

She stared at the floor, deeply embarrassed. “It’s not just the dark. I’m not...comfortable...in tight spaces.” She didn’t dare look at him again. She knew what she’d see—the same condemnation 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 out another 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 hospital room 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 the door 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 hands beside 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 strong enough 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 sounded in 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