limp spaghetti. “Neela…”
“Agreed,” Arlo said. “Let’s move.”
“Yes, I concur,” Shaun said. As if his robot opinion mattered. Mackenzie, Wes, and Neela had already dashed up the wide staircase toward the open doors.
“Stop!” Persey screamed. The sound coming out of her own mouth was jarring, disconnected. She was pretty (positively) sure she hadn’t screamed since she was in diapers.
At least not where people could hear.
“Two minutes,” Neela said, her eyes shifting back and forth between the countdown clock and Persey so quickly Persey was afraid she might give herself motion sickness. “I think we all have to be out of the room to pass the challenge.”
Persey shook her head. As much as she didn’t want to hang around with a dead body all day, she certainly wasn’t going to just leave him there. “It’s B.J.”
“He probably disappeared into one of those booths,” Kevin said. He jogged across the room and took her hand. “Let’s go.”
“All the doors are locked.” She yanked her hand away, pointing to the floor. “Look!”
“Holy shit.” Kevin’s eyes grew wide as his voice dropped to a whisper. “Is that real?”
Are you joking? “Of course it’s real. He’s dead!”
Neela sucked in a breath. “What?”
“I think this is an elevator,” Mackenzie mused. She stepped through the double doors into the giant metal box. “Oooh, I wonder where it goes?”
“Um, didn’t you hear me?” Persey asked. These people were unbelievably self-involved.
“Yeah, yeah,” Wes said. “Dead body. Sure.”
“You have ninety seconds to get into the elevator,” Shaun said, “or this competition goes on without you.”
“Or we all fail…” Neela’s voice trailed off. “Persey, please. We have to go!” She stepped into the elevator with the others, leaving just Kevin and Persey at the far end of the room.
“He’s dead,” she said again, as if repeating it made it more real.
Kevin was noncommittal. “He looks dead, but we have to go.”
“But—”
“Don’t make me carry you.”
Persey narrowed her eyes. He wouldn’t.
For a moment, Kevin looked as if he was going to throw her over his shoulder and drag her kicking and screaming into the elevator, but then his body relaxed. “It’s just part of the game,” he said, repeating Mackenzie’s line from before. Regardless of whether or not he believed it. “Are you willing to risk everything to stay here with him?”
The prize money. Damn it.
Kevin smiled, sensing victory, then grabbed her hand again. “Come on!”
Reluctantly putting one foot in front of the other, Persey followed Kevin into the elevator.
Persey glared at Kevin as the elevator doors closed, angrier at herself than at him. She shouldn’t have let him talk her into continuing. B.J. was dead, and this competition needed to end, but she’d allowed the promise of money to sway her. What kind of a horrible human being was she?
Just like your dad. Just like your brother.
“Are we even moving?” Neela asked, her voice higher pitched than before. She must have sensed the tension in the cramped elevator, and it heightened her nervousness.
Riot shook his head. In contrast to Neela, he seemed cool and calm. “Not yet.”
“It’s all part of the game,” Kevin said dismissively, off Persey’s look.
“You saw him!” Persey cried. “How can you say that wasn’t real?”
Mackenzie jumped in immediately, taking Kevin’s side. Shocking. “Totally a setup. Like Kev said—this happens all the time in Escape-Capades rooms.”
Kev? Ew. “He was dead.”
“Looked dead,” Mackenzie said, correcting her. She was going to cling to her “none of it is real” routine to the bloody end. “It’s amazing what they can do with special effects and makeup.”
Persey was relatively (unfortunately) sure that she’d had more up-close experience with dead bodies than Little Miss Royal Academy, and she was not about to let herself be lectured on what she did or didn’t see. Not even Hollywood’s biggest and brightest could replicate that glassy, open-eyed look of death. No matter how much you wanted it not to be real.
“When we get out of here, I bet Leah will show you how they did it,” Mackenzie continued. She liked the sound of her own voice almost as much as Arlo did. “Like a magician exposing her tricks. You’ll see!”
“There was a camera in the room,” Shaun said. “It might have the proof.”
Persey sucked in a sharp breath. That’s right! Arlo had been threatening Leah through the camera when she was released from the ATM booth. Somewhere in the Escape-Capades HQ, Leah was watching the proceedings.
“Do you think they caught Brian’s death?” Wes asked.
“Who?” Kevin asked.
“The…the singing dude,” Wes stuttered.
“His name is B.J.” Mackenzie clicked her tongue