Locked Out (No Way Out Series Book 2)

by Shari J. Ryan

  My begging cries grow louder as the feeling of free falling falls upon me. Everything tightens and my heart stills as I take that anticipated fall. Tremors quake through me as everything relaxes heavily into the earth. Sin moves heavily against me a few more times, groaning against my ear until he falls on top of me, breathing heavily against my neck. “My God. You have made the last five years of my life worth surviving,” he utters. “I was so lost, Reese. So damn lost. And I’ll be damned, but I’m so grateful you’re the one who found me.”

  Maybe he isn’t as big of an asshole as I thought.

  “I’m still glad I said ‘Screw you,’” I smile against his cheek.

  4

  Chapter Four

  Sin

  Reese is like my own personal detox. For every moment of anger and hostility this girl has redirected toward me, I have grown a new appreciation for the badass side I see growing within her. I can’t take my eyes off of her as she slowly slips her clothes back on, all while trying to hide the struggle of a smile painted across her pretty little lips. “I should practice shooting some more,” she says tying up the laces on her boots.

  I haven’t made much of an effort to get dressed as I’m sitting here against the tree in nothing but my boxer shorts, so I reach up and grab a branch, tugging it away from the tree. “Here, shoot that leaf,” I point to the one dangling inches over my head.

  “Are you out of your mind?” she asks, tying her hair back up.

  “Yup. Now shoot.”

  “I could shoot your hand off, or—or I could end up putting a bullet right through your head.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t do that. That would kind of suck.” I continue holding the branch still. “Come on. Show me what I know you can do.”

  “Sin, no. I’m not doing it.”

  “What happened to the girl with confidence?” I stare at her for a minute, watching a darkness seep in through her eyes. There it is. She walks over to the pistol and lifts it back up, inspecting it for a moment, stalling. She backs up until she’s at least ten feet away from me and lifts her arms up, holding the pistol just as I showed her. “Back up some more.”

  I can see she’s debating whether or not to argue, but I also think she doesn’t want me to remind her of the confidence issue. She backs up another five feet. I’ll quit bugging her now since I guess I would like to keep all of my fingers. She lifts the pistol back up and squints her right eye shut. My eyes are locked on her chest and the heaviness of each one of her breaths. “Sin,” she breathes out.

  “You won’t hurt me,” I tell her. She squeezes her finger over the trigger and releases. I squint, nervous at first to look up at the leaf and hopefully all of my fingers. With one eye open, I glance up, seeing another hole directly through the center of the leaf. This girl is damn good. “Shit, girl. You got some sick gift there. You sure you never shot a weapon before?”

  She drops the pistol down by her side and walks over to me slowly. The wind is blowing the loose strands of her blond hair across her forehead and I unintentionally lose myself in the moment, seeing something change within her. I don’t know what it is, but she’s driving me nuts. She kneels in front of me and leans in toward me. “How do you know I wasn’t taken here for my bad behavior? How do you know I wasn’t being committed to Applebrook the day you saw me in the hall? How do you know I didn’t murder someone with a weapon,” she looks down at the pistol, “just like this one.” She leans in closer, her lips close enough to touch. “Have you considered the thought that maybe you’ve had me all wrong?”

  Holy fu— her lips crush into mine as her legs wrap around my waist. An ache in my groin has me losing my mind and trying to figure out how to get her clothes off as fast as I can. But that thought is interrupted when she stands up, leaving me with the wind of her presence as she walks off back toward the water. This chick will most definitely be the death of me.

  She takes her bag from the ground and slings it over her shoulders before squatting down in front of the water. I watch her observing the dead bodies at the bottom of the pool. The train of thought running through her right now is intriguing and I want to know exactly what she’s thinking because regardless of her being locked up for three years, she still seems like she’s got this hidden secret of intelligence I’m dying to uncover. “We need to keep walking,” I tell her.

  “We need water. Is there any water that isn’t deadly?”

  “There is, but it ain’t near here.” I finally stand up against the tree, feeling a slight unease in the back of my head. I reach around to the wound, checking on the damage left behind from the food fight. I pull my hand back around to check for blood, displeased to see that there is, in fact, blood coating my fingers. “Hey,” I say, softer than I intended. This wound is starting to make me a bit nervous. I can’t afford an infection right now. I don’t have much for medical supplies and what I have has to last us until we die or get the hell out of here—whichever comes first.

  Reese runs over to me with worry laced through her blue eyes. “What’s the matter?” She looks down at my hand and back up at my face. “Did I do that?” She thinks she shot my hand.

  I nod and laugh quietly. “No, babe.” I wipe my hand off on my pants and turn around. “It’s my head.”

  “Where’s the first-aid stuff?” she asks, urgency filling her voice.

  “In my bag.” Reese runs over to my bag, rummaging through it. She pauses for a minute while she’s in there and I know the first aid shit was right on top, so she shouldn’t be having much trouble finding it.

  She still hasn’t moved. I hear her unfolding paper. What the hell? Why now? I move up behind her, tearing the paper out of her hand. “I just need you to help me with my head.” I shove the paper into my back pocket. Damn, I can’t keep much from this girl.

  “What is that?” she asks.

  “My head, please,” I say, although it comes out more as a growl.

  “It looked like directions. Do you know how to get out of here?” she asks.

  It’s the question I’ve asked myself hundreds of times, yet the only information Mom left for me makes no goddamn sense.

  “No. Just, Jesus, can you help me or not?” She presses on my shoulders, forcing me to sit in front of her feet. She squats down behind me and I can feel her eyes inspecting whatever the damage must look like. It can’t be good if she’s looking at it as long as she is. “Am I dying, or what?”

  “It’s infected,” she says quietly. I can’t say I’m surprised. The ache has been running down my back for hours, but I’ve done my best to ignore it. Being inside of her made forgetting about it pretty easy. Although I think if I suggested that as a quick fix right now, she’d probably just call me an asshole again. “This is going to hurt.”

  “It already hurts,” I remind her.

  “It’s going to hurt more,” she says, obviously needing the last word.

  “Do what you need to do.” She takes the small bottle of rubbing alcohol I threw in my bag and pours it over my head. Every nerve in my head feels like it’s in shock or on fire, and dammit to hell, I can’t even remember my name right now.

  Although regardless of not being able to think straight, I sure as hell feel the needle piercing back through my skin again. “Just tightening it back up.”

  “Wasn’t it already tight?” Jesus. I’m shrieking like a girl at this point and if the circumstances were different, she’d be laughing at me for reacting this way. Shit, that hurt. “Are you done?”

  “Yes, you big baby,” she says, blowing on the spot gently. My body can’t take much more of the dizzying sensations hitting my skin right now.

  “Just stop, please. Thank you.” I stand back up, feeling out of sorts again. This has to stop. I did not need this. We didn’t even get much food out of it and we’re both starved nearly to death at this point. We need to find something to hunt, which is why we need to keep walking. The prisoners have cleared this place of any animal years ago. The only place we have any hopes o
f finding anything is at least fifteen miles from here, and I don’t know if I can even make it that far at this point.

  She puts the medical supplies back inside my bag, zips it up and hands it over to me. “Sorry for going through your stuff. I shouldn’t have.”

  Great. Now I’m the ass. “It’s fine.”

  She takes her bag and places her pistol into her pocket.

  “Is the safety on?” I ask, and she looks at me with confusion. I guess that means she wasn’t actually a murderer before finding herself condemned to this place. I reach into her pocket and pull the pistol back out. “See this?” I point to the safety switch, showing her how to lock it in. Looking embarrassed, she takes the pistol from my hand and slips it back into her pocket.

  “So, it’s at least a fifteen mile walk, , but I’m hoping we’ll find food and water there.”

  “Hoping?” she replies.

  “There are no guarantees here, Reese. I think you’ve learned that over the past couple of days. All we can do is cross our fingers and hope for the best right now.” I begin walking alongside the dam in the direction away from the main camp. I hear her following in my footsteps and I’m gathering she doesn’t want to talk too much. She’s probably regretting everything that just happened between us. I took her virginity and she’s probably sore and shit. Plus, I’m acting like a dick. Is there really any other way to act here, though? I reach my hand back to her, waiting for her to succumb to my assholeness. A minute passes, but I still hold my hand out, waiting for her to take it.

  She finally slips her small hand into mine and grips her fingers around mine. Without much to say, I bring her knuckles up to my lips and kiss her gently. I hear a sigh of relief expel from her and I pull her into me. “I’m sorry,” I say. I don’t know why I said sorry or even what I’m really apologizing for, but it felt like something I needed to say.

  “I didn’t know you were capable of speaking such a poisonous word,” she replies under breath.

  “I’m capable of more than you give me credit for,” I remind her. “Look, Reese.” I stop walking and bring her in front of me. “We haven’t had much water and hardly anything to eat in days. I’ve got an infection and—”

  “What are you saying?” she snaps. “You promised me we were going to make it out of here, Sin. You promised me. That’s why I’m here with you. I was ready to give up days ago. I was ready to give up in the shed, actually. Do you know how many times I tried to…to—”

  “To what?” I growl.

  “End it all. The pain. The starvation. The thirst. Did you know a person can go a couple of weeks without eating or drinking before—before your body shuts down? I do. I know this because I tried it. At the end of it all, during the days I started hallucinating and wondering how long I would have to lie in the middle of the cold, wooden ground, waiting to die. And then I realized I couldn’t sit there waiting for it to happen, so I began to eat the rations I had stored. I made myself sick for a week after. I thought my stomach was going to explode or implode—I couldn’t determine what I was feeling. I just thought I was going to actually die from eating due to whatever damage I must have caused while I was trying to starve myself to death.”

  I can’t get mad at her. I did my own stupid shit. Locked in a dark cell, with no light, I tried to convince myself I was dead a number of times, hoping it was just true. It never was. It made me feel crazier by the day. “I get it.”

  “So don’t sit here and give me your stupid death warnings because neither of us are dying here. We would have already died if that was our destiny. So, sorry, you’re stuck with me, and you’re stuck with your stupid hot body and your even stupider cocky personality. Suck it up, Sin. We’re finding food and water, and then we’re getting the hell out of here.”

  I can’t help the small smile biting at my cheeks. I don’t know why this girl was brought here, but with as many shitty hands that life has dealt me, I sort of won the royal flush with her. I continue pulling her ahead into the blinding sunlight.

  “Do the prisoners come down this far?” she asks as we turn a slight bend in the path.

  “Not usually. Why?”

  “Do you know who that is?” she asks, pointing up at the tree.

  5

  Chapter Five

  Reese

  THREE YEARS AGO

  “I’ll be home at six tonight, Reese,” Mom shouts into my bedroom. “Just a short shift today.”

  “See ya later,” I yell back. A short shift for mom is nine hours. I wouldn’t call her a work-a-holic, but she’s a devoted nurse who loves what she does. Now that it’s summer and school and soccer are over for a few months, she’s picked up some more shifts. I do think she overdoes it, but she shoos me off when I tell her that. I try my best to pull my weight around here and help out. I babysit every morning and the family pays me pretty well, so it’s enough to take some of the burdens off of us at least. Mom and I are more like friends than we are mother and daughter, but it’s because we’ve been in this survival thing together since Dad died. She needs me just as much as I need her. Dad’s death forced me to grow up much quicker than I probably should have, but that’s life.

  I head into the kitchen to make myself breakfast, finding Mom’s lunch bag sitting next to the gallon of milk. Crap. I don’t know what’s with this hospital she works at now—most of the time it’s like it’s an empty shell filled with no more than thirty patients. There’s no cafeteria there or any place to grab food. And of course, it’s a bit of a walk to the grocery store—too long to make it there and back during a break. We don’t have a working car anymore, so we walk everywhere. Thankfully, we are only a fifteen-minute walk from the hospital.

  I have to bring this down to her or she won’t eat today. With her diabetes, she can’t go without lunch and she wouldn’t dare to test that awful boss of hers with an extended break. He’d probably fire her on the spot. This guy, Jackson Crownwell, is supposedly the wealthiest man in this county—he owns both hospitals and a bunch of local shops and office buildings here. He’s sort of like the mayor I guess, but our town doesn’t have a large enough population for a mayor—or that’s what I’ve been told anyway. It doesn’t make much sense to me. Any time I’ve asked questions, Mom usually just says it’s politics and not to worry about it. So, I don’t.

  I pour myself a small bowl of cereal and eat it quickly so I can get down to the hospital. I debate calling her at work to let her know I’m coming, but she may get in trouble for taking a non-emergency call during her shift. It’s best if I just slip in and out before anyone sees me. She’ll have her lunch and I’ll have some peace-of-mind.

  I step outside, lifting my face up to the sun, still appreciating it after living here for seven years. Before Dad died, we lived up in Washington. It was always raining, dark and kind of gloomy. We lived there because of Dad’s job at Microsoft, so we didn’t have much say about our distaste for the climate. After he died, Mom took a dive into a funk. She was miserable and depressed, as was I. Dad was everything to us. He supported us and cared for us so we wouldn’t ever have to worry about needing or wanting anything. He took pride in giving us a good life. Regardless of how much financial planning he did for our family, though, it was all taken from us when he was in the car accident on his way home from work one night. He was in a coma for six months and needed multiple surgeries. Mom cleaned out the bank accounts at the chance of keeping him alive, but in the end, it just wasn’t enough. Anyway, we had no reason to stay living in the rainy state, so we moved down to a more affordable and sunny location in Oklahoma. With Dad’s life insurance money, Mom bought us a tiny house and went back to school so she could support the two of us. It was a wise investment, but the money ran out quickly and she fell into a pile of debt, which is why everything she makes now basically goes to her credit card and loan payments. Life dumped on us. Still, Mom developed a new outlook and pushed through our troubles with a smile, constantly reminding me that life will get better. I believe her. I have
to. I want her to be happy again. A real kind of happy. Not the fake kind she portrays for my sake.

  I walk through the dirt lot of the hospital and up to the front doors, noticing how little the grounds have been cared for lately. I haven’t been here in a few months, but it looks like they kind of let the place go a little, which is strange. Mr. Crownwell is usually on top of all this. After all, he has an image to maintain.

  I walk up to the front desk, finding Miss Amy, the receptionist, where she usually is. I will say, this hospital has had basically no turnover since Mom started working here five years ago. “Reese Pieces, how is my favorite young lady?” she squeaks, running out from around the desk and wrapping her arms around my neck. Miss Amy is about sixty, old enough to be my grandmother. She’s a vibrant woman, full of energy and always has a smile on her face. Her hair looks a little grayer than the last time I saw her and she’s wearing a touch more makeup than usual; although her dark red lipstick is something that has always been constant with her. It makes her teeth extra white and her smile large. “Are you here to see your mama?”

  “She forgot her lunch today and I didn’t want her blood sugar levels to crash.”

  “You are such a sweet young lady. Your mama sure is lucky to you have you as a daughter.” She pats me on the head and returns to the back of her desk. “Let me see if I can locate her for you.” She searches through the computer for a minute and lifts up the receiver on the phone. “Paging Laura Daniels. Could you please come to the front desk,” I hear Miss Amy’s voice boom through the speakers in the hall.

  It takes a couple of minutes but the front desk phone rings and Miss Amy quickly picks up the call. “Is that her?” I whisper.