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Tee blinked when the door opened and brought in a whoosh of warm air. How had it become so cold? She moaned, wondering how long she’d been out of it. Her bare feet tingled and burned. She shook and shuddered from the cold, and one bare thigh felt hot where it made contact with the icy floor.
A figure fell into the room, and the door slammed shut, plunging them back into darkness. She’d caught a glimpse of gold hair. “Lia?” Tee struggled to her feet and hugged her still-bound wrists to her chest. Lord, the cold hurt. Where were they?
“Yes, it’s me.” Lia fumbled in the blackness until a dim light bulb came on overhead.
Tee gasped. It had been better in the dark.
Ice crystals covered the walls and door of the walk-in freezer. A young woman with long dark hair sat frozen to one corner of the room. Icy tears on her cheeks glittered. Tee looked away. But a glass thermometer at the door sparkled like crystal . . .
Like the Lucite butterfly night-light in Tee’s childhood bedroom where, at age nine, Tony Kanoa turned her into damaged goods.
Her vision darkened again, chest tightened, and then Lia’s hands clutched hers. Tee fought, struggled, crying to escape the faceless fog-demon from her past, but Lia wouldn’t let go. “I’ve got you, you’re safe. We’re together, and we’ll get out of this together.”
Tee took a big cleansing breath, puffed it out, and nodded as the room swam back into focus. She pulled away from Lia’s bound hands and took turns standing first on one foot and then the other. “A freezer? Hell of a way to die.” Two women, hands bound, with no tools to escape. They’d be pau—finished, dead if they were ever found at all.
The freezer measured six-by-five-feet. The temperature registered five degrees Fahrenheit. If standard issue, the walls, ceiling and doors, were four to six inches thick. No way out.
“Aha! Look what I found!” Lia held up a box cutter, grinning, and cut off Tee’s zip-tie and waited for Tee to return the favor. She shrugged off her jacket and held it out, and Tee didn’t hesitate. No time to be a hero. She slipped it on but it offered little relief. Even with heavy clothing, they’d both soon succumb to hypothermia, if they didn’t suffocate first.
“Aren’t these things supposed to open from the inside? Some sort of emergency switch?” Lia pushed through the swaying plastic curtains at the entry and banged on the door, searching the walls nearby for an emergency switch of some kind.
“Even if this one does, I’ve a feeling that Boss made sure we’re not getting out.” Tee dumped a carton filled with frozen mystery meat—maybe chicken?—and watched them hockey-puck across the slick floor. She used the blade to break down the box, then pressed the cardboard flat to the floor to stand on. The barrier gave much needed respite to her bare feet that might as well be dead. Her blue toes had icy white tips.
Lia noticed the body for the first time. “Oh my God! The poor woman.”
Tee spoke through her shivers, her voice a herky-jerk staccato. “My guess, that’s Momma Ruth, but doesn’t matter at the moment. Lia, we don’t have much time. Walk-in freezers are airtight. One this size gives a single person maybe four to six hours of air, and that’s with no exertion. Divide that by two for both of us. And we need to cobble something together for shelter. I wouldn’t count on more than a couple hours at most, before we’re breathing carbon dioxide or worse.”
