These Deadly Games(68)

“I’m not. I’m being serious.”

“But you left a voicemail—which, weird,” she threw me a judgy look, “and then I called you back, and we talked.”

“Wait, there’s a voicemail?”

Her expression fell, perturbed. “Here, I didn’t delete it yet.” She tapped her screen again, then thrust her phone at me. I never left voicemails, like, as a personal policy. My own inbox had been full for years since I refused to check it. But there it was. A voicemail from me. My contact. My number. Placed at 6:30 a.m., before I’d woken up.

At least, I didn’t think I’d woken up yet.

Akira leaned against the wide stone barrier, fiddling with a twig she picked up and watching as I pressed Play and held the phone to my ear.

Hey, Kiki. I’m so sorry to call you this early, but I … I really need to talk to you. It’s really, really important. Can you please call me back before you talk to anyone else? Love you.

It felt like I’d plunged into the icy waters of Hanover Lake. I’d always hated the sound of my own voice on our streaming videos—it sounded alien, somehow. And this was my voice. My intonations and inflections. Even down to calling Akira Kiki. Zoey and I were the only ones who called her Kiki.

That was the most unsettling thing of all.

“So, then … you called me back?” I asked.

Akira chuckled nervously. “Yeah … you really don’t remember? We made plans to meet. You said you had an errand to run first across town, so you wanted to meet here instead of driving over together.” She picked some bark off the twig. “I wonder if it’s some sort of PTSD thing. Did you black out or something?”

Was she right? Had I wanted to tell Akira about Zoey’s cheating and blackmail, since I’d already told Dylan most of the story … and then my brain short-circuited?

No. No way. Dylan had been lying in bed next to me—I would have remembered edging around him to get to my phone without waking him, and then climbing back into bed.

This had to be An0nym0us1’s doing. I thought of the voice changer I’d used yesterday to call in the fake tip, now in a nylon bag somewhere at the bottom of the lake. They could have used a voice changer, too; a more convincing one than the one I’d used. But they hadn’t just gotten the tone and pitch right—they’d used my inflections, my vocal mannerisms, even my nickname for Akira. They had to know me really freaking well—

“What’s going on?” said Akira. “Something’s clearly very wrong.”

“I … I can’t tell you.”

It started drizzling again, but we both ignored it. “Why not?” My heart broke at her pained expression. “I thought we agreed. No secrets between us. Ever. But you’ve been hiding something for weeks.”

“What do you mean?”

“What’s been going on between you and Zoey?” she asked. Of course. She hated that neither of us would tell. I wiped a hand down my face. It was such a long story, and I was still trying to work out why An0nym0us1 summoned Akira here. Was she a distraction, like Jeremy? Why make us meet here, of all places—

The realization hit me like a meteor. I knew what the next game would be. No. I couldn’t let that happen. I scurried back toward the trail, distancing myself from Akira and the stone barrier.

“What is it—”

“Mountain lion!” I cried. “Run!”

Akira’s eyes widened as she scanned the woods. “Where?”

“Run! Get out of here!” I thought I’d saved her last night. I thought I’d outsmarted An0nym0us1. But they wouldn’t give up that easily. Of course they wouldn’t.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, right on time.

“What about you—”

“Dammit, Kiki. Go!” If only it were Dylan, checking in. If only it were literally anyone else. But I had all my alerts turned off save one.

What if I ignored it? What would An0nym0us1 do to Caelyn? She was already cut. Already bleeding. But they said they’d kill her if I broke their rules, and I already had once today.

So I looked.

A knife was pressed against Caelyn’s pale throat as she squeezed her eyes shut. Blood drained from my face in a rush, and my vision went hazy and slow, giving everything jagged edges, making the text overlay hard to read.

Let’s play The Pushing Game. Push Akira off the cliff, or your sister dies. You have 2 minutes. Ready? GO!



How could I possibly choose? Akira or Caelyn. Caelyn or Akira. There are some choices a person should never have to make. It’s one thing for an ER doctor to decide which patient gets the ventilator. For a firefighter to pick who to carry from a smoldering building. For a search and rescue responder to prioritize airlift pickups from a swift-water flood. Their choice would let a stranger survive when they would’ve died otherwise.

But this was something else. My choice would needlessly rip a person I loved from the world. It would tear my soul in half. There was no coming back from this.

“What’s going on?” Akira was screaming at me now, glancing between me and my phone. Oh, God. After everything Akira endured over the past few years—the battles with her own mind she’d fought and won—it couldn’t end like this. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. Now she refused to run, refused to leave me in danger. We always looked out for each other. Always. Or maybe she knew I was lying about the damn mountain lion. She could always read me like a book. How could I kill her? How could I kill my best friend?