These Deadly Games(36)

“Dude!” Randall yelled as Dylan scrambled to turn down the volume.

“Sorry,” said Dylan. “When I get stressed out, I, uh…”

“You try to murder your eardrums?” I said.

He chuckled. “It takes my mind off whatever.”

I shook my head, and as Randall ragged on him for this strange ritual, I pulled up my phone’s browser and started typing Lance Burdly’s name, but froze. An0nym0us1 would see whatever I searched for on here. With a shudder, I stuffed the phone into my pocket; well, Mom’s pocket—I’d swiped her old puffer coat since mine was still at school.

Before I could bury myself too deep in my thoughts, Akira raised her voice over the music. “So, what’re the chances we play in the tourney now?”

Oof. MortalDusk. The prize money. Our mortgage. A stab of regret pierced my gut. I couldn’t imagine life piecing itself back together in time to play in thirty-six hours.

Randall shook his head, like he couldn’t even think about that right now. I turned down the radio volume even more. “I’d give it around a zero percent chance.”

“Good odds,” said Dylan. “I was thinking more like negative fifty percent.”

I sighed. “Zoey’ll probably still want to go.”

“No way,” said Akira. “We can’t play without Matty.”

“Jesus,” Randall muttered.

She squeezed his hand. “No, he’ll be fine. I’m just saying, I doubt he’ll feel well enough to go by then.” She bit her lip and glanced at me. “She’ll say he’d want us to play anyway, you think?”

I shrugged. “Or she’ll say we were always going to leave one of us out. Now we don’t have to compete for it.”

“God, that’s terrible.” Akira smacked the back of my seat. “What’s the deal with you two lately?”

I crossed my arms and stared at the window. “Now’s not the time for tea.” Now, or ever. I still couldn’t tell. That hadn’t changed.

We endured the rest of the ride in an awkward silence, but as soon as we turned onto Pearson Drive, my insides went numb. Blue and white lights flashed ahead of us, police cruisers and unmarked black cars blocking the road.

Suddenly it all clicked into place. An0nym0us1’s endgame. I knew it now. Panic flooded my veins, searing the nerve endings in my fingertips.

Dylan slowed to a stop. “Uh…”

“What’s going on?” said Akira.

Randall craned his neck to see around my seat. “Are they in front of my house?”

Yes. They were. Of course they were.

Before I could respond, Randall was out the door. I unclipped my seat belt and followed, ignoring Dylan, who called my name. Randall raced across the lawn toward the cluster of officers milling by the front stoop. Bronze numbers above the door marked 379.

379 Pearson Drive. The address from the script. I knew it.

A police officer spotted Randall and rushed over, stopping him. I couldn’t make out what she said. My heart pounded so hard I could hear it thudding in my ears.

“But this is my house!” Randall shouted.

The officer shook her head. “I need you to stand back—”

“Mom! Dad!” He tried going around the officer, who set a firm hand on Randall’s shoulder. Like the other officers, she wore a bulky black uniform and a helmet strapped under her chin. The word POLICE stretched in bold white letters across her chest and arm. The porch was illuminated by electric sconces on either side of the front door, which stood wide open, its frame splintered and mangled.

This wasn’t just the regular police.

A SWAT team had busted into Randall’s house.





CHAPTER 15


“It all happened so fast.” Randall’s mother perched at the edge of her seat in the hospital waiting room, face ashen and taut, absentmindedly tearing a tissue into tiny pieces with quivering fingers and letting them pile in a mound on her lap.

“What happened?” Randall wiped a sheen of sweat from his upper lip. It was about a zillion degrees in here—or maybe it felt that way because we’d sprinted from the parking lot, or because Akira had my arm in a vise grip as she gaped at Mrs. Lewis. Zoey was on FaceTime on Akira’s phone since her parents refused to let her leave the house, even after she told them Randall’s dad had a heart attack.

“I was upstairs in the office, and your dad was in the living room with Nessa, setting up Netflix for her.” Mrs. Lewis spoke in a voice so low she was almost whispering, though nobody was close enough to overhear. “And all of a sudden, the front door crashed open. There was yelling. So much yelling. The police were screaming for your dad to put his hands up. And Nessa was screaming bloody murder.” She visibly swallowed and glanced down at her six-year-old daughter curled up beside her, head practically buried in Mrs. Lewis’s armpit. “By the time I got downstairs, he was already having a heart attack—well, cardiac arrest, I guess. But, my God, seeing those officers pointing their guns at your father as he collapsed—I thought they’d shot him. I’ll never get that image out of my head.” She clasped her forehead.

Randall cupped his mouth, eyes darting back and forth really fast, like he was trying to picture the scene she described. I imagined gangly, balding, cheerful Mr. Lewis—always cracking dad jokes and teasing his kids—crumpled on the floor in agony. My fault.