I crossed the room and pressed my ear against the door, listening as Darren kicked his way into another room. He was at least three doors down. Five, if he was hitting the rooms across the hall as well. When I heard the soft squeal of another door being opened, I realized he was checking the closets. Which meant he was no longer in the hall.
I quietly opened Julie Cass’s door and glanced into the hall. Four rooms were open, and by my best guess, Darren was in the closest of them. I sucked in a deep breath and closed the door softly behind me, then headed toward the stairwell in the opposite direction. I ran as hard as I could, gripping the slick floor with my toes, my legs pushing me faster than any human could have run, my arms pumping at my sides for balance.
The hall swam around me and my vision began to darken, but I kept running, blinking tears from my eyes, wiping sweat from my forehead.
Hinges squealed, and boots clomped into the hall behind me. “Hey!” Darren shouted. “Abby!” His footsteps stopped and that scared me worse than being chased, because that meant he was aiming.
The stairwell was fifteen feet away. Then ten. I heard an odd click, like plastic being broken, then a metallic scraping sound. Five feet from the stairwell, I heard a soft thwup, and pain bit into my left thigh. Three steps after that, I grabbed the doorknob and twisted. I pulled the dart from my leg as the stairwell door swung closed behind me, then I was running again, up the steps instead of down, because I was less likely to fall that way.
Heart racing, I gripped the rail. Two steps later, I stumbled and bruised my shin on a metal-edged tread.
“You may as well give up, *cat!” Darren called through the door as his boots stomped closer. “You’ve only got minutes at that dosage. Maybe less, since you’re a tiny thing.”
I ran faster, my pulse racing, my head spinning, and by some miracle I reached the fourth-floor landing before he burst into the stairwell below me. But I couldn’t climb any longer without passing out.
“Where’d you stash her?” Darren clomped up the stairs as I threw open the door to the fourth floor. That was as high as I could get, without heading to the roof. “You know I’ll find her.”
The hallway warped and stretched in front of me, like a carnival mirror maze, and I wasn’t sure whether that was from the tranquilizer or exhaustion.
“Not long now!” Darren pushed open the door behind me, but he wasn’t running anymore, and he wasn’t shooting either. He knew he didn’t have to.
When I realized I wasn’t going to make it to the stairs at the other end of the long hallway, I stopped and grabbed the nearest doorknob. Twisting it took too much effort, and the click of the broken lock sounded distant, as if I were hearing it through a tunnel. I pushed the door open, listening to the steady rhythm of Darren’s footsteps at my back. My legs folded beneath me just inside the room.
Gravity ripped the doorknob from my grip as the floor flew up to meet me, and the side of my skull hit the linoleum with a sickening thud.
A shadowy form appeared over me as I blinked sluggishly, struggling to stay conscious.
“Hello, Abby. I’m officer Darren Park. What do you say we get to know each other?” He lifted me, and as my head fell back against his arm, the world went dark.
“Aaaaabby… Wake up, now.” The voice was familiar, and just hearing it made my stomach churn, but at first, I couldn’t quite remember why. “We have a lot to talk about.” Something patted my cheek, and my eyes flew open. Darren’s face hovered over me, and the memories snapped back into place.
Robyn.
Dart gun.
Hunters.
Nonononono!
I tried to push him away, but my arms wouldn’t move. Neither would my legs. I couldn’t sit up or roll over. I couldn’t move at all except to breathe and to blink. I was frozen. Paralyzed. At the mercy of a psychotic hunter with a badge.
A cold draft stirred my hair from the gap at the bottom of the window. My bare feet were warm from the heating vent over the end of the bed. I couldn’t move, yet I could still feel everything.
Terror surged through me, and my chest felt too tight. I couldn’t breathe. There was nothing covering me but borrowed clothes, yet I felt a brutal pressure crushing me with the weight of my own nightmares. My memories.
I had to move.
“Where’s Robyn?” Darren sat next to me, and when the mattress sank beneath his weight, panic shot up my spine like a flame fed with fuel. I recognized the creak of the springs. I knew every lump and crack in the plaster overhead. I knew that drafty window. He’d carried me back to my dorm room.
I was going to die in my own bed.
“I’ve checked every room on this floor,” he continued. “If I have to go look for her again, you’ll both die slowly and painfully.”
Wait, he’d already looked for Robyn but hadn’t found her? Where the hell was she? Was this some kind of trick?
My pulse thudded in my ears. How long had I been out?
It would have taken several minutes to check every room on the third floor, and Jace had said he was on the way. Could I stall long enough for help to arrive?