Page 441 of The Winslow Brothers

I peer out of the cart and realize two things—I’m halfway between floors, and thankfully, the doors to the floor above me have glitched open enough that I can get my body through without having to strong-man them open. The fall to ground level is nothing to snub my nose at, but since I’ve never reallybeen afraid of heights and have a long history of doing reckless shit with my brothers, I don’t hesitate over the risks.

Right into action, I pull myself up and out of the cart and onto the sixth floor of my building.

I dust off my now-sore hands and push to standing, but when my ears catch the faint sounds of the wordhelpcoming from the other elevator shaft, I rush over and put my ear against the closed doors.

“Help!” I hear a desperate woman’s voice call. “Can anyone hear me? I need help!”

“Hello! Can you hear me?” I yell back, hoping to reassure her that someone’s here and that help is on the way.

“Hello?” she yells back, her faint, feminine voice sounding both strong and terrified at the same time. “Is someone there?”

“I’m here!” I scream again, this time a little louder. “Have you tried the emergency phone?”

“It doesn’t work!” she yells back.

Of course it doesn’t.Fucking hell.

“Do you know what floor you’re on?”

“I think I’m on the sixth!” The panic in her muffled voice is unmistakable. “And I really need to get out of here! Please help!”

There is no way on God’s green earth I can just leave this woman stuck inside an elevator when she sounds like she’s in distress.

Okay, she’s on the sixth floor. You can work with that. That’s a good thing.

“I’m going to try to get the doors open and see if I can get you out of there, if that’s okay with you?”

“Oh, well, actually, I was hoping to stay in here for a while. But if you must…”

If I weren’t so over fucking blackouts in the city this summer, I might have laughed. I guess that was a pretty dumb question. Instead, I give her a simple but hopefully comforting instruction. “Hang tight.”

My fingers are already torn up from my last battle with elevator doors, but my eyes quickly locate a bright-red fire case with an ax inside. Shirt off and wrapped around my elbow, I break the glass and get the fire ax out without slicing open my skin.

“Are you still there? Hello?” The woman’s muted voice hits my ears again as I step back toward her elevator. “I really need help!”

“I’m still here!” I shout toward her as I position the blade of the ax inside the seam of the sixth-floor doors. “Just stand back while I try to pry the doors open!”

I lift the ax’s handle to get some leverage before pushing hard to one side. The doors open just enough for me to get my hand inside, and I juggle the transition from the ax to my hands as carefully as possible. I’m not looking to lose any fucking fingers today.

Finally getting my footing, I push the doors with a strong heave, straightening my arms out until the doors have completely opened to the sides. Unfortunately, the only thing I can see is the top of the elevator cart below me. This one, it seems, didn’t stop in as good of a position as mine did.

Thankfully, it’s only a couple of feet down, and I can easily pull her out through the top emergency hatch if I need to.

“Can you hear me down there?” I ask toward the top of the elevator. “Are you doing okay?”

“Um…” She pauses, her voice sounding out of breath. “No. Not really.” There’s a small, almost indistinct whimper and then words that seemed dragged from somewhere pained inside her. “I don’t think I’m okay.”

My eyebrows draw together, and before taking even a moment to think, I’m on top of the cart, looking for the release to open the emergency hatch.

“Hang on,” I tell the woman inside. “I’m coming to get you, okay?”

I find the latch and release it, opening the hatch and peering down below into the soft light of the car. The woman, it turns out, is a woman I know.

And from the looks of her strained position on the floor, she’s in full-blown labor.

Fuck!

Maria

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