The air smelled dank, but that’s not what woke her.
The sound of the laptop inches from her ear went into cooling mode—its fan began to whirl loudly. As it was an older piece of equipment, it was working hard to stay awake and functioning.
Sloan knew how it felt. She opened her blue eyes to watch it as though it were a fly on the wall. She kept waiting for it to do something of some significance, knowing she should do something about it, but not sure how to begin. Instead of coming to life, the screen went black.
She looked around the room in which she woke sprawled flat on her stomach, face first into the packed dirt ground.
Pushing up carefully, she felt her muscles argue with the attempt at movement. She felt like she’d spent the weekend at training and had performed very poorly.
Once she was finally upright, she dusted off and looked for the door so she could get out of here.
There was no door.
No windows either.
This is like a bad riddle, she thought.
I must still be asleep. She pinched her arm, trying to force herself to wake, but the room stayed the same as her skin yelled back at her for her inane tactic.
The walls looked to be made of brick, though Sloan was very sure if this was the prison she thought it was, the brick walls were much more than one layer thick. She had no way of knowing what day it was, or what time. She remembered being at the ranch house in Texas when men stormed into the room and attacked her.
Sloan forced herself to breathe, an attempt to slow her bird’s wings flapping heart caged behind her ribs.
Looks as if I’m supposed to do something with the laptop. She frowned at it.
That’s when she saw the scrap of paper that had been blown off to the side. She crawled to it, still unsure of her legs and turned it over. It read, “WATCH ME” in thick, black ink—all capital letters like some sort of note written by a narcissistic psycho with a God complex.
Sloan had no idea how accurately she predicted her jailor until she pressed the play button on the old laptop and watched in abject horror at the man who had her trapped like one of his rats. Now when was he going to open her cage to see if she were stupid enough to go running for the cheese?
There has to be a way out of here, Sloan breathed deliberately in through her nose and out through her mouth.
Chapter 50 Cell #3—Maze
The silver-backed coydog whimpered softly before opening his bright-yellow eyes. It didn’t matter how dark it was in the room, Maze could see well enough with his nose to know his Meg wasn’t there with him. Her scent so much a part of the coyote, he would smell her in his sleep and feel safe knowing she was safe.
Maze didn’t remember life before his Meg. She was always there, rubbing his ears, hugging him, using him as a pillow for her head. Maze loved everything about his girl and would do anything to be near her. She was his and he was hers. If a coydog could imprint on a human, Maze had done that with Meg from the time he was a pup.
Now Maze stood on shaky legs and paced the room, smelling every morsel of packed dirt. His heightened sense of hearing and smell gave him clues about this room that none of his metahumans could discern. Many sick people had been in this room before—using this corner to urinate and defecate, using that corner to sleep. Maze smelled stale excrement, sick people and something else that itched his nose almost painfully. If he could put words to it, it would have been arid sulfur and ashes, but all Maze was searching for was his Meg.
He kept sniffing the air, trying desperately to separate the rancid stench from foreign scents, peeling back layer upon layer of smells until he found Meg. The coyote in him felt elation and had to whip back his head to howl wistfully at the wall he knew her to be behind—somewhere. He couldn’t stand it for even one more second.
Maze began digging at the packed dirt that made the floor right against the wall—Meg’s wall. Time held still as he worked furiously. His front paws scrapped at the aged ground so fast, they blurred. He nuzzled his nose in the hole he was making, sniffing the dirt to help him know which way to move. Dirt flew out from behind him once he moved past the six-inch top layer of near cement-like substance.
He worked for an hour without stopping.
He didn’t stop when he felt his first nail rip away, nor did he stop for the second or third.
Maze kept digging.
Desperation made him whimper as he dug.
Images of his Meg flashed in his canine mind and his devotion drove him further into the hole as he worked to find a way under the brick wall separating him from his girl.
By the end of the second hour of digging, the formerly regal-looking, fifty-five pound, coyote-German shepherd mix was completely underground with his ripped-up feet, still digging. His beautiful thick coat was crusted with the damp earth though which he was frantic to pass.