Reclaiming The Key
938 Words
Chapter 13
The door clicked shut.
Darkness swallowed Claire whole.
Old paper. Ozone. Cold air moving up from below. The brass key was still in her fist, slick with tunnel water. Her other hand was empty. Damien’s warmth was gone.
Three meters. Fifty meters. The math of him fractured the second the wood sealed.
Above, the grate screeched. Boots. Movement. The Board wasn’t leaving.
“Claire Whitaker. Final approach,” the speaker said again, but it was muffled now. Separated by wood and stone.
She didn’t answer. She took the first stair down.
Water dripped from her coat and hit stone with a sound too loud. One. Two. Three. The stairwell spiraled. No rail. Just a wall on one side and a drop on the other that she couldn’t see into. Rainwater made the steps glass-slick.
Her lungs were still burning. Her thumb kept finding the teeth of the key like a rosary. Bank. Proof.
Then the sound changed.
A knife left a sheath. Metal on leather. Soft. Final.
Damien.
She stopped. Didn’t turn. Because if she turned, the door was there, and he was there, and the fifty meters was a lie again.
“Don’t,” she said, and her voice echoed back at her. “Don’t you count.”
On the other side of the wood, he didn’t speak.
She heard it instead. A boot sliding in water. A breath he was trying to keep quiet. He was counting. She knew he was. One meter. Two.
The wood shuddered.
He wasn’t leaving his post. He was testing it.
Claire pressed her palm flat to the cold wall to steady herself. The cut at his temple flashed behind her eyes. Rain in his lashes.
The speaker above crackled again. “Seal confirmed. Move to Archive.”
They were coming for the wooden door. For her.
That’s when the stairwell betrayed her. Her foot slipped. Not much. An inch. But the step was wet and her knees were shaking. She went down hard on one hip. Pain shot up her side. The brass key clattered, skittered, and fell.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
It bounced down the spiral, disappearing into the black below.
“Claire!”
His voice broke through the door. Not low. Not clipped. Her name, raw.
The wood took a hit. Not a boot. A shoulder. Once. Twice. The old brass plate jumped in its screws.
“Damien, stop” She scrambled after the sound of the key, hands slipping on stone.
Another hit. The wood cracked. Light split through. A thin, knife thin line of Board flashlight.
“Rule three,” he said through the door. Right against it. She could hear him breathing.
“I lost the key,” she said, and hated how small she sounded.
“I don’t need it.”
The c***k widened. Fingers. His fingers, white-knuckled, in the split. The door was old. Municipal. It wasn’t made to hold him.
Claire found the key at the bottom of the curve, in a puddle. She closed her fist around it and ran back up.
The door gave with a scream of wood.
He didn’t fall through. He caught himself on the frame, chest heaving, water streaming from his coat. His eyes found her immediately. Not the stairwell. Not the danger. Her.
He was soaked to the bone. The cut at his temple was bleeding again. And he was furious. Not at her. At the meters.
“You ran,” he said.
“You let go,” she shot back.
“I didn’t.”
He was inside before the door could close again. One step. Two. He closed the gap in three strides, and this time he didn’t stop at three meters. He stopped at zero.
His hands came up to her face. Wet. Cold. Shaking. Not from cold.
“Look at me,” he ordered. Thumb brushing under her eye, catching water that wasn’t rain. “Say it.”
She couldn’t breathe. The stairwell was too narrow. He was too close. The Board was too near.
“Fifty meters,” she whispered.
“Liar,” he said, and his forehead dropped to hers. “You’re here.”
His mouth found hers. Not the key vow. Not dry and careful. This was wet and desperate and furious. Water on his lips. Blood from the cut on his temple smeared at her hairline. He tasted like cold air and panic.
His hand slid to the back of her neck, holding her like if he loosened his grip the stairwell would take her again. The other arm locked around her waist, pulling her off her bad hip and into him. She gasped into his mouth and he swallowed it.
Above them, a boot hit the wooden door.
They broke apart by a breath.
His eyes were dark. Undone. He pressed his forehead to hers again, once, hard. “Bank. Proof. 7:00,” he said against her skin. “And you. You’re not alone .”
The door took another hit. Splinters rained down.
He didn’t let her go. Not yet. His thumb dragged over her knuckles until her fist opened and he saw the brass key, dented but whole. He took it. Slid it into his own palm. Closed her fingers over it with his.
“Mine to hold,” he said. “Yours to use.”
Then he stepped back. Not three meters. One. A shield again. Knife out. Body between her and the door.
“Down,” he said. No question. “Stairs. Now. I’m your fifty meters.”
The wood cracked down the center.
Claire ran.
And this time, he didn’t count.
- Writer
