Page 52 of Montana Falls
I blinked, trying to focus. The air was thick, heavy with the smell of earth and mildew. The floor beneath me was hard and uneven, like concrete that had been left to rot in adamp basement for years. Dirt crumbled under my fingers as I pushed myself up, and I winced as pain shot through my side. Everything hurt, and the more I moved, the more I realized just how battered I was.
Then I wondered where the hell was I and why the hell did I feel like I’d been run over by a truck that then reversed and did the same thing again.
I tried to take a deep breath, but the air was musty and tasted of dampness and decay. My throat tightened, and I coughed, the sound echoing faintly in the confined space. Spluttering away, I squinted into the gloom, forcing myself to focus, to make sense of the shadows and fog and… and the nothingness surrounding me. My pulse was racing, fear pounding in my chest as the realization crept in. This wasn’t just a dark room. This was underground.
A basement. Or worse. A basement like the one I’d already escaped.
The walls around me were made of crumbling stone, dirt packed in between them. It felt like I’d been buried alive. My heart slammed against my ribs, and I pressed my hand to the floor, trying to steady myself from the sheer terror of being a captive for the second time in my life.
And I was seventeen, for god’s sake. Was it going to be a yearly occurrence, or was this it? I was dying here.
As I sat there, my mind racing with a thousand horrible possibilities, I heard a groan nearby. My heart lurched, and I instinctively pressed back against the wall, my body tensing. But then I heardhim.
“Widow,” I croaked, my voice barely more than a whisper. My throat was raw, dry, like I hadn’t had water in hours. Days, maybe.
With only the slightest – okay, a lot – of aches and pain, I crawled toward the source of the noise, blinking my eyes hardenough that by the time I found Widow, I could almost see through the thin cracks in the ceiling above me.
He was lying on the ground, his body curled in on itself like he was trying to protect himself from something. His breathing was shallow, his face pale in the dim light filtering from somewhere above us.
“Widow.” I said again, gently poking his arm.
He stirred, groaning again as he rolled onto his back. His hand came up to shield his eyes, even though there wasn’t much light to shield them from. Slowly, he blinked, his gaze unfocused at first, and then he winced in pain. When his eyes finally landed on me, recognition flickered across his face, followed by something like relief.
Then sheer fucking terror.
“Delilah,” he rasped, his voice rough. He coughed, then forced himself up onto his elbows, wincing as he moved. “You’re alive.”
“Seems like it.” I nodded, biting back the panic that threatened to rise in my throat. “Where are we and what happened? Last thing I remember is being outside the car and then…”
Then pain, agony in my side, my stomach, then all of me. I remembered flickering in and out of the pain with nothing to concentrate on but the thought that I was dead.
Widow winced again as he sat up, his body trembling slightly as if every movement hurt. His eyes darted around the small, cramped space, and I could see the same fear in them that was twisting in my own gut.
“I… I don’t know,” he admitted, his voice shaky. “Feels like we’re underground. Some kind of basement or… cellar. It’s all dirt and stone.”
I followed his gaze, scanning the walls. They were rough and crumbling, cold moisture dripping down in slow, irregularpatterns. The ceiling wasn’t much better—wooden beams, rotting and sagging under the weight of the earth above us. It felt like at any moment the whole place could collapse, burying us alive. The thought made me shudder, and I hugged my knees to my chest, trying to calm the rising panic.
I’d got out of a place like this once before. I could do it again.
I had to.
“How did we get here?” I asked, my voice cracking, desperate for answers that Widow didn’t seem to have.
He shook his head, rubbing his face with his dirty hand. “I don’t remember all of it,” he muttered, his voice distant, like he was still trying to piece it together himself. “When you got out of the car, someone attacked you. They stabbed you and hurt you, and I tried to help.” He swallowed hard. “Someone took the car and drugged us both, and I blacked out after that.”
I swallowed hard, my heart sinking further into the pit of dread that was growing inside me. I vaguely remembered the chaos too—flashes of blonde hair, dark smiles and lots of shouting. But it was all a blur, jumbled in the fog of fear and pain and sheer nonsense.
Was I cursed? Surely I had to be cursed to have been kidnapped twice. There had to be a god up in the sky, going out of his way to be a dick to me. It was the only thing I could think of.
For a long moment, we sat there in silence, the oppressive weight of the darkness pressing down on us. The only sound was our shallow breathing, and the faint drip of water somewhere in the corner of the room. It was like time had stopped and the world had forgotten about us.
Widow broke the silence first, his voice low but with a forced confidence that didn’t match the fear in his eyes.
“Don’t worry. Sapphire and the others… they’ll find us. They’ll come and we’ll be okay.” He swallowed hard. “BeforeI passed out, I got a text off to the guys; they know we’re in trouble, too.”
I glanced over at him, trying to trust his words, but the doubt gnawed at me. “We don’t even know where we are or who took us.” I asked. “They might not know either.”
Widow met my gaze, and for a second, his mask of forced bravery slipped. “Don’t worry, Lilah. They will find us,” He whispered. “They won’t leave us here. Trust me.”
