Read Against the Dark for Free Online

gloves back on, and shimmied through the space under the elevator car. She gripped the rope with her hands and legs and slid into the belly of the elevator shaft. Macy stood at the very bottom, partly illuminated by her cellphone light. She waited, holding the door open. “After you, chiquita taco.”
    Angel popped through. White Jenny followed.
    “Did you get all the blood?” White Jenny asked.
    “Pretty sure,” Angel said.
    “Who cares. They can’t tell dick from your blood,” Macy said. She flicked on a flashlight. “Damn.” They stood in an intersection of four tunnels.
    It was nothing like the model.
    “Jocko dies,” White Jenny said. “He made up this part of his map. Didn’t think we’d find out.”
    “These could all be dead ends for all we know,” Macy said.
    Voices sounded out from somewhere above them.
    Angel felt a pang of fear. Trapped. “No,” she breathed.
    “Bitches?” Macy put up her hands and slowly lowered them, as though she was closing something. Their old signal for calm, something she’d been doing since they were twelve. “Who gets the best of us?”
    “Nobody, bitches,” White Jenny said.
    Macy fixed on Angel fiercely.
    Angel frowned. “Nobody, bitches.” Their old mantra.
    “That’s right, girls.” Macy pulled out her tube of lucky lipstick, pink with silver flecks, and rolled it around her lips through the lip hole in her facemask.
    Angel and White Jenny got out their lucky lipsticks, too.
    Putting on lucky lipstick was a kind of group meditation, a signal to the world that they were in control no matter what it looked like. The careful application of lipstick in the face of the instinct to panic and run had always given their criminal minds the space in which to work.
    Macy snapped the lipstick top on and rubbed her lips together. “Four hallways,” she finally said, stating the obvious. She pointed. “Mini HVAC. That’s the way to the mechanical.”
    White Jenny pointed at another. “Wine cellar this way, probably with a delivery door in the middle of everything. One of these other two is likely designed for escape.”
    “Agreed.” Macy pulled out her cellphone and flipped on the flashlight function. They searched the floor with their lights.
    “Boot prints,” White Jenny whispered loudly.
    “Go, go, go,” Macy said.
    They ran down the tunnel, which stretched on and on, illuminated every few yards by a fluorescent bulb. This was good. The right choice.
    They came to a metal ladder in the wall.
    “Take it,” White Jenny panted. “Yes, yes, yes.”
    Macy climbed up top, pushing up a cover. Cool air gusted in. “Supply road,” she whispered down. “East edge of the grounds.” She pulled herself up and disappeared. Angel went next, climbing the ladder and pulling herself up into the cool darkness. They were on the far lawn. Flashlights played around the grounds in the distance, nearer to the mansion. On the other side was the wall that ran all round the property.
    Dogs barked.
    White Jenny heaved herself up and over, and Angel replaced the cover. The three of them got up and ran like hell for the wall. White Jenny already had her rope out. She lassoed one of the spikes. Lassoing was a skill White Jenny had taught herself in juvie; it had seemed innocent enough to the counselors at the time.
    Macy went first and cut the barbed wire at the top. Angel and White Jenny followed over and dropped. Soon they were sprinting through the darkness on the other side of the wall, past some other houses and through a service alley.
    They reached a street that seemed almost regular, except for it being in a gated community. They wouldn’t be truly okay until they were out. They cut through lawns and went low past bushes and finally reached the community gate, which was a lot easier to get over than Borgola’s.
    Finally they were out. They collapsed together behind some bushes in the dirt, and leaned against each other, panting.
    “What if I left my DNA?” Angel