Page 73 of Shattered Hearts

Maybe it’s not a three, maybe it’s a two. Maybe. I don’t know.

My eyes flicker open.

Gage is deathly pale and he’s breathing shallowly through his mouth.

“What?”

“Where the fuck were you? I’ve been waiting for you to come back for fifteen minutes.”

“Oh!” My legs buckle and I fall onto my butt. Baby jumps up and protectively stands next to me, pushing her body against my shoulder.

Desperately, I beg, “Try it. Try it before the numbers fly out of my head. Seven, three, eight, four.”

“What the fuck, Zarah? You freaked me out.”

“I was there. I washere. In this elevator, with two doctors. Please, Gage. Hurry. The numbers will disappear. Seven, three, eight, four.”

He punches them in, and the light on the keypad blinks red to green. The elevator lurches.

“It worked,” I whisper, then let out a gasp of laughter. “It worked.”

Gage kneels next to me, nudging Baby out of the way. “You scared the fuck out of me. It’s like you were under a spell.” He brushes the hair out of my face. “Are you okay?”

“Yes.” I rise to my knees using his shoulder as a support. “Yes. It worked. God, it worked!”

“I don’t give a shit about that. I care about you.” He grips my chin and meets my eyes, worry creasing his face.

I press a quick kiss to his lips. “I’m fine. Help me up. My legs feel like spaghetti.”

We’re stumbling to our feet when the elevator reaches the basement, and the doors slide open.

The stale air hits me, and I recoil, pressing my face into Gage’s chest. I breathe in the scent of his leather jacket and try to keep my stomach from purging the cheeseburger I ate at lunch.

Baby barks and races off.

“Jesus. Let’s get out of here.” Gage’s voice rumbles through his chest under my ear. “Fucking creepy.”

I force myself to step away. “No. I need to see this. I have nightmares about this place.” He clenches my upper arms, and even through my jacket, his hold hurts. “I need to know what’s real and what isn’t.”

“Okay,” he says reluctantly, “but the minute you say we go, we go.”

“Yeah.”

The basement is dark, dank, and there’s only one lone light weakly shining down the hallway.

Gage turns on his phone’s flashlight.

I don’t see Baby anywhere.

There’s a receptionist’s cubby to the left, vacant now, and dark like a cave. A fiberglass wall separates us, a hole cut into the middle and a slot at the bottom for paperwork exchange. That’s all there is, and we turn a corner to see the rest.

A scream rips through the air, and I jerk.

“What?” Gage asks.

“Nothing.” He didn’t hear it. The scream came from inside my head. Echoes of squeaky wheels, women crying, pleas to stop, and men, growling to tell the truth. Tell the truth and the pain will go away.

A doctor rolls me down the hallway, and I pass a blonde woman who is also sitting in a wheelchair, tears streaking her face, her skin white as a sheet. She’s shaking, and I know she’shurting. The doctor wheels me into the room a nurse just pushed her out of. It’s my turn.

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