Panic(22)

Was it Donahue? Dodge? Another player?

Here, moonlight filtered in through a large, curtainless window, and Heather suddenly sucked in a breath. The walls were covered with metal, glinting dully in the milky light. Guns. Guns mounted to the walls, hanging from upended deer hooves, crisscrossing the ceiling. The gun room. She thought it even smelled faintly like gunpowder, but she might have been imagining it.

The room was cluttered with workbenches and overstuffed chairs, bleeding stuffing onto the floor. Underneath the window was a large desk. Heather felt as if the air in the room were suddenly too thin; she felt breathless and dizzy, remembering the email she’d received that morning.



Bonus: Find the desk in the gun room and take what’s hidden there.



Heather moved across the room to the desk, navigating the clutter of objects. She began with the drawers on the sides—right, and then left. Nothing.

The shallow central drawer was loose, as though from frequent use. The gun was curled there, like an enormous black beetle, shiny, hard-backed.

The bonus.

She reached in, hesitated—then seized it quickly, like it might bite her. Heather felt nausea rising in her throat. She hated guns.

“What are you doing?”

Heather spun around. She could just see Dodge silhouetted in the doorway, although it was too dark to make out his face.

“Shhh,” Heather whispered. “Keep your voice down.”

“What the hell are you doing?” Dodge took two steps across the room. “You were supposed to keep watch.”

“I was.” Before Heather could explain further, Dodge cut her off.

“Where’s Natalie?”

“Outside,” Heather said. “I thought I heard—”

“Was this some kind of a trick?” Dodge spoke quietly, but Heather could hear the edge in his voice. “You guys get me to do the dirty work, then sneak in and grab the bonus? So you could get ahead?”

Heather stared at him. “What?”

“Don’t screw with me, Heather.” Two more steps and Dodge was there, directly in front of her. “Don’t lie to me.”

Heather fought for breath. Tears were pushing at the back of her eyes. She knew they were being too loud. Too loud. Everything was all wrong. The gun in her hand felt awful, cold but also alive, like some alien creature that might suddenly roar to life.

“What are you doing here?” she finally said. “You were supposed to get proof for us and get out.”

“I heard something,” Dodge fired back. “I thought it might be one of the other players—”

The lights came on.

Jack Donahue was standing in the doorway, eyes wild, chest slick with sweat. Then he was shouting and the barrel of the gun was swinging toward them and there was an explosion of glass, and Heather realized Dodge had just hurled a chair straight through the window. Everything was fracture, roar, blur.

“Go, go, go!” Dodge was shouting, pushing Heather toward the window.

Heather threw herself shoulder-first into the night. She heard a second explosion and felt a spray of soft wood as she went through the window, felt pain slice through her arm and an immediate dampness pooling in her armpit. Dodge hauled her to her feet and they were running, fleeing into the night, toward the fence, while Jack shouted after them and sent two more shots off into the dark.

Through the fence—gasping, panting—to the road, mostly empty of cars. There was the dazzle, the wide sweep of headlights. Heather recognized Bishop’s car. Nat suddenly materialized in front of her, backlit, like a kind of dark angel.

“Are you okay?” Her voice was wild, urgent. “Are you okay?”

“We’re okay,” Heather answered for both of them. “Let’s go.”

Then they were in the car and moving quickly, bumping over the country roads. For several minutes they were quiet, listening to the distant sound of police sirens. Heather gritted her teeth every time they hit a rut. She was bleeding. A piece of glass had sliced the soft skin of her inner arm.

She still had the gun. Somehow, it had ended up in her lap. She kept staring at it, bewildered, half in shock.

“Jesus Christ,” Bishop finally said when they had put several miles behind them, and the noise of the sirens was lost beneath the quiet shushing of the wind through the trees. “Holy shit. That was crazy.”

All of a sudden, the tension broke. Dodge started whooping and Nat began to cry and Heather rolled the windows down and laughed like a maniac. She was relieved, grateful, alive—sitting in the warm backseat of Bishop’s car, which smelled like soda cans and old gum.

Bishop told them about nearly pissing himself when Trigger-Happy Jack came barreling out of the house; he told them that Ray had cracked one of the dogs with a huge rock and sent it whimpering off into the dark. But half the kids never even made it over the fence, and he thought Byron Welcher might have been mauled. It was hard to tell in the dark, with all the chaos.

Dodge told them about getting so close to Donahue; he thought for sure he’d be shot in the skull. But Donahue was enraged, and probably drunk. He wasn’t aiming well. “Thank God,” Dodge said, laughing.

Dodge had stolen three items from the kitchen—a butter knife, a saltshaker, and a shot glass shaped like a cowboy boot—to prove they’d all been in the house. He gave Nat the shot glass and Heather the butter knife, and kept the saltshaker for himself. He made Bishop pull over and placed the saltshaker on the dashboard, so he could get a good picture of it.