Casius was madly searching the floor with wide eyes. Something about his jerking movements sent a chill down Sherry’s spine. He was afraid, she thought. And not just afraid of the guns below. He knew something she did not, and it was sending him scampering about in fits.

She grabbed the rail and watched him, too stunned to ask what he was doing. He rounded the floor twice and evidently found nothing, because he ended with wide eyes raised to her.

He glanced above and she followed his gaze. A dark hole yawned ten feet higher. And above it—dirt. The end.

“Take your shirt off !” he snapped frantically.

“Wha . . . ! Take my what?”

“Quick! If you want to live through this, take your shirt off. Now!”

Sherry clawed at the T-shirt and pulled it over her head. She wore only a sports bra. Casius snatched the shirt before it had cleared her head and pulled it over his own. He’d lost his mind, she thought.

“We’re going for a ride. You just let go and let me carry you. Understand?”

She didn’t answer. What could he possibly . . . ?

“You understand?” His face was white.

“Yes.”

And then the gears ground to a halt and the floor began to tilt toward a hole waiting like an open mouth. It was a steel tube maybe three feet in diameter, disappearing into blackness.

Casius swung an arm around her waist and threw himself to the floor, pulling her with him so that she lay on top of him, faceup. Their heads were pointed into the gaping steel tube. He was taking her into the shaft, headfirst!

Sherry closed her eyes and began to whimper then. “Please, please, please, God.” The smacking of steel colliding with steel suddenly crashed in her ears. Bullets! Like heavy hail on a tin roof. The men below were firing their guns up the elevator shaft and their bullets were slamming into the steel floor. She clenched her eyes and began to scream.

And then they were falling.

It was why he’d searched the floor frantically, she realized. It was why he insisted on taking her shirt when he’d found nothing else. Because his back was sliding against steel. She didn’t know how long this ride would last or where it would take them, but she imagined that her thin cotton shirt was already giving way. His skin would be next.

Like breakaway tobogganers, they gained speed. Sherry pried her eyes open and lifted her head. Far away now, the dwindling entrance glowed between her jerking feet. Below her, the man suddenly tensed and squeezed her like a vise. His arms were wrapped around her midsection, coiled like a boa constrictor.