As he re-formed, Novo was already there, braced and ready, but massaging one of her shoulders as if she were either rubbing pain away or assessing if the damn thing had dislocated.

One by one, four more dripping and damp trainees made it out of the pool: The athletic male from the pommel horse. The one who looked like a murderer, who had piercings and tats on only one side of his face and neck. The guy who’d had his arm around Paradise. Another male who was tall and strong.

He had no idea what happened to—

The receptionist was the last to re-form, and Craeg had to turn away or exhibit an emotion that was unacceptable. To distract himself, he tried to see what was happening in the pool to the five who’d been left behind—

A door opened right beside them all, and as a stiff, cold breeze came at them, he smelled the outdoors.

Whatever was on the other side was dark.

“Who goes first,” Paradise asked.

“I will,” the pierced, Goth-looking male answered. “Nothin’ to lose.”

Craeg frowned as the sudden silence around them began seeming like a bad omen: The shooting had stopped. Which could mean that that part of the test was over … or the Brothers were taking aim again.

No, they were gone—all that was left in the pool were a couple of trainees who had broken in half, the soaking wet, sobbing figures sitting on the damp concrete with their heads in their hands or their bodies in the fetal position.

Shit. Where were the Brothers now?

“I’ll go with you,” he said to the Goth.

The pair of them were the biggest of the group, the tip of the spear, so to speak—and though he’d gone into this thinking about solo survival, he was beginning to reconsider that strident position. At least for the short term.

If an attack came at them, two were better than one.

Novo spoke up. “I’ll take the rear.”

The athlete fell in beside her. “I can help cover that, too.”

“You three,” Craeg ordered the blond female and her … mate? BF? And a guy who was good looking in a pretty-boy kind of way. “In the middle.”

At least that way, he wouldn’t worry about her.

Not that he was.

“Move out,” Craeg said.

He and the hard-core male went over the threshold together, their combined shoulders nearly filling what turned out to be a tunnel—and once they were in there, a distant flickering light became a guide they slowly progressed toward.

“What’s your name?” the Goth whispered.

“Craeg.”

“I’m Axe. Nice to fucking meet ya.”

Paradise expected anything to happen as they made their way as a group through the tunnel. Tight quartered, anxiety ridden, slow moving and wrung out, she waited for another shoe to drop, something to jump at them, fall on top of them, knock them down.

When they simply emerged outside by a bonfire, her jangling nerves didn’t know how to process the lack of attack.

And then her brain really couldn’t grapple with the fact that there was a table set up with bottles of water on it and energy bars and pieces of fruit.

Was this the end? she thought as she looked around at the pine trees, the underbrush, the stars above.

“I’m thirsty as hell,” Peyton said, beelining for the Poland Springs.

The male she couldn’t help but keep track of stopped him. “It could be a trap,” Craeg said, going over.

“You’re paranoid.”

“Did you try the food before? You like throwing up?”

Peyton opened his mouth. Closed it. Cursed.

Craeg measured the setup. Tapped the earth with the toe of his wet boot. Moved forward from the side in a crouched position. When he got close, he bent down and put his eyes on a level with the orderly array of bottles. He lifted the skirting on the table and looked underneath.

Then he picked one of the Poland Springs up slowly.

Paradise’s heart thundered. She was dehydrated, too—even after feeling like she had swallowed half that pool. But she was scared to get poisoned.

God, she had never been in this situation before—consumed by thirst, confronted by drink, and yet frozen from getting what she wanted.

“This is not sealed,” Craeg announced.

He picked up another one. And another. On the third, there was a crack! as he freed the cap. Taking a sniff of the open neck, he tested a sip.

“This is good.” He passed it back without looking—and as soon as Peyton grabbed the thing, Craeg kept going, inspecting more tops, weeding out the unsealed ones. Peyton was the one who divvied them among the group until everybody had water.

Craeg kept a bottle for himself, but didn’t drink much, tucking the thing into his belt. Then without any comment, he moved on to the energy bars, tossing out the ones that had rips in the wrappers, sharing those that were okay.

Paradise ate even though she wasn’t hungry, because she didn’t know when they would stop again or how much effort was going to be required for the next stage—and talk about food as fuel and that was it. The energy bar was a nasty mix of cardboard, fake sweet, and goo, but she didn’t care. She was going to need the calories.

If only to stay warm, she thought as a shiver went through her. November night and wet clothes. Not good for your core temperature if you were standing around.

Or stuck out in the elements for very long.

“What do we do now?” she asked everyone and nobody at the same time.

Behind them, the door to the facility slammed shut and locked.

The serial-killer guy, Axe, drawled, “That’s okay, I wasn’t looking for a reboot of that pool action anyway.”

“There’s a fence over there,” the other female said, pointing to the left.

“And over here,” the athlete chimed in.

“Bet it’s electrified,” Peyton muttered. “Everything else that’s metal has been.”

The question was solved when someone picked up a stick, threw it at the chain link—and the thing got toasted in a shower of sparks.

With some further exploration, they discovered they were in a chute of some kind, one that offered them a single outlet: straight ahead, into the dark woods.

“We go together,” she said, staring past the flickering orange light of the bonfire. “Again.”

“I hate teamwork,” Axe muttered.

“And I’m so excited to be doing this with you,” Peyton drawled back.

Without talking about it, the group fell into the lineup order from the tunnel. And then they were off, moving forward as a unit, mindful not to get too close to the chain link as the fence narrowed in on both sides.

Twigs cracked under their wet trainers. Someone sneezed. A breeze blew in from one side that turned Paradise’s arm to ice.

But all that barely registered. As she walked along, her body was a live wire, energy coursing through her veins, her instincts prickling and ready for input from somewhere, anywhere: She was on the razor-sharp lookout for anything that was wrong, a snap on the ground that was too loud, an awkward shift of Peyton’s body beside her, a creak from a tree branch over on the left … and that which she couldn’t immediately sort into the non-threatening category made her twitchy muscles and her bouncing brain want to freeze and assess. Or break out into a run to escape.

And yet they kept going. And going. And … going.

Time was passing, she thought, glancing up at the position of the stars.

And still they kept on, their ragtag group schlepping along, shuffling over the ground, limping, lurching, everyone injured in their own way and yet remaining on their feet.

Several miles later—or was it more like a hundred?—nothing had come at them.

But she wasn’t fooled.

The Brothers would be back. They had a plan for all of this.

She just needed to stay tight, keep with the group, and—

Up ahead, Craeg and Axe stopped.

“What is it?” she said as she grabbed for Peyton’s arm.

Why did she smell … fire?