that statement was meant for, but as she hung up the call, she was pretty sure she saw a familiar gleam in her brother’s eyes, and it made her blood run cold.
“WHAT THE FAJITA?” NEELA SAID. PERSEY ALMOST (NOT really) thought she’d been about to swear. “One of us?”
Wes groaned. “Not this again.”
“There is no ‘again,’” Neela said, using air quotes. “This is the first time anyone has suggested that one of us might be involved in these deaths.”
“Murders,” Kevin said, correcting her.
“Fine.” Wes whirled on him. “You want to single out potential murderers? You get my vote.”
“How do you figure?” Far from being horrified or offended, Kevin merely smirked at Wes in amusement. Which only pissed off his accuser more.
“What’s your connection to Escape-Capades, huh? You and your little girlfriend are all hot and bothered to figure out how the rest of us are linked to this place, but I don’t see you volunteering information about yourself.”
Like you did?
Kevin held his hands up before him, palms out, a gesture of innocence. “I’m just collateral damage, remember? Along for the ride.”
Which wasn’t really a point Wes could argue, given the reason for Kevin’s inclusion in this competition in the first place. Not that he was willing to give up his side of the argument.
“What about her?” Wes jabbed his thumb over his shoulder in Persey’s direction.
Persey had spent her entire life being spoken about as if she wasn’t in the room. She’d been conditioned to remain quiet, to accept the degradation because it had come from her father. But she sure the fuck wasn’t going to take the same treatment from Wes.
“I’m right here,” she said. “And I can hear you. So if you want to know if I have any connection to the Brownes, why don’t you sack up and ask me yourself?”
“Persey didn’t even know who the Brownes were before today,” Neela said, clambering to her feet. “I had to tell her the whole story.” Persey appreciated Neela’s desire to defend her.
Mackenzie, never one to stay silent for long when it meant getting in a dig at Persey, joined the fray. “And you believed that?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Then why is she here, huh? Every single one of us had a connection to the Brownes—we’re just supposed to believe it’s a coincidence that she’s here too?”
“The logical explanation—though I use that adjective loosely because literally nothing that’s happened to us so far has been logical…but I digress—the logical explanation is that whoever invited us here never expected anyone to actually beat the Hidden Library. When Persey did, they had to invite her.”
Kevin raised his hand. “And me.”
“And Kevin by default,” Neela concluded. “Maybe they’re even here to throw the rest of us off. In case we recognized each other.”
“I don’t buy it,” Wes said. “There’s something strange going on.”
That’s an understatement.
“Why does it have to be one of us?” Riot asked. Neither his voice nor his body language was defensive or combative. His question was born of pure curiosity. “Doesn’t it make more sense that someone from Escape-Capades is killing us off?”
“Leah.” Mackenzie scowled as she said the name, jealousy practically (definitely) seeping out of her invisible pores. “If that’s even her real name. I knew there was something fucked about her.”
“I agree with Crazy Pants,” Wes said, waving his hand vaguely in Riot’s direction. “The trapdoor that killed Arlo, the platform that dropped Shaun into the fire. Those couldn’t be controlled by one of us.”
Couldn’t they? But Persey didn’t really need to argue that point. “B.J. was killed by someone in the room. There was nowhere for anyone else to hide. The killer must have been desperate to get rid of him, and did it while the rest of us were focused on solving the puzzle.”
“When we were all gathered around the computer,” Neela said. “Anyone could have slipped away.”
“But why kill him at all?” Mackenzie asked.
Kevin snorted. “Yeah, his singing wasn’t that bad.”
Persey ignored the joke. “Because he knew about Wes and his connection to the Brownes. If someone is killing us off as a vendetta against them—”
“Someone?” Wes said. “Are you accusing me of murder?”
Maybe. “The killer might just be tying up loose ends.”
“I didn’t kill him.” Mackenzie tossed her long blond hair out of her face. “I was busy at the keyboard solving the last puzzle.”
“Depends when he died,” Kevin said with a shrug. “Does anyone know for sure?”
Wes refolded his arms across his chest. “I still say it could have been an accident.”
“Shaun’s paralysis was