chill of dread creep down the back of her neck.
“Then I’ll be forced to take drastic measures.”
“Like you did with my sister? Cut me out of your will unless I do exactly what you want me to?”
A pause. “If that’s what it takes, yes.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t let you do that.”
Then a gunshot echoed through the house.
PERSEY HELD HER HANDS UP BEFORE HER. AS IF THAT MIGHT actually stop Kevin. “What are you doing?”
“I’m trying to save our lives,” Kevin said. “Those that are worth saving, at least.”
Persey shook her head. “I don’t understand.” The bottom dropped out from her stomach, her eyes fixed on the hollow muzzle of the gun.
“Wes might have killed B.J., Arlo, and Shaun,” Kevin said. “But he didn’t do it randomly. He had to be working with somebody. At somebody’s direction.”
“Okay…”
“Someone who turned on him.” Kevin’s eyes shifted to the camera for a split second. “I’ll kill her. Let the rest of us go or I’ll do it.”
“I see where you’re going!” Mackenzie cooed happily. Thirty seconds ago she’d been willing to shoot Kevin in the head if she’d gotten her hand on that gun first, and now she had his back. Her instinct toward self-preservation was impressive. “She wanted Wes dead. And she was the one wearing the night-vision goggles in that room. Persey was the only one with the opportunity to kill him.”
Was I?
“I knew you didn’t solve that Hidden Library on your own,” Mackenzie continued, positively gleeful. “You were on the inside the whole time. What’s your real name, huh? Linda Browne? Lori Browne?”
“No,” Persey said. “And just for the record, anyone who was working this from the inside would have to be completely batshit crazy to put themselves in the kind of danger we’ve experienced today. And I may be a lot of things, but I’m not crazy.”
“Crazy might be an overstatement,” Kevin said.
Mackenzie was quick to agree. As always. “Yeah. I mean, you’d have all the insider information. Know all the secrets. There’d be a thrill in it, too. Of course you were the one coming up with all those solutions today. Oh!” she said in a mocking falsetto. “A confession! That must be what we’re supposed to do!” She laughed. “You knew the secret already. No one would have figured that out on their own.”
I did. “That actually makes a lot of sense, but it still doesn’t mean your insider is me.”
“Well, it’s either you or Kevin. You’re the only two not connected to this Prison Break thing.”
“So why not him?”
Mackenzie shrugged. “He’s the one with the gun.”
“Persey didn’t kill Wes,” Neela said. “She couldn’t have.”
“We don’t know what happened in there,” Mackenzie said. Her voice had turned slimy. “Maybe she pushed him.”
“You were there, too.” Persey arched an eyebrow. “Maybe you pushed him.”
“I don’t get my hands dirty.”
“You sure about that?” Kevin asked.
The words weren’t spoken in a flirtatious way, but Mackenzie certainly took them that way. She slid up behind Kevin and brushed her hands down the sides of his body. “I’ll show you later just how dirty they can be.”
“Make up your mind!” Kevin said, glancing to the camera once again. “Her or us.”
And suddenly, Persey had an idea. She narrowed her eyes at Mackenzie. “I’m sure your hands are quite capable of making people do whatever you want. Like Wes?”
Mackenzie laughed. “Wes was broke and desperate.”
“But not smart enough to come up with that Prison Break plan on his own.”
A tiny smile broke the corners of Mackenzie’s mouth. “Okay, I mean, when he told me about how he’d met B.J. while the two of them were getting drunk at his parents’ casino, I might have planted a suggestion.”
“You masterminded that plan?” Kevin asked.
“Yep.”
“That’s pretty hot.”
Mackenzie’s Achilles’ heel. “You think?”
“Smart is sexy.”
It took every ounce of self-control Persey had left to keep from rolling her eyes. “Just to be clear, it was you, Mackenzie, who came up with the plan to obtain confidential information on the Prison Break escape room?”
She laughed. “Well, you didn’t really think it was Wes, did you?”
Kevin’s eyes met Persey’s. “No. I didn’t.” Then in one fluid motion he spun around and fired.
The bullet hit Mackenzie square in the chest, just an inch or two from her heart, and Persey could tell by the way her body hung frozen for a moment that she couldn’t quite process what had happened to her. Blood spread rapidly across her white shirt, mixing with the grime and the gore already there and creating a