“We’re not using the door.” Another wave of nausea hit me, and I took several breaths through my mouth until it passed. “We’re going to dig ourselves out. Is there anything in here we can use to dig?”

“I…”

“Think about it while you work your hands to the front.” I braced my back against the wall and lifted my butt. Sliding my hands underneath me, I then concentrated on unthreading my arms from my legs.

Greta’s voice shook with fear. “If he sees we’ve done this, he won’t like it.”

“We won’t be here when he comes back.” With my back to the wall, I pushed up to standing, then waited out a rush of dizziness. Greta seemed to be working on slipping her hands to the front.

I turned and pressed my eye to a crack between the slat. The ground was clear for about ten feet and then it hit the woods. I took a step toward another wall and my legs nearly buckled underneath me. I caught myself against the wood slats and waited for a new round of nausea and pain to subside.

“What the hell did he give me?”

“Some drug they created but it didn’t work out for recreational use. Obviously. It’s brutal, Carly. You need to sit and rest.”

No fucking way was I going to sit and rest. Unless he was stupid, he didn’t care if I survived or not, otherwise he would have given me a coat or a blanket. “No. We need to find something to dig with.”

I looked out of the slats in the second wall and saw more woods. The third wall faced the side of a small wood cabin. A black truck was parked out front. Mud was caked on the sides, and I realized it had double wheels in the back.

“Charlie/Shane’s the one who was at Lula’s property,” I said. “Only she must have seen him coming and run out into the woods.” I moved to the wall with the door and saw a narrow road curving from the house and into the trees. “We need to go out on the side opposite the house. Toward the back,” I said, nodding in that direction. “We’ll dig a depression big enough for us to slip through, run into the trees, and run parallel to the road until the house is out of sight. There’s bound to be another house somewhere close.” I hoped.

It was a solid plan. We just needed to find makeshift tools and hope that the asshole didn’t come out to check on us.

“We can’t do that, Carly. If he figures out what we’re doin’…”

“He’s not gonna figure it out. Not until after we’re long gone.”

I found a metal coffee can full of screws on the ground, so I slowly dumped them out, careful to make as little noise as possible. Dropping to my knees in front of the back walk, I gripped the lip of the can and pushed it into the ground as hard as I could. A small amount of soil got scooped up, and I tossed it into the corner before going in for another. The ground was hard, but we’d get through it.

Greta found a small garden shovel, and I suggested we use it cut our wrist bindings before we started digging.

It took multiple attempts for me to get the angle and pressure right, but I finally cut through her bindings. By the time I finished, my hand was shaking, and I dropped the shovel to the ground and took a few seconds to recover.

She shook out her hands and released a soft moan, then wrapped her arm around me and hugged me tight.

I sank into her for a moment, soaking up her body heat, before I reluctantly pulled free. “Me next.”

She nodded and picked up the shovel, and I got a good look at her as she started working on the rope. The band of her ponytail had slipped a few inches from her head, making the hair around her head loose and messy. Her face was more swollen than I’d realized, and her sweater was covered with splotches of blood.

“What does he ask you when he comes in?” I asked, the words taking more effort than I’d expected.

“He asks where Lula is,” she whispered. “Where she put the money. I don’t know anything about any of it, of course, but he doesn’t like that answer.” She gave me a wry smile, but it stretched her swollen, busted lips, and she winced. “I’m not surprised you’re here. The last time he paid me a visit, he asked about you and if you were workin’ for Bingham. He thinks you know something about Lula.” She paused for a moment, looking up into my eyes. “Carly, he’ll try to beat it out of you.”

The hairs on my arms stood on end, and a new wave of energy flushed through my veins, pushing away the exhaustion. We had to get out of here before he came back.

Greta was almost through the rope, so I pulled my wrists apart and broke through the final cords.

I rubbed the rope burns on my wrists and said, “Let’s get started.”

It was slow going. The ground was packed, but we were determined. We worked in coordinated silence as I kept pushing back against the overwhelming urge to lie down and take a short rest. If I closed my eyes, I had no idea when I’d wake up. I prayed the adrenaline rush continued to hold off the darkness in my head.

The deeper we dug, the more freezing winter air filled the shack. The snow continued to fall, adding to the dirt we were scooping. After we’d been at it for twenty minutes or so, we could clearly see the outside. The ground was covered in a light dusting. Panic hit me when I realized we were going to leave tracks pointing to our escape route. We needed to get out of here as quickly as possible so the continuing snowfall would hopefully cover our tracks.

“Stop,” I said, closing my eyes for a second as a new round of nausea and dizziness hit me. “I think we’re close. Let’s check the depth.”

The depression was about a foot deep in a half circle. Freedom was so close I could taste it, but it made me anxious too. If he decided to come in and check on us, it would be difficult to hide what we’d been doing. But the hole still wasn’t big enough for us to escape. “I think we only need to go a little farther.”

“Okay.” She continued digging while I took another few seconds.

The movement had warmed me up some, but my head was killing me and my balance was off, and a new worry took hold. I was going to slow Greta down when we got out. I wasn’t sure I could run, let alone walk without falling over.

After another five minutes of us working in silence, I checked the hole again. “I think it’s good enough. Greta, you go first.”

She stared at me in wide-eyed terror. “I can’t.”

“You can,” I said. “And you will.”

“What if I get stuck?”

“Then I’ll dig you free. Now go.”

My bossiness must have overridden her fear because she got on her stomach and started to put her head through first.

“Stop,” I said. “Put your hands through first so you can pull yourself up.”

“Yeah. Okay,” she said as though giving herself a pep talk. She did as I’d suggested, threading her arms into the hole and then her head.

I realized our mistake straightaway—we should have given the hole more of an incline, but it would work in a pinch. Greta had gotten the top half of her body through, but we hadn’t made it wide enough for her hips. She was stuck. She started to panic, struggling against the blockage, but I put my hand on her lower back and said, “Calm down. He’ll hear us. You’re okay, I’ll dig you free.”

To my relief, she settled down and I used the shovel to dig around her hips, trying to not jab her despite my growing sense of urgency.