Chapter - 282
The initial thrill of finding the key evaporated as quickly as it had arrived, replaced by the grim, suffocating reality of their situation.
The dust motes dancing in the fading sunlight seemed to mock them, each tiny speck a reminder of the seconds ticking away. They were six hours into Sharon's twenty-four-hour deadline, and all they had to show for it was a single, useless piece of metal.
Rick and Sharon were hunched over the small kitchen table, the beam of her phone's flashlight creating a stark circle of light around the silver key. The plastic tag attached to it was a cruel joke. Whatever numbers and letters had once been written there were now just a faint, smudged ghost of a clue, an illegible mess that defied every attempt to decipher it.
"Maybe it's a 'B'?" Sharon muttered, her voice tight with frustration as she zoomed in with her phone's camera, the pixels blurring into a meaningless blob. "Or an '8'? Damn it, it could be anything."
