heard Mackenzie trying to plunk out the melody on the keyboard, but her brain was only half registering the noise. She was completely focused on the immobile form of the boy band singer.
Persey didn’t know why she felt the need to discover why B.J. was lying on the ground, but she did. Logically, his role in the escape room completed, he was just staying out of the way until they either opened the door or failed miserably. But then why lie on his back? Why not crouch down behind the sofa, where he’d be completely out of sight? Or better yet, just duck inside one of the still-open ATM booths? Either of those choices made more sense.
But as she rounded the leather sofa, she knew exactly why B.J. was on the floor. He lay on his back, his pale face turned toward her at a sharp, unnatural angle with open, unseeing eyes. His frost-tipped hair was slick and matted, blood pooled around his cheek and nose, oozing outward as if in slow motion, and on the ground beside him lay one of the framed records, the plastic corner of which was cracked and caked with skin and blond-tipped hair.
B.J. was dead.
PERSEY WANTED TO BELIEVE THAT B.J.’S BODY WAS A FAKE, A masterful illusion meant to up their panic and anxiety levels as they continued through the competition, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away, and as the seconds turned into a minute, she noted that his chest never moved. He wasn’t breathing.
B.J. was dead. There was no doubt. His eyes never blinked, his neck was crimped at an unnatural angle, and as she peered down at his body, she could even see the jagged wound peeking out through the blood-matted hair where the plastic corner of the framed record had made contact with his skull.
Not just dead. Murdered.
There was no way he could have slipped and landed unluckily on the framed record—it had been on a shelf at shoulder height, which also meant that it couldn’t have fallen from the shelf and hit him. From that height, it might have broken his big toe, but the kind of force required to crush his skull and possibly break his neck…No. Someone did that to him. Someone—perhaps one of the other competitors—picked up that record and struck B.J. down from behind.
Panic hit her like a bucket of ice water to the face. The anxiety Persey had felt in the airplane as it approached Las Vegas and the claustrophobia she’d fought against in the ATM booth were nothing compared to the terror that descended upon her as she stared fixedly at B.J.’s corpse. He had died right there in the room with eight other people and no one heard a sound. Had they been so absorbed in solving a puzzle that they didn’t even notice a man dying on the other side of the freaking room?
“Guys!” she cried, forcing her eyes away from the body. At the keyboard, Mackenzie was plucking out a tune on the keyboard, with more wrong notes than right ones.
“Aren’t you supposed to be a music major?” Arlo asked, wincing as Mackenzie hit another wrong note.
“I am,” Mackenzie said through clenched teeth. “But I’m a voice major.”
“So?”
Mackenzie sighed. “So if they asked me to sing that stupid tune, we’d be out of here by now, but transcribing by ear isn’t exactly the opera singer’s forte.”
“No kidding,” Wes said.
“Guys!” Persey yelled louder. Her voice felt raw, strangled. “You need to see this.”
“Yeah, well, your superweed didn’t help.” Mackenzie shook her head as if trying to clear it.
“Guys?”
“Kosher Kush,” Wes said reverently. “So good.”
If anyone heard Persey, they paid her no attention. They were all focused on Mackenzie and the piano keyboard and the relentlessly ticking clock.
“Guys!” Persey yelled. She hated yelling. “Something happened—”
“Shh!” Arlo hissed, holding her hand up for silence. Mackenzie, shoulders hunched over the keyboard, was starting again.
“B, A, G,” she sang out the note names as she played them. “E, F-sharp, Geeeee!” Quick breath. “B, B, Deeeeeee, G, F-sharp, G.”
Persey heard a loud thud, as if a huge bolt had been thrown, and the double doors at the top of the stairs slowly swung open, revealing a brightly lit room faced in shiny, silvery steel.
“You did it!” Neela cried. But her excitement was short-lived. “The clock is still ticking, though, which leads one to believe that the challenge is not completed. Maybe we need to vacate this room entirely?”
Persey staggered toward the desk. Her legs felt like