These Deadly Games(16)

Randall smiled coyly. “I wouldn’t miss—”

“Alright, I don’t need to hear your sex plans,” I said.

“Oh my God.” Akira threw the balled-up Saran Wrap from her sandwich at me.

I swatted it away, faking a laugh. “I’ll see you later.” I rushed toward my car before she could see how the laughter didn’t reach my eyes.

Before she could piece together that my life was falling apart.





CHAPTER 6


After pulling into my driveway, I shot a message to An0nym0us1. I’m home. Let me talk to her.

How would this work? Would they call me? Did this app have something like FaceTime? As I waited for a response, I ran my fingers over the passenger seat. Caelyn sat here only a few hours ago. This whole situation was too surreal—like something that would happen to Liam Neeson in an action movie. But I wasn’t a former FBI agent, and I hadn’t the slightest idea how to track down Caelyn’s kidnapper.

I glanced at Zoey’s house—her second-floor bedroom window was just visible, facing mine. Our houses were inset in a hill, so we used to keep our windows unlocked and climb in and out to visit each other. Until that time her mom caught her with one leg out the window. She screamed bloody murder and grounded Zoey for a month. I never understood why she found exiting through windows so much more offensive than doors. Either way, after that, I did all the climbing. We’d spend hours trying new video games, hiding from our guilt, losing ourselves in virtual landscapes—but at least we got lost together. We’d discovered MortalDusk before it went mainstream, and convinced the rest of our friends to play together.

Then she went and ruined everything.

I hated keeping what happened bottled up, the stopper under lock and key. Akira clearly knew something happened, and I was pretty sure even Matty and Dylan suspected something thanks to my slipup in chemistry class a few weeks ago.

I cringed at the memory. Mr. Ferguson had started class with his usual bonus question. “Alright, folks, first person to tell me eight risks of carbon monoxide poisoning gets five points—”

Zoey and I had shot our hands into the air before he could finish. Weeks earlier, I would have let her have it. After what she did? Forget it.

“Zoey was first,” said Dylan.

I threw him a scathing look. He winked, and something sparked in my chest. But Zoey’s smirk quickly smothered it.

“You seeing time backward, bro?” Matty chimed in behind me. “Crys was first.”

Mr. Ferguson chortled and rolled up his sleeves, revealing the dorky electron tattoo on his dark skin. “Looks like we’ve got ourselves a sudden death. Ladies! Paper out. Pen out. First to write down all eight wins.”

As our classmates drummed on their desks, I frantically scrawled: clogged chimneys, space heaters, dryers, stoves, water heaters, portable generators, fireplaces, and … and—

“Got it!” Zoey grinned triumphantly.

“Fucking cheater.” I’d meant to mutter, but the jocks in the back row crowed, clearly having heard. Heat crept up my neck.

“Whoa, language,” said Mr. Ferguson as Zoey exclaimed, “What? No! I didn’t cheat.” Then she (successfully) muttered under her breath, “Paranoid jerk.”

I scowled. Screw her. Like I didn’t have a good reason.

As Mr. Ferguson scanned her answers, Dylan watched me like he was trying to puzzle something out, and Matty squeezed my shoulder. “It’s only five points.” But it wasn’t about the points.

“You got it,” Mr. Ferguson confirmed. Zoey folded the page, looking defeated despite her victory. Then he tapped the next blank line in my notebook. “Car exhaust!”

I groaned. “Obviously.”

“Sometimes the most obvious answer is the one that eludes us.” He quirked his brow. “You gonna apologize to your friend or what?” Shame burned my cheeks as I mumbled my apologies. Zoey said it was fine, but her glassy eyes told me it wasn’t. She knew why I’d really snapped.

My phone buzzed, jolting me from the memory, and I gasped. But it was just a text from Mom to say she was heading into a long surgery, and there was leftover Chinese food in the fridge. No word yet from An0nym0us1. That’s when I noticed Mrs. Rao watching me, two driveways down, wheeling a garbage can from next to the mailbox. Her family had moved in after the Cullens moved to California. I babysat her kids a lot—she paid way better than Randall’s grocery store shifts—but it was always weird going into Brady’s old house. It felt like something was sitting on my lungs the whole time.

Mrs. Rao smiled and waved, and, afraid she’d try to strike up a conversation, I slipped from my car and rushed inside, pretending I hadn’t seen her.

Wanting to look up this bizarre app on my phone, I raced down to my laptop in the den, sank onto the couch, and searched. All I had to go by was the icon: a silver serpent wrapped around a microphone. I googled a bunch of variations of “app icon snake microphone.” Nothing came up. Next, I checked the App Store, scrolling through the endless icons. Filtering by messaging apps didn’t help—eventually, my eyes glazed over.

Maybe An0nym0us1 had coded the app and manually installed it. But how? I couldn’t remember anyone else holding my phone, or my clicking a suspicious link recently.

Still no new messages. What the hell were they waiting for?