No Ordinary Day , Tate, Harley [ebook offline .TXT] 📗

I guess.” She smiled despite the situation. “I like the distraction while I’m getting ready.”

“Can you get a signal? I keep trying to load the Georgia Power site, but it won’t do a thing.”

“It’s the elevator.” The man from the morning spoke for the first time since the lights flicked out. “We’re in a giant metal box. Reception is terrible.” He leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms.

“So that’s it? We just wait?” Tyler reached for the emergency phone. “Hello? Hello? We’re stuck in the elevator—” After a moment he replaced it. “There’s no one there. Not even a dial tone. Shouldn’t there be a dial tone?” Panic edged up his voice.

“Haven’t you ever been stuck in an elevator before?”

Tyler spun around in the small space. “Once. I was seven and all by myself. It took my parents six hours to find me.” He palmed the wall. “I’d never been so thirsty in my life.”

“If the confinement is bothering you, try to regulate your breathing,” offered the man from the morning.

“What?” Tyler turned to him. “What good will that do?”

“Focus on your breath. Count to four on the way in, hold, count down from four as you breathe out, hold. Ten seconds total, then repeat.”

Tyler tried it. “It’s not working.”

“Give it at least a minute.”

“I don’t—”

Emma reached out a hand. ‘“It’s worth a shot. I can do it with you.”

Together, the two of them slowed their breathing until it matched. By the time a minute rolled by, Emma was calm and collected. Tyler stopped pacing and leaned against the wall.

“Where did you learn that?”

The other man shifted across the elevator. “YouTube.”

Emma laughed and angled her phone so it lit the elevator before sticking out her hand. “Emma Cross.”

After a moment, the other man shook it. “John Smith.”

“Seriously?” Tyler snorted. “You know that’s like the name everyone gives when they don’t want to tell the truth.”

“Is that right?” He sounded unimpressed.

“Tyler Savateri.” He stuck out his hand and John shook it. “You should really think about jazzing that up. What’s your middle name?”

“Tyler!” Emma admonished him, more like a mother than a fellow lab tech.

“David.” John didn’t seem to mind. “What can I say? My parents were traditional.”

The conversation continued in fits and starts, with Tyler intermittently exclaiming about the close quarters and lack of cell service. After half an hour, he cursed and banged the wall with his fist. “That’s it! I can’t just stand here and wait for someone to let us out. We have to do something!” He reached for the closed doors and tried to wedge his fingers inside. They wouldn’t budge.

“You’ll never move that door on your own.” John stepped off the wall. “But if we work together, we might be able to get out of here.”

Chapter Four

Holly

A wave of Cheerios sloshed over the bowl as Holly carried it to the kitchen table.

“What did I say about overfilling those bowls?”

She rolled her eyes. “That I always make a mess and waste half the milk.”

“It’s true.” Her dad handed her a paper towel. “Now clean that up before we get another batch of ants.”

Holly set the bowl down before crouching above the linoleum. As she wiped up the spill, her father busied himself with his coffee, adding milk and sugar and giving it an exaggerated stir.

“I thought you were cutting back on the caffeine?”

He grimaced. “Me too, but this Congressional testimony has me so nervous, I can hardly sleep. I’m dragging all day.”

Ever since her father told her about the testing gone wrong at CropForward, she’d been worried. It sounded more like the beginning of a spy thriller than real life. A handful of researchers out to prove a big corporation really was a greedy profit machine. She sat back down and frowned at her cereal bowl. “Are you sure the seeds are no good?”

Her dad leaned against the counter and rubbed his eyes. He was right about the not sleeping; the dark circles and puffy skin broadcast his nervous state to anyone who glanced his way. “The subjects showed decreased fertility in each subsequent birth, with the second generation almost completely sterile. The subjects who did produce offspring showed signs of hair loss, dermatitis, and sometimes incurable itching. Nothing I want to experience.”

“But those are rats, right? I mean what’s to say it would have the same effect on people?”

“We test on rats not just because they reproduce like crazy, but because they are very similar to people genetically.”

“You can’t be serious.” Holly made a face.

“I am. Researchers recently mapped the entire genome of lab rats and concluded one-fourth is shared with humans. That’s approximately 700 megabases of DNA shared by rats and people.”

“Still seems sketchy to me.” Holly picked up her bowl and drank the last dregs of milk.

“Holly?” Her father’s voice took on an unexpected edge. “Get in the basement.”

“What?” She lowered the bowl in time to see her father crouch below the counter. “What’s going on?”

He swallowed and his finger shook as he pulled out his phone. “Just do it.”

“You’re scaring me.”

“Go!”

Holly scrambled out of the kitchen chair as something shattered in the back of the house. “Was that the back door? What’s happening?”

“You have to go, honey. Now.” Her father pushed her toward the basement. “Get down there and whatever you see or hear, you don’t come out. Understood?”

Panic lodged in Holly’s throat and she nodded at her father before turning toward the basement door. Keeping to a half-crouch, she hurried through the kitchen with her father following right behind. She eased the door open but hesitated at the landing. “I love you, Dad.”

“I love you, too. Go!” He nudged her down the stairs and shut the door behind her.

“Zachary Klein!” A voice Holly didn’t recognize boomed from somewhere across the house.

Holly eased to the floor and wedged her face against the basement door. With one eye, she could see the kitchen, hall, and part of the living room. Her father’s feet emerged from the pantry, too close