Locked Out (No Way Out Series Book 2) Read online

  “I want to feel your body tighten around mine. I want to make you feel everything you’ve dreamed of feeling,” he utters into my ear. But my dreams were never eccentric enough to imagine this. The pain of a first time leads to the pleasure of the second. There is no pain here, wherever here may be. There’s flowers blooming, waves of an ocean crashing, and a warm sun melting into my cold skin. There’s warm butter melting over a warm dish of food and that is what I feel inside. “I want to make you scream louder. Scream my name.”

  As if I have lost all control, I shout his name over and over until my body jerks against his with uncontrolled reflexes. Warmth fills me and makes me feel as though I’m melting into this bed. I let out a long breath and allow the smile to stretch my lips into an arch across my cheeks. One by one, blades of grass tickle my back and the dew droplets I had forgotten about reappear along with the cool breeze. And when I open my eyes, I see Sin, naked…lying over me…smiling a smile I believe is only for me. “The thought of a bed in a warm room was nice, but as long as I’m experiencing you, I don’t care where I am,” he says.

  He slides over to the side of me and wraps his t-shirt around me. “My head and stomach are actually feeling better this morning.” It’s a relief I’ve needed to hear. “No more raw birds.”

  “What’s happening to me? The hallucinations. Why?”

  “It’s both of us. We’ve been starving for too long and our neurological capabilities are weak. We need to find a steady income of food. We’re running out of time.”

  12

  Chapter Twelve

  Sin

  THREE DAYS LATER

  Her limp body feels heavy in my arms, regardless of knowing she weighs no more than ninety pounds. Explaining that we’re almost there means nothing when she can’t hear me. But I tell her anyway. “We’re so close, Reese. We’re so close.” I don’t know how I’m running. I don’t know how I’m breathing or standing. Surviving the odds doesn’t explain my luck. I knew she would be the first to drop. She is skin and bones and her body has nothing to feed off of.

  I don’t know how many of them had been following us since we left, or why they had chosen to leave us alone until yesterday, but I’ve had to outrun them three times now. They must be the ones who win the food battles every week because they have far more energy than I have ever had while living here. Although, that doesn’t explain their insatiable hunger for their own species—nothing can explain that.

  “There it is. The rumor was true,” I tell her. A condemned stone house with no windows or doors, covered in overgrown ferns and weeds. I run in through the opening, circling around for a minute before setting Reese down in the corner. I press my fingers against the artery on her neck, double-checking to make sure she’s still alive.

  Barely. “Hang in there, babe.”

  I start tearing up floorboards, looking for this entrance. This urban legend spread as a rumor across the camp of sheds. They—whoever they are—made this place far enough away that most of the starved inmates would never have the means to make it here. Yet, we did. Barely. I get most of the floor torn up before I find a metal door with a latch and a lock.

  “Reese, I found it.” I crawl over to her, removing her right boot where she has kept the key I gave her. The key Mom left me for a just in case. She left me a just-in-case form of survival but didn’t tell me where it would work or how I could escape. This key has been the only form of hope I’ve had since the day Mom left.

  As I retrieve the key, Reese stirs slightly, her eyelids fluttering. “I found a door.” I don’t know if she can hear me or understand me, but in case she can, I want to give her the hope she’s needed for so long. I promised her I’d get us out of here. Alive.

  Crawling back over to the door, my heart pounds against my chest and sweat beads over my forehead. My stomach churns into knots as I slip the key into the lock, and I’m shocked to see that it fits smoothly inside. I twist to the right, hearing a click. Confirmation that the key works. Dear God, this is it. The lever is rusted, making me work to release the door from its hinges, but after a short moment, it opens up into a dark hole. A dark hole I will blindly jump into without fear of what is on the other end because it sure as hell can’t be worse than what is on this side. I run and grab Reese, seeing more of those assholes out the window. They’re walking toward the house and I know I led them here, but they don’t have the key. I’ve got to get her down there before they come in. As I’m lifting Reese from the ground, I see one of the guys outside, the larger and stronger of the bunch, now running up the path.

  I slide down into the hole with Reese held tightly under my arm. There’s a ladder I’m clinging to as I pull the door down over my head, twisting the latch to lock in place. The banging on the door echoes around us, vibrating the walls closely surrounding our heads. I descend the ladder, wishing I had a free hand to grab my flashlight. Claustrophobia sets in after several minutes of descending into what feels like a bottomless pit. I can’t see the end or the beginning now. I just know I’m stuck and it feels like the walls are caving in around me and the air is becoming thick and hard to breathe through. What if I’m just imagining this? That thought has entered my head too many times in the past couple of days.

  My feet finally reach solid ground and there is no more light surrounding me than there was when I was climbing down here. I feel around, my hand finding walls on both sides, telling me I’m in some kind of hall. Walking blindly, sounds begin to grow in volume—whispers. “Who’s there?” I shout. Quiet laughter echoes between the walls and I swallow hard, trying my best to ignore the fear running through me.

  “Sinon, go back,” I hear. Sinon. Mom?

  “Mom?” I shout. “Where are you?”

  “Sinon, don’t come any further. Please, listen to me. You don’t understand.” Screw that. I’m not going back there to die. If I die finding my way out of this hell, I’ll die with some pride at least. I continue forward until I hit a wall. A metal wall. I feel around from top to bottom and side to side until my hand sweeps over another latch handle. Expecting it to be locked, I’m shocked when the latch unhinges the door. I slide it open, finding light beaming from a stark white room.

  As my eyes adjust to the brightness, I see a wall lined with computers. Lots of them. And there are people sitting at each computer. All of them are now staring at me holding Reese.

  Mom is one of them.

  She jumps from her seat, throwing her arms around me. Pressing away slightly, she grips her hands around my face, looking into my eyes as tears fall from hers. “They’re going to kill you,” she whispers through a silent cry. “They want you dead, Sinon.”

  “I was going to die out there,” I grunt.

  “I know,” she responds. “I should have known better. This is all my fault. You have to know I had no control over any of this or over the fact that I left you there. That was not what I wanted. You know this, right?”

  “I have hated you for a long time,” I tell her honestly. “But I believe you.”

  “This poor girl,” she says. “Someone help me with her.”

  “Uh, they’ll kill us too,” one of the men says from his seat at a computer.

  “We’re going to die down here anyway. For God’s sake, Peter. Help me.” The man stands up from his chair and runs to Mom’s side, taking Reese from my hands.

  “She needs food.”

  “So do you,” she says, running her fingertips over my exposed cheek bones.

  “Where the hell are we?” I ask her.

  She laughs quietly, breaking eye contact. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I can’t,” she says.

  “You can’t ever tell me a thing, and you left me to die,” I remind her. I’d take a bullet for her. I came with her to Chipley to protect her from Dad, and this is how I’m thanked. I’m not the parent, and yet, I had acted like one for so long to her, always needed to protect her, taking care of parts of our life
that fell behind when her work took priority. Her research was her child. She was a good mother, but she let too much get in the way of the life she once wanted. It was like she got tired of having a family and needed something new to give her the thrill she wasn’t feeling anymore. Dad didn’t help this, but God, what about me? I didn’t ask for this shit.

  “I didn’t choose this,” she says again.

  “Where the hell are we?” I ask again, demand seething through my words.

  “She’s waking up!” Peter shouts from the other side of the room.

  Mom runs to one of the walls across the room and pulls a hidden drawer out, lined with metal. It looks like a damn morgue hole. It probably is. She pulls out two sandwiches and two bottles of water. She tosses a sandwich and a drink at me and runs to Reese’s side, unwrapping the sandwich on the way. “Honey, I need you to eat this.”

  “Who are you?” Reese groans. She attempts to claw herself away, against the floor, moving away from Mom, so I rush to her side and move Mom out of the way, hoping to ease some of the fear I can assume she feels.

  “It’s okay,” I tell her, running my hand down the side of her face. “Eat the sandwich.”

  “Where are we, Sin? What is this?”

  “I don’t know. We’re in some underground bunker below Chipley. And that’s my mother.” Reese’s eyes are larger than I’ve ever seen them. Her thoughts are scattered as is. Between the hallucinations and her memory loss over the past few days, she could hardly make heads or tails out of what was going on before she started passing out.

  Reese begins to scream, swatting at Mom’s outstretched hand and me. “Get away from me,” she shrieks.

  “Phase seven,” Mom says to the controllers behind her. “Cell three.”

  “What are you talking about?” I ask, anger raging through me.

  “She needs to be contained.”

  “No, you aren’t doing anything with her. What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “Peter, John. Please,” she says.

  “Why are you acting like you’re the goddamn leader here?” I seethe.

  “Because I am.”

  13

  Chapter Thirteen

  REESE

  Darkness. Four black walls with no lights, no windows and a door I can’t see. Darkness. My shrieks are going unheard. Muted. I’m mute in the dark.

  A sandwich rests in my hand and a bottle of water sits beside me. With my eyes closed, I slowly nibble on the sandwich, taking only a couple of bites at a time as I was instructed. They said my body would reject food if I eat more than a few bites. They said the light would destroy me. They said this is the last phase and this is their only option. The only option is darkness.

  How did I get here? Who brought me here? I just wanted to bring Mom her lunch, and now I’m here in the dark. I don’t like the darkness. I need light. Please. Please. Please. Why is this happening to me?

  I pull myself up to my feet—my cold feet, feeling the iciness of the cement. I place the sandwich down next to the water and hold my hands up against the wall. Circling the room, I search for a way out, but everything is sealed tight, leaving me in this large coffin to die. I don’t want to die in the dark.

  Circle, circle, circle. Walking until my knees tremble. Walking until I fall heavily to the ground. I rest my face against the floor, feeling a soothing against what feels like a burn. I close my eyes, trying to imagine light, but I fail. I don’t think I can remember what light looks like or feels like. How long has it been since I’ve seen light? My mind feels blank, like someone has stripped away all of my memories. I don’t know how someone could do that.

  And if there is no light, how I could see a man standing in front of me wearing a military uniform?

  *

  Want more? Make sure you check out, Unlocked, the last installment in the No Way Out Series.

  About the Author

  Shari J. Ryan is an International Bestselling Author of heartbreakers and mind-benders. Shari was once told she tends to exaggerate often and sometimes talks too much, which would make a great foundation for fictional books. Four years later, Shari has written over twenty novels that often leave readers either in tears from laughing, or crying.

  With her loud Boston girl attitude, Shari isn’t shy about her love for writing or the publishing industry. Along with writing several International bestsellers, Shari has split her time between writing and her longstanding passion for graphic design. In 2014, she started an indie-publishing resource company, MadHat Books, to help fellow authors with their book cover designs, as well as assistance in the self-publishing process.

  While Shari may not find many hours to sleep, she still manages to make time for her family. She is a devoted wife to a great guy, and a mother to two little boys who remind her daily why she was put on this earth.

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  Make sure you join her Twisted Drifters Reader Group at: http://bit.ly/2e17FsX

  For more information:

  www.sharijryan.com

  [email protected]

  Other Books by Shari

  Last Words

  Manservant

  Man Flu

  Man Handler

  Man Buns

  Darkest Perception

  Raine’s Haven

  A Missing Heart

  Queen of The Throne

  Spiked Lemonade

  A Heart of Time

  Ravel

  No Way Out

  Red Nights

  TAG

  You’re It

  Schasm

  Fissure Free

  When Fully Fused