These Deadly Games(72)

“I’m so, so sorry about Matty,” said Lucia. Randall tilted the camera toward her, and I searched for traces of blood, but she was wearing all black. Besides, she would’ve changed out of anything incriminating before heading to the hospital. “I’m sorry about everything. I can’t even imagine what you guys are going through.” Just like her text last night, those weren’t the words of a psychopath. But An0nym0us1 was clever. They’d know how to throw us off.

I took a shaky breath and plastered on a smile as fake as hers. “Randall?” I said through gritted teeth. “Can I talk to you alone for a sec?”

Lucia frowned, but leaned back in her seat, out of view. “What’s up?” said Randall.

“Alone, Randall.”

“Alright, alright.” To Lucia, he said, “Be right back.” The screen went all jagged and pixelated, and then he reappeared in front of a white-and-green-tiled backdrop. “Why’ve you been ignoring my texts, anyway?”

“Oh … uh … I didn’t see them.”

He gave an annoyed huff. “Well, listen … we’re gonna take a break from the hospital and pick up some food for Matty’s moms and, you know, visit with them for a bit—”

“No!” I shouted. Lucia was trying to lure him from the hospital. How could he be so oblivious? I had to stop this. “Don’t you dare leave that hospital with her.”

“Dude, you need to chillax. Paying our respects isn’t exactly anyone’s idea of a hot date.”

I almost laughed. If only my concern were Lucia encroaching on Akira’s turf. “That’s not—”

“And I was literally just calling to ask Akira to meet us there. Where is she, anyway?”

I ignored his question. “Why are you even talking to Lucia? How can you trust her, after everything she did?”

“She apologized for that. Just now.”

My breath caught. “She admitted to trolling us?” When Zoey confronted her, she’d denied everything.

“Yeah. And to lying to you and Zoey. She really wants to apologize to Akira—she knows that matters most. And she feels terrible she never got to apologize to Matty. She wants to make up for it. She even offered to take Matty’s place at the tourney tomorrow, so we could all play.”

My heart dropped. So this was about MortalDusk. She must’ve leveled up her skills and wanted in on a tourney team. “Oh, big sacrifice. Come on, Randall, that’s fishy as fuck! How do you not see that?”

“It’s not. She thought we still needed six players.”

Oh, God. He had no idea we were down to four. There was room for one more. “Randall, you need to get with the program, right now.” My voice shook, frantic. “Someone is after us. Someone swatted you. And I think she did it. You cannot trust her. You can’t leave that hospital with her. You need to stay in a public place. Please.”

Randall clenched his jaw, for once in his life looking genuinely angry. It took me aback. “Crystal, stop it. Stop always assuming the worst in everyone. You’re so … so … paranoid.”

My heart jolted. There was that word again. Paranoid. He’d spat it like he’d tried to find another, but nothing else fit. Zoey had told Dylan I was paranoid, feeding him lies to make him think he couldn’t trust me. Had she implanted the idea in our other friends’ minds, too?

“Lucia’s being nice,” Randall went on. “She went out of her way to come here and be nice.”

“Why, though?”

“Maybe because she’s a nice person. Maybe she made a mistake once, and that’s not really who she is. Just because we’re awful doesn’t mean everyone else is.”

A rock lodged in my throat. I knew he meant what we’d done to Brady. And I wondered, then, if maybe I was a bit paranoid—quick to suspect people, to assume the worst of people—because I didn’t even trust myself.

I was the biggest liar I knew.

“Trust me,” he went on, “it wasn’t Lucia. We had this whole long talk just now. She didn’t, like … like me or anything. I know that’s what you girls thought. She started watching our YouTube over the summer and thought I was funny. She liked my vids the most. That’s it.” Randall’s livestreams did get the most views on our channels, followed closely by Matty’s, much to Zoey’s chagrin—but it was no big surprise, since they were the funniest. I remembered how Lucia ogled Randall at tryouts. Starstruck, not crushing. He was her Fishman. I’d just assumed she liked him and would try to steamroll Akira. “But we humiliated her at tryouts, so she wanted to throw back some shade. One comment turned into two, and … well, she got carried away—”

“Wait a minute,” I cut him off. “How long have you two been talking? How long has she been there?”

“I dunno, about an hour, I guess?”

My breath caught. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah. Maybe a little longer, actually. Why?”

“And has she been on her phone a lot?”

He tilted his head. “Uh … I don’t think so? No, not at all, actually.”

If Lucia had been at the hospital talking to Randall for over an hour, there was no way she could have sent me those messages or gotten the timing right. There was no way she could’ve stabbed Caelyn while I was at Hermit Thrush’s Nest. There was no way she was An0nym0us1. It was physically impossible.