Page 72 of Death Trap

“Calm down. It’s just a little confidence spell. Something to take the edge off.” When she lifted her hand off me, my legs automatically straightened again and my grip eased. “How do you feel?”

Honestly? I was still scared as shit. But at the back of my mind, I could hear a small voice whispering to me:If you don’t get to that door, you’ll never get the answers you need. One step at a time. One step.

My feet moved to another plank of wood, and when the bridge swayed, I closed my eyes, terror shooting down my spine again.

“It helps not to look down, too,” Tamara added.

I’d never wanted to tell someone to fuck off so much in my life, but the voice in my head got louder.

One step.

It was smarter to focus on it and get across the bridge.

When Tamara took her first footstep onto the bridge behind me, the entire structure trembled beneath my already unstable legs. I clutched the ropes tightly and waited until everything settled again before moving forward.

One step.

“Try to keep focused on the door ahead.” Tamara’s annoying voice was a constant buzz nearby.

“I know,” I groaned. “Do you think you can give me a stronger dose of that confidence spell? It’s not giving me the big boost I need.”

“You don’t need it,” she said, getting closer to me. “We’re almost there.”

Were we? Because when I looked at the white door, it felt like it was miles away.

One step.

Listening to the little voice, I took another step forward. And another.

“That’s it. Keep going.”

My entire body was shaking. My bones even seemed to be rattling behind my skin.

Damn, Benjamin better be ready for us once I got to that door with some freaking tea and cookies. I’d need a reward after all of this.

One step.

“A couple more.”

I kept going, following the voice in my head and the one echoing behind me.

Finally, when my boots hit the solid ledge, my knees almost gave out. I stumbled to regain my footing and grabbed the doorknob to steady myself. “Shit.”

Tamara came up beside me. “That wasn’t too bad,” she said. “At least you didn’t turn into a blubbering mess. I was fully prepared to roll you across that bridge if I had to.”

“You talk as if you’ve never been afraid of anything,” I countered, glaring at her from the corner of my eye.

She said nothing for a moment. “I’m not afraid of anything.”

Lie. An obvious and gigantic lie. It was all in the hesitance beforehand. It gave her away. She just didn’t want to tell me.

I glanced over my shoulder once more, and my stomach dropped. I was more than ready to get through the door and away from that bridge.

Without another thought, I pushed the door open and walked inside…an empty but lavishly decorated living room.

I gaped in disbelief. A brown leather sofa, cushy shag rug, and paintings on the wall—this was an expensive bachelor pad, not a torture chamber in Hell. Definitely not like the empty, dark room I’d found Lisa in.

“This place is nice,” Tamara whispered in shock as she glanced around. Somewhere in another room, water was running from a faucet. “Maybe I’ll stay.”

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