Contracts: A King & Slater Thriller (The King & Slater Series Book 2) by Matt Rogers

Author:Matt Rogers [Rogers, Matt]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-06-24T16:00:00+00:00

47

Slater didn’t waver for close to an hour, and then everything steadily went downhill.

It started with a numb ache in his muscles. Not specific regions in particular, but all of it at once. His entire frame, throbbing and lethargic and heavy. It came out of nowhere, and he almost didn’t realise what was happening until it seized him completely. He adjusted his position, convinced he was cramping from sitting at an awkward angle.

Then it got worse.

The heaviness swamped him, like his muscles were made of lead, and his heart rate skyrocketed as soon as he moved an inch. It thudded against his chest wall, spearing up into his throat, drawing all his attention

He put it together in an instant.

His heart was working overtime to oxygenate his muscles. That was the crippling downside of having the physique of an Olympic sprinter at high altitudes. It meant there was a whole lot of oxygen required to satiate his body, and at thirteen thousand feet there simply wasn’t enough in the air.

The beginnings of altitude sickness were setting in.

He tried not to panic. There was little to do but sit in the dark, regulate his breathing, and conserve his energy. As he adjusted to the new baseline, he realised it wasn’t as bad as he initially thought. There’d been a lot of initial anxiety to overcome, but it wasn’t anything worse than a dull ache all over. He felt slightly more lethargic than normal, but that wasn’t much different from the rest of the trip. And if he could silence the worry over his elevated heart rate, he’d be in the clear.

But to put that into practice proved a lot harder than he thought.

He focused on breathing deeper, a vain attempt to inhale more oxygen, but it didn’t help. He ended up practically hyperventilating, and struggled to suppress the sound of laboured breathing. The rasping would carry through the night if he allowed it.

Then something else carried through the night.

Another twig snapping.

Clunk.

Slater had heard it before, so even though he froze up he didn’t assume the worst.

Then, at the very edge of his hearing, he picked up the faint muttering of a curse in a foreign language.

In the distance someone lit up a torch, and the white beam played across the trail.

Slater sat very, very still.

His heart thudded faster.

Faster…

Faster…

Dangerously fast.

He couldn’t take his mind off it. His muscles were screaming for oxygen, and to amplify the problem his adrenaline reserves kicked in. His vision narrowed to a tunnel and he fixated on the beam of light, only for his body to silently protest.

‘King,’ Slater mouthed.

He only allowed a sliver of sound to escape his lips.

No response.

‘King.’

Silence.

The beam of light drifted closer. Then a second one materialised right beside it, and together the beams swept through the trees further up the trail. Slater narrowed his gaze and thought he could make out a cluster of silhouettes behind the light, hunched over, barely illuminated.

Coming down the mountain.

Getting closer.

‘King.’

A little louder this time.

He had to risk it.

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