Page 60 of Wired Strong

Had she been poisoned enough to be disabled? Black spots began spinning in her vision as she headed for the bedside table.She had to get away in case Connor won the fight, and she was in no shape to help the Master.

Just behind the table was a loose stone that opened a hidden exit point from the room, a tunnel so secret that, as far as she knew, she was the only one trusted to know about it. The Master had built it years ago, and had made sure that everyone who worked on it had died.

Pim Wat had just enough strength to push the loose stone. A strange numbness, a lack of responsiveness in her arms and legs had begun to take control as she threw herself across the threshold into the narrow space. The door, nothing more than a panel of three stones identical to those in the wall, slid shut silently, automatically.

Pim Wat lay flat on the cool, rough stone floor of the tunnel.

She lay there, no longer even able to close her eyelids.

Her mind scrambled frantically.She’d barely had a sip.Whatever Connor had put in the tea had been in the whole pot. Damn that trickster, she should have killed him as soon as the Master chose him!

And how had he gotten the poison? Had to be that ungrateful peasant, Kupa. She must have used the same one Pim Wat had administered to the plastic surgeons; it was the only poison the woman was familiar with.

Pim Wat hadn’t taken enough to die, or she’d be dead already—the stuff was fast acting. She was probably going to be fine, but how long would she be paralyzed?

No way to tell, and the stone wall was too thick for her to hear the fight going on in the other room—but it would be fierce, and to the death.

The Master would know where she was, and come and get her if he won.

She could relax. She could let go. She had every faith in her lover.

With repeated effort and total focus, she was finally able to close her eyelids, and it felt like a victory.

Maybe she slept for a time; maybe she was unconscious. It didn’t really matter. What did matter was that sensation was returning to Pim Wat’s extremities, a tingling to her limbs as if waking from being asleep. She wiggled her toes, her fingers; took a great deep breath that pressed her rib cage into the stone, then lifted her back. Air rushed in and flushed her with fresh oxygen. She panted as deep and hard as she could, trying to expel the toxin the only way she had available—through pumping oxygen into her blood, and pushing that through to her kidneys and liver.

The Master had not come.

He had to be dead.

The realization broke over her with a crash like a wave, sucking her under.

Pim Wat had wondered if she wasn’t like other women because she felt no remorse for the things she did. She had tried to learn compassion for the Master’s sake. He had wanted her to, though he accepted her the way she was.

But this feeling. . . this was grief. Pim Wat recognized it, curling herself into a tight ball, the shape she had been in her mother’s womb. If only she could return there and begin her life again. But she couldn’t, and because he hadn’t come for her, they would be looking for her.

She had to get out before they pinned this on her—that’s what she would have done if she had been the survivor of that fight.

There was no way to tell how much time had passed; the passage was completely dark. But Pim Wat knew the way; she had used it before.

She rolled onto her knees, and used her hands, clawing up the rough wall, to pull herself to her feet. She stumbled down the pitch-dark tunnel, tightening her robe to protect her skin from the rough stone, her mind racing ahead to the next steps.

She exited at last, near the outer wall of the courtyard and the helicopter pad.

The Master had had escape as his top priority when he created this exit, and it served Pim Wat well as she roused the pilot from the “always-ready” hut built in the corner of the helipad.

“I need to go see my sister,” she told him. “You know the address. It’s a family emergency.” The man nodded, knuckling sleep from his eyes and running to the chopper. Pim Wat looked at the stars overhead, guessing the time. No more than an hour had passed since she had lain in the tunnel—they hadn’t had time to raise the alarm yet.

“Hurry,” she said, climbing into the passenger seat. “My sister is in danger.”

The pilot hastened to obey, handing her a helmet. She put it on and buckled into her harness. She usually rode in back, disliking chopper flights with their noise, fumes, and bumpy air travel—but it was dark out on a windless night, and she was fleeing for her life. “Turn off the radio,” she told the pilot. “I want to rest.”

He flicked the switch without question.

The chopper lifted off. Energy came back into Pim Wat as they hurtled above the black jungle, arrowing toward the city. Her roiling emotions began to settle like the feathers on a bird coming to rest.

She rested her head against the Plexiglas window and planned as they flew.

Pim Wat redirected the chopper to the Bangkok airport, telling the pilot that she would take a cab from there to meet her sister at their lawyer’s. Though he raised his brows in question, used to dropping her off right in her sister’s neighborhood, she smiled and told him he deserved to have a night on the town on the Yam’s expense account.

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