Page 20 of Reset

A rat went flying.

Sarah jerked back, tripped over the uneven floor, and fell into the room behind her. Her backside hit the hard rock. The candle flew from her hand. Its meager light snuffed out instantly. And blackness rushed at her. Even the glow from the room Ryan was in was blocked from her view.

“Okay, you’ve got this,” she muttered. “No big deal. Just stand up and head back into the corridor and over to Ryan. Don’t make a fuss. You aren’t a child. It’s only a dark, sinister cavern filled with…okay, that’s not helping. Come on, Sarah. Get your backside up off the floor.” She wet her dry lips and fought to breathe evenly.

Her heart was racing so fast she thought she might pass out. Dark places. Her body curled in a ball. Hiding. Scared. Memories from her childhood attacked from every direction.

Completely illogically, she swept the ground for the candle, turning her body until she couldn’t remember which way she faced. She wasn’t thinking straight, and she was aware enough to know it. Even if she found the candle, how would she light it? She needed her phone. Why was it in the bag with Ryan? Why hadn’t she thought she’d need it? She spent her life preparing for every contingency, but this she didn’t plan.

“Get up now,” she snapped at herself as she placed her hand on the ground, ready to push herself up.

Her voice seemed to bounce off the thick, impenetrable darkness as her gaze darted around, trying to find something, anything, to rest on in the blackness. She was becoming disoriented. Even though she could feel the rock beneath her, she was having trouble telling which way was up. Panic messing with her senses.

Her palm slipped forward across the stone, making her lose her balance, falling back on her backside.

Something tangled around her fingers.

Cobweb? Spider?

Awareness seeped into her mind, bringing with it a feeling of absolute horror.

No.

It couldn’t be.

Time slammed to a halt as Sarah’s universe shrunk to the threads wrapped around her hand. It felt like they were crawling up her wrist, entangling themselves in the silver chains of her bracelet. A scream became trapped inside her head as they held her captive.

“Sarah!” Ryan’s voice came from miles away.

And barely registered, because recognition had dawned through her terror. She knew what’d trapped her. Knew it with the same certainty she knew her own name, and the horror of it stole whatever reason she had left.

It wasn’t a web her fingers had strayed into.

It was human hair.

CHAPTER SIX

Benson Security

London

* * *

It was driving Elle crazy that she couldn’t find any sign of Ryan’s GPS transmitters. The last time they’d pinged on the grid was right after he’d walked out of hospital that morning. After that, they just disappeared.

“Someone has to have jammed the signal,” she muttered to no one in particular. “It’s the only explanation.”

All she could do now was set up an alarm to alert her when his signal appeared again. In the meantime, she had his online life to dig through. Hopefully, that would shed some light on his current situation.

Swiveling in her expensive, hot-pink gamer’s chair, she faced the two screens set up on the right of her massive U-shaped desk. There were six monitors in total, plus her ever-present laptop, an iPad, and several phones—just in case. One keyboard controlled her empire, and her attention flowed over the screens almost as quickly as her fingers danced over the keys.

Hacking into Ryan’s social media accounts would have been child’s play—if she’d needed to hack. Which she didn’t because she kept a password vault with everyone’s passwords in it, whether they’d given them to her or not. Mostly, it was for security, sometimes it was for when someone had forgotten their password and needed help, occasionally it was for something like this.

Elle liked to be prepared.

A Snickers bar appeared on the desk beside her keyboard.

“Thanks, Ryan,” she said automatically, then froze.