Read Online Reunion by Meli Raine - Free Book Online Page A

Carrie?”  
    The room starts to waver, like air on a super-hot day. I can see ripples in the air.
    “Carrie?” Chase asks.
    Allie carefully pries the phone from my fingers and speaks into it softly. I hear some assurances. A few I Love You s. Mostly the sound of Chase fighting against himself to let Allie do what he knows she needs to do.  
    We’re cornered. She should just scramble up that pipe and leave me to my fate. I make my decision.  
    “Allie, just go. You can crawl up and—”
    “Like hell I will.” She’s off the phone with Chase and staring at the scars on her arm. Her other hand reaches up to stroke her hairline.
    Ah. I see.
    I’m not the only one out for revenge. She can’t let the dean—El Brujo—win.
    All the swirling bits of myself that can’t stop turning in a cyclone inside my body come together. With an energy I haven’t felt since being trapped down here, I stand tall.
    I look at her.
    And I say, “You’re right. Let’s make this fucker pay.”
    The grin spreads across her face like pure, hard-core goodness.
    Attagirl.

Chapter Fifteen
    I help her tie the rope properly around her waist and lift her so she can put her feet in the pipe. I have to use a lot of force to get her in there. It’s a different problem tucking someone in backwards. P lus, this pipe isn’t as big as the one on the other side of the room that I crawled in.
    SNAP!
    I jump and scream at the sudden sound from the corner. Scrabbling sounds fill my ears. They’re louder and more ferocious than before.
    Something just got caught in a mouse trap.
    And it’s not a mouse.
    “ What is that?” Allie asks in a hysterical voice. A flash of shiny metal in her hand catches my eye. The gun. She’s holding it, her shoulders pressed against the pipe but the gun is in her hand. She points it toward the sound.  
    “ Rat,” I say tersely. I hold my hand up to the side of my face to block any peripheral view of the creature. “Caught in a mousetrap.”  
    “Ewwwww. Gross.”
    “Yeah.” I can tell by the lack of emotion in my voice that she’s freaked out for me. Allie gives me the side eye and her brow lowers.
    “We’re getting you out of here, you know,” she says. Her voice is commanding. Deep.
    D etermined.
    “Right.” The effort it takes to talk feels like running a marathon.
    The rat’s sounds of struggles are slowing down. It’s losing energy. It’s losing its will to live. My ears attune to the little shuffles and crackles, the weird sounds of hearing life fade away.
    And then I hear my own breath, so clear and simple, like it’s the only sound in the world.
    It’s getting fainter and fainter.
    “CARRIE!” Allie shouts from her hole in the wall . Her body starts to wiggle, like she’s coming back into the storage space, like a worm seeking sunlight.  
    She looks like she’s in oppositeland, like every part of her that should be white is black, and black is white. The room changes into a million shades of brown. I don’t hear my breath any more.
    And I don’t hear the rat.
    The word What? is queued in my brain. I know I’m supposed to answer Allie. But I can’t.
    It takes too much effort.
    “If I have to go out there and tell Mark you died in here, Carrie, because you gave up, I’ll never forgive myself. Or you,” she says. The words are there, and I struggle to understand them. My knees buckle and I fall against the wall, my elbow brushing against her nose.
    I can’t weep.
    I can’t move.
    I am that rat.
    We’re not so different after all.
    Right before Allie crawled in the tube, she handed me Chase’s phone. I had shoved it into the waistband of my pants. I feel it hum against my belly. The heat makes me feel something. Anything. There isn’t much left to feel, is there?
    I’m winding down.
    “Carrie!” she hisses. “I hear a buzz. Did Chase text you?”
    I can’t answer. All my effort goes into remembering to inhale. My body is shutting down. It pauses. It halts. Sheer force of