shook her head. “No, I think you are Escape-Capades.”
Neela stepped behind her. “Persey, are you sure?”
“I’ve been a complete idiot,” Persey said, holding the gun steady. “He told me his last name at the Hidden Library and at the time I thought it was kind of odd, but I couldn’t put my finger on why. Kevin Lima. The international symbol for the letter L. Like in L. Browne.” She took a step away from him, shepherding Neela behind her. “What does it stand for? Lucas? Larry?”
If Kevin had been considering a protest, he quickly decided against it. The carefree Kevin vanished, and the guy who remained was cool and calculating, an imposing figure of vengeance. “Lincoln.”
“Oh my God,” Neela said.
“Lincoln Browne,” Persey said. “Sounds like a car model.”
“Cute.”
The pounding was louder, closer. She could hear voices too, shouting words that sounded very much like “Police!” and “Open up!”
She eyed the camera, hoping it was recording. She wanted a record of what happened next. “Wes killed B.J. and Arlo, and drugged Shaun. But it wasn’t at Mackenzie’s direction. It was at yours.”
Lincoln laughed as he flashed one of his winning smiles. His overly tan skin gave him an affable-worldly-guy kind of aura that was deceptively disarming, and Persey could see how manipulative he could be. “The best part was that he didn’t know it was me! I was a voice on the phone only. He had no idea I was there to get rid of him afterward.”
Neela flattened herself against the wall. “Oh my fajita-ing God.”
“In the Hidden Library, I was faltering. I couldn’t figure out the final puzzle, and I remember you said that Persephone translated into ‘bringer of death’ and suddenly I knew how to solve it. Because you fed me the answer.”
“Okay, yes.” Lincoln grinned wider. “But you mostly figured out the rest on your own. I swear. You’re pretty damn smart.”
“And…and you wanted me to punch in the wrong code in the classroom,” Neela added, anger creeping into her voice. “Because you knew what would happen.”
Lincoln shrugged but didn’t offer a defense.
“I think you picked me,” Persey continued. “I think you’d been waiting for someone to get close to the solution so you’d be able to tag along on this competition without anyone suspecting who you were. Someone who had no connection whatsoever to the Brownes and Escape-Capades. So you doctored the game to make sure I’d solve it.”
“Was Leah in on it, too?” Neela asked.
Lincoln shook his head. “I didn’t trust anyone with my secret. She knew her script, and that was all. As soon as the competition began, she was completely locked out of the control room. Everything was automated.”
The pounding was now accompanied by a buzz, which caught Lincoln’s attention. “I’m guessing she’s the one who called the police.”
A flash of metal jutted through the pristine white of the shiny wall, and then a circular saw ripped into the stucco. The police were cutting through.
“They’re coming!” Neela cried, grabbing Persey’s arm. “We’re going to be okay!”
“It’s over, Lincoln,” Persey said. Finally.
“Not quite.”
The words were ominous and Persey tensed, but instead of racing toward her, Lincoln backed away. Toward the wood chipper.
“I get to choose how this ends,” he said, pausing by the conveyor belt. “This is my escape room.”
“Lincoln, no!”
In a flash, he had turned the machine on; the deafening roar drowned out all other attempts at speech. The police had managed to cut an L-shaped portion of the wall away and were using a battering ram on the other side to knock the rest in. Lincoln flashed Persey a smile, gave her a familiar wink; then as the police barreled through into the white room, Lincoln dove headfirst onto the conveyor belt and was gone.
PERSEY REMEMBERED NEELA’S HAND. IT SPENT THE BETTER part of the next hour clasped in her own, neither girl ready or willing to let go until a detective, anxious to get their stories separately, forced them apart.
She also remembered Leah’s panicked, tearstained face, running back and forth getting information for whoever was asking. And Greg, still sullen in his neon lime green, leaning against a wall after his statement had been given, staring fixedly at his phone.
A veritable army of police and firefighters had descended on the Escape-Capades Headquarters. From where she sat in the glass-walled lobby, Persey noticed rows upon rows of black-and-white sedans, white-and-blue SUVs, and red trucks—a sea of spinning lights and beeping radios—parked haphazardly throughout the once-empty lot.
Between the questioning and conversations going on around