Unsurprisingly, the shake was tight and short.

“This is next.” She nodded at the void. “Why the hell didn’t I bring a flashlight?”

“I was thinking the same—”

“This way!” someone hollered. “This is the way!”

In the strobe lighting, Craeg saw a group of three males gunning for the open doorway, led by a big muckling guy who wore an expression of anticipatory triumph that Craeg was pretty damn sure wasn’t going to stay in place for long.

Craeg shook his head and stepped back. However he went in there, it wasn’t going to be headlong and at a dead run. For all they knew—

One … two … three … the trio passed by him and the female, who also stepped aside.

Right away the door slammed shut with a loud clang. And then there were screams from the other side.

Craeg looked around. Maybe something else was going to open? Or was he not casting a wide enough net? It was possible that there was another answer—

At that moment, he saw a pair of ropes hanging from the ceiling about thirty feet away. He could have sworn they hadn’t been there before—who knew.

“That’s the next option,” he said.

“Let’s do it.”

The pair of them took off, running around the exercise equipment, heading for the ropes before anyone else went over there. There was no telling where the lengths led to—he couldn’t see that far up—but the lights were strobing with greater intensity, and there were no other options.

“Rock, paper, scissors for who picks first,” she said, putting out her fist.

He did the same. “One, two, three.” Craeg threw rock, she threw paper. “Your pick.”

“Right.”

Craeg grabbed the left one and pulled so hard his palms burned. Certainly seemed strong enough. But if he was wrong? Long way to fall, and there was no padding underneath.

He and the female went hand over hand, gripping, pulling up, using their feet to clasp the loosey-goosey they left behind as they ascended. And she was nearly as fast as he was, not that he spent a lot of time measuring her progress. Up, up, up—until the speakers from which the explosion noises ripped were directly above his head and the light boxes generating the jagged illumination overwhelmed his vision from straight ahead.

“Now what,” he barked when he was about six feet from the ceiling.

“Scaffolding,” she yelled back, shifting her grip and pointing.

Sure enough, there was some kind of catwalk suspended from metal wires. Glancing down, he said another prayer that the platform was strong enough to hold his weight.

“I’ll go first.”

“Rock, paper, scissors,” she hollered. “One, two, three.”

He threw scissors; she threw paper.

“Me first,” he announced.

Except the catwalk was a distance away even as he came up to its height. Holding on to the thick rope, he used his lower body to create a swaying motion … that increased to a full-on swing. It was going to require perfect timing to get this right—he was going to have to go hands-free for a good five feet of nothing-but-net. And shit only knew what he was going to find when he landed.

More metal with an electrical current piped through it?

Craeg pumped his pelvis one last time, brought his knees up, and sent his weight away from the scaffolding; then as momentum brought him forward again, he arched his back and kicked his feet out ahead of him.

At just the right time, he released the rope, giving up his tether.

At least … he hoped it was the right time.

Chapter Seven

“Get up! Peyton, get up—now!”

As Paradise lost the fight with her survival instinct and rolled her friend—or nemesis or whatever the hell he was—over onto his back, she cursed him, herself, the Brothers, pretty much anything that was a noun.

That whole faceup thing didn’t last long. As he began to heave again, she shoved him back over so he didn’t aspirate.

Glancing around, she saw … so many on the ground. As if it were a battlefield.

“I’m gonna die,” Peyton moaned.

In the back of her mind, Paradise noticed that although the noise was just as calamitous, there was more illumination¸ the flashes coming faster and staying lit longer.

“Come on.” She pulled at his arm. “We can’t stay here.”

“Leave me here … just leave me…”

As Peyton vomited again and not much came up, she looked to the far corner of the gym. There were a number of people standing around the dark opening that Craeg had told her to head toward.

“Peyton—”

“We’re all gonna die…”

“No, we’re not.”

And it was a shock to realize she actually believed that—it wasn’t just a line to offer false hope to Mr. Smooth with the stomach issues. The thing was, all this noise and light wasn’t actually producing any debris, smoke or dust, any structure rattling, any sort of real impact on the space or the people in it. It was a light and sound show, like a thunderstorm or a theatrical production—and that was as far as it went.

She also had the sense that the lights were changing, and that had to mean something.

Probably nothing good.

“Peyton.” She grabbed his arm and pulled him over onto his back again. “Get your ass up off this floor. We’ve got to make it over to the corner.”

“I can’t—it’s too—”

Yup, she slapped him. And she wasn’t proud of it or satisfied by sharp contact, either. “Get up.”

His eyes popped wide. “Parry?”

“Who the hell did you think you were talking to? Taylor Swift?” She pulled his upper body off the gym floor. “Get on your feet.”

“I might throw up on you.”

“Like we don’t have bigger problems? Have you seen this place?”

Peyton started babbling, and that was when she decided enough was enough. Straddling his legs, she took hold under his pits and used her newfound strength to walk back and drag him upright onto his pair of Adidases.

“Paradise, I’m going to be—”

Oh, fantastic.

All down the front of her.

And he was weaving so badly that walking in a straight line was going to be a challenge. Running? NFW.

“Fuck this,” she muttered, grabbing him around the waist and jerking him into a dead lift off the floor.

Heavy. Really heavy on her shoulder.

Now she was the one with the whoa-nellies: It was like trying to balance a piano up there—made worse by the fact that the weight was arguing with her—and barfing down the back of her right leg.

Paradise set off, ignoring everything but the goal of getting to that godforsaken door across the way. Her head was wrenched to one side, her neck straining so badly it burned; her shoulder was going numb from lack of circulation; and her thighs were already quivering from the stress on them.

The temptation to get lost in all those physical sensations was strong, especially as they grew ever louder and more insistent. But she wanted to … well, she wanted to get to that door, to the fresh air, to the end of all this shock-and-awe business. Then she could take a deep breath, put Peyton’s whining deadweight down, and sit in a nice, clean classroom.

Maybe share a laugh with the Brotherhood that she had made it through the worst part and now the self-defense and schoolbook training could start.

To keep herself going, she tried to remember the classrooms she’d seen as the trainees had walked from the parking area to the gym. They’d had fluorescent lighting, and banks of tables with chairs in orderly positions facing the blackboard—

“Stop,” Peyton said. “I’m going to die…”

“Will you shut up and stay still?” she said with a grunt.

“I’m going to—”

Oh, for fuck’s sake, she thought as he lost it again.

As she trudged along and panted from the exertion, the maze of athletic equipment was a total pain in the ass, the various stations seeming to have been spaced and angled in a way that made it incredibly awkward to get through, past, around.