These Deadly Games(91)
He had absolutely nothing to lose, no tracks to clear behind him.
“Anyway,” Andrew said, glancing at his watch again, “it’s time to keep playing.”
“No. No way. I’m not killing anyone else.”
He pulled something from his pocket—a bright blue Zippo lighter—and flicked it open, pressing his thumb threateningly on the spark wheel. “If you don’t, she dies. And then, I guess, so do we.”
All the air squeezed from my lungs. Caelyn was upstairs after all.
But Andrew had already shown his hand. He meant to run away. To start a new existence. He’d never blow up the house with himself still inside. He didn’t want to kill me, either—he wanted me to live with the guilt, to be in pain just like he was.
It was time to call his bluff.
Before he could stop me, I chucked the burner phone at his head as hard as I could and darted from the room.
CHAPTER 38
It took ten seconds to climb those stairs. Ten seconds, max, to put one foot in front of the other, taking them two at a time. But it felt like an eternity, time stretching and slowing like in one of my recurring nightmares, the distance between me and my destination elongating infinitely as a monster chased me down.
As it turned out, reality could be just as horrific—monsters and all.
“Caelyn!” I shouted as Andrew followed like a shadow. Before I could swing open the nearest door, he grabbed my left arm above my injured wrist and shoved me against the wall, making my arm sear with agony. It took all my restraint to keep from crying out. I couldn’t let him see my weakness. Not when I was this close to getting Caelyn back. I could almost sense her presence. I was so close. “Cael—”
Andrew covered my mouth, bracing me against the wall with his forearm. I tried shoving him back, but when he pressed the metallic tip of the cigarette lighter into my cheek, I froze. “Don’t move, or we’re all dead.”
I flinched as the metal pricked my cheek and involuntarily cringed against the wall as though bracing for an explosion. But I knew he was bluffing. He wouldn’t end his own life to keep me from getting to my sister. That wasn’t his endgame. I straightened and said into his palm, “Bullshit.” Even muffled, the word was clear. I held his gaze and hoped mine was filled with fire.
He gnashed his teeth as a battle raged in his mind. With his face this close, gray eyes inches from mine, I could see a subtle ring around his irises. Contacts. Colored contacts. So it wasn’t just a filter or trick of the light that made his eyes brown in those Facebook pictures. I already knew the glasses were just for show, but this one last deception made the fury in my chest spew up my throat like a dragon.
He lied about everything.
He took everything.
He destroyed everything.
Before he could react, in one fluid motion I yanked the knife from my pocket and drove it upward toward his forearm bracing me to the wall, aiming for the exposed skin his plaid coat sleeve didn’t reach. I could have plunged it into his belly, but didn’t want to kill him—I just wanted him to release me and drop the lighter. The blade easily tore through skin and sinew.
“Aaah!” He reflexively backed away, and when I tugged out the knife, blood sprayed all over me. We both screamed—him in pain, me in surprise at how much blood there was.
Andrew clutched his arm and dropped the lighter, and we gasped as it fell to the carpet. With all that gas in the air, all it would take was a spark to make the house blow.
But nothing happened.
We stared at it, breathing hard.
Our eyes flicked up to each other.
And then we lunged for it. I was closer, so I snatched it and leaped out of reach, brandishing the knife at him. He recoiled. Blood gushed down his arm, and he’d already left a trail of red on the beige carpet. I must’ve hit an artery or something. He followed my gaze and let out a hiss as he took in the steady stream of blood running down his middle finger, down to the floor, like he hadn’t quite realized the depth of his wound. Maybe his brain was releasing chemicals to block the pain. He clasped his arm again. “Jesus.”
I took advantage of this distraction and dashed to the next room. “Caelyn?”
She wasn’t there.
“Stop it—” Andrew lunged at me, but I raised the knife in a silent threat. He curled his lip in frustration, keeping his distance, believing me. Believing I would do it.
And he was right.
I checked all the rooms and closets upstairs in a sort of grotesque dance with Andrew, warding him off with my knife each time he got too close. I even tugged down the ladder into the attic at the end of the hall, climbing just enough to poke my head up there and check. But Caelyn wasn’t anywhere. This reminded me of how my friends and I couldn’t find Brady—he’d seemed so close, yet nowhere at all, like he’d slipped through a crevice between dimensions as we’d counted to one hundred. I stilled and gripped a doorframe, starting to feel light-headed from all that gas in the air, and strained to hear shuffling, movement, any sign of life besides us. But there was nothing. Caelyn wasn’t here.
And that was all I needed to know.
I turned back to Andrew and raised the lighter, flicking it open again and hovering my thumb over the spark wheel. “Game over, you son of a bitch.” If Caelyn wasn’t here, I could end this game now. Randall and Zoey would be safe. Caelyn would be safe—still lost, but alive.