She didn’t know for sure what she’d find in the maze, but she could guess. The Postman would be waiting, of that she was absolutely positive. Would he have the remaining Painiacs there as well? Odds were pretty good. But at least Dee was prepared for them, thanks to Mara’s encyclopedic knowledge of the Painiacs, their tactics and weaknesses. And after finding Gassy Al’s corpse tucked away inside the pavilion, Dee had understood what The Postman wanted her to do.
Now if she could just find a pair of shoes. The only thing worse than the Lucite kitten heels? Entering Slycer’s warehouse barefoot.
Oh well, no helping that now. Dee marched up to the main entrance of the warehouse, grabbed the metal handle firmly, and slid the door open.
An area of Slycer’s imposing maze walls had been cleared away, revealing a large rectangular space, carpeted with the plastic green blades of an Astroturf rug crisscrossed with lines of white paint. It looked like a small football field, complete with end zones. A large floodlight hung above the field, centered on the fifty-yard line, and black security cameras, like the kind found in a bank, were perched on top of the maze walls, all aimed directly at the field.
The plastic grass felt strangely agreeable against her feet, warmer than the unrelenting chill of the concrete floor, and the crinkly blades had a massaging affect against her sore, blistered skin. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all?
Then the music started.
Speakers mounted to the interior warehouse walls erupted with a folk-rock-meets-techno-yodeling soundtrack, and even before she saw the man bun, Dee knew that her first obstacle would be Barbaric Barista.
She stood motionless at the edge of the field, her body tense, her ears straining to hear anything above the Alpine techno music, when suddenly a tinkling bell cut through the noise.
Rrrrrrring!
It was a familiar sound, old-fashioned but easily recognizable. One of those lever-operated bells attached to a bicycle.
The instant her brain registered the origin of the bell, it sounded again, and Barbaric Barista sailed around the corner on a powder-blue beach cruiser.
If he hadn’t been a known sociopath, Dee would have laughed out loud at BB’s appearance. In addition to the man bun wound loosely on the top of his head, BB wore a red-and-black-plaid flannel shirt, carefully tailored to fit tightly to his lithe, almost skeletal body, and a pair of lavender cuffed skinny chinos. On his feet, leather flip-flops curved around the bicycle pedals with each rotation, and across his back he’d slung a leather messenger bag, stuffed to bursting.
And then there was the beard.
The video screen in her prison cell really hadn’t done Barbaric Barista’s massive, grizzled facial hair justice. Carefully groomed to appear carefree and overgrown, BB’s brown beard was eight inches long at least, climbing up both cheeks until it disappeared into his sideburns, and it was capped with a waxed mustache, twirled up at the ends, which gave his face the appearance of a permanent smile.
Mara had dropped a little nugget about that beard. BB was incredibly vain about his facial hair. It was his pride and joy. And perhaps his Achilles’ heel.
BB piloted his rickety bike around the outer perimeter of the field, his eyes shielded from view by an oversize pair of horn-rimmed sunglasses. Mara had suggested that BB lived in the hipster mecca of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and if it was anything like Silver Lake in Los Angeles, Dee could easily see how BB would have blended in.
Just like a serial killer.
Barbaric Barista executed a lazy figure eight on his bike before he spoke. “Do you like games, Cinderella?” His voice had a smarmy, ironic lilt.
Games. Just like Kimmi used to play. “Not especially.”
He ignored her. “I like games.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“My favorite,” he continued, as if reading from a script, “is Ultimate Frisbee. Ever played?”
At least I know what’s in his bag. Dee was on full alert now. Razor-sharp Frisbees that might cut off her hands? Frisbees that shot laser beams? Rabid dogs that chased said Frisbees?
He backpedaled, applying the brakes with a strangled squeak. When his bike came to a full stop, he dismounted, threw down the kickstand, and swung his bag so that it was in front of him. “It’s usually played in teams, but since it’s just you and me today, I thought I’d make up my own rules.”
“Shocking.”
He pulled a Frisbee from his bag—plastic and red, it looked like the kind you’d pick up at any toy store, but Dee notice that he handled it gingerly, reverently, as if he was afraid it might break apart in his hands.
“I throw this to you, and you try to catch it,” BB said. “Easy, right?”
“Right.” She had to be on her guard. No telling what BB’s game of Ultimate Frisbee might actually entail.
“Awesome!” he cried. “Last one standing wins.” Then he torqued his body and let the Frisbee fly.
He was a good shot. The disc started low and rose gracefully as it crossed the field. It flew in a straight line with hardly any arc, and if Dee had stayed put, she could easily have caught it in her hands. But there was no way in hell she was actually going to play by BB’s rules. So she held firm until the toy was a few feet away, then darted aside.
It glided by her, slowly losing altitude until it hit the front wall of the warehouse. The instant the rim of the red plastic disc made contact with the corrugated metal, it exploded, leaving a two-foot-wide hole.
“Shit.” Exploding Frisbees? Really? How the hell is that even possible?
Dee had no time to ponder physics and aerodynamics—BB had already unleashed another projectile. It approached even faster than the first, and Dee barely had time to dive to her right as it soared by. This one exploded in the Astroturf, the shock waves temporarily knocking away Dee’s breath as chunks of fake plastic grass rained down around her. The smell was acid and toxic, and Dee wondered how many carcinogens were invading her lungs as she climbed to her feet.
BB launched his barrage furiously, and Dee had to keep her eye on two or three discs at once as she bobbed and weaved her way around the Ultimate Frisbee course.
“I can do this all night, Cinderella,” the Barbaric Barista sneered. Dee noticed an edge of irritation in his voice. Good. She liked the idea that she was pissing him off.
“You’re going to run out of Frisbees eventually,” Dee panted.
“You won’t last that long,” he replied.
She had to hit the ground to avoid a low-flying saucer; then she immediately rolled aside to miss another. Both exploded instantly. How did BB keep from blowing himself up as he handled the precariously explosive-laden lawn toys? Or while he’d been riding his stupid bike around the field?
She crouched, just missing another one, and this time she noticed a flashing red light coming from a small black box on the underside of the Frisbee.
So that’s how he can carry these things around in his messenger bag.
The box probably had a switch, and BB was arming the Frisbees just before he launched them. The impact caused the explosion. Maybe if she could get to his bag and turn a few of them on, he’d blow himself to pieces?
It was worth a try. Now she just needed to distract him.
“Oh my God!” Dee said, climbing to her feet. She widened her eyes and pointed at BB. “What happened to your beard?”
“What?” Barbaric Barista gasped in horror, as if someone had just killed his firstborn. He let the unarmed Frisbee in his hand fall to the ground and dropped his eyes to his prized facial hair, grasping at it with both hands. His beard was his weakness, just as Mara had predicted.
He was only preoccupied for a second.
But that was all Dee needed.
She sprinted right at him, tackling him by the legs. They both went sprawling across the Astroturf. In the confusion, Dee thrust her hand into BB’s bag, fumbling blindly with her fingertips for a switch on the underside of one of the Frisbees. She found something that felt like hard
plastic, and sensed the satisfactory click as she pushed the lever into place, activating the explosive. Then she yanked her hand out of the bag and scrambled away.
As she fled, her feet slipped on the plastic grass, rolling her ankle. She yelped in pain, toppling forward onto all fours, and when she flopped onto her back she half expected to find Barbaric Barista bearing down.
But BB must have realized that she’d activated one of the discs, because he lay frozen at the edge of the fake grass. Slowly, his hand inching toward his head, he tried to lift the messenger bag’s strap off his shoulder while he slid away from it. But his hip was caught beneath the bag, and the moment he shifted, it began to slide toward the ground.
Barbaric Barista’s eyes met Dee’s just before impact. “You bitch.”
Or at least that’s what he would have said.
The explosion blew him apart before he could finish.
THE ONLY THING WORSE than the smell of burning plastic grass was the smell of burning man bun mixed with burning plastic grass.
Dee limped across the field, carefully stepping over bits of smoldering appendages. Her rolled ankle throbbed, but it could still bear her weight, though tenderly. Not sprained, not broken. She’d just have to deal. If only she had a pair of…
Near the edge of the field, Dee stopped. Lying side by side, as if placed there by magic, were BB’s flip-flops.
They must have been blown off his gross hairy man-feet by the force of the explosion, and though Dee was relatively sure she’d just tiptoed around one of his legs that was severed at the ankle, the brown leather mandals looked blood-free and pristine.
What was worse, going barefoot or wearing the hipster shoes of a dead serial killer?
With a shrug, Dee slipped her feet into the flip-flops. They were about a size too large, but nothing she couldn’t manage.
Well, that was one problem solved. Only about a million left.
But she’d start with the most immediate one: What she was supposed to do next?
Barbaric Barista had been waiting for her. The football field, the exploding Frisbees—those had been planned in advance. Dee’s eyes traveled to the nearest camera, the red dot of light squarely facing her. The Postman was filming every moment as she took out yet another of his Painiacs.
So Dee’s hunch had been right: The Postman wanted his killers dead. There was a new batch of them arriving soon, and it was time to liquidate the old ones. Dee was pretty sure the Painiacs had no idea they were being set up. Maybe she could use that information to her advantage? There was only one way to find out.
Dee poked her head tentatively into the corridor where BB had emerged on his bike, half expecting someone to jump out at her with a machete or a poisonous snake, but all she found was another messenger bag.
It was the identical twin to the one BB had been carrying, and as Dee carefully lifted the flap with her toe, she could see a dozen or more red Frisbees packed inside. BB must have brought another round of ammo and stashed it back there in case he needed it. Weird place to leave them, but whatever.
Dee was pretty sure she couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with one of those Frisbees, but now that she knew how they worked, she at least had a weapon.
Ho-ho-ho, Dee said to herself as she looped the bag over her shoulder. Now I have exploding Frisbees.
She smiled. Ethan would have been so proud.
The corridor was narrow, hardly wide enough for a person to squeeze through, and it twisted and turned at sharp ninety-degree angles until Dee was hopelessly confused as to which direction she’d come from and which way she was going. It was dark in this coiled interior of Slycer’s old maze, and at each corner, she expected to encounter some life-threatening booby trap, or worse, another Painiac. But all she saw were the cameras. Cameras everywhere.
She limped her way through the maze for what felt like an eternity before a ball of flame flew past her face, impaling the wall beside her. An arrow with a flaming tip.
Behind her, a crash as if something heavy and metallic had fallen to the ground. She spun around to find an iron gate impeding her retreat. Well, now she knew where one of the gates from Molly’s cages had ended up. Dee was trapped with Robin’s Hood.
But she quickly realized that he was only half the challenge. Robin was there, of course—poised beside a large, bubbling hot tub with a bow in one hand, an open Zippo lighter in the other—but he wasn’t alone. Standing on a scaffold behind him was Hannah Ball.
Robin was dressed in what appeared to be a makeshift outfit. His black tights were opaque, but not completely, showing lighter patches around the knees and a hint of the control-top panel peeking out mid-thigh from beneath a heather-gray long-sleeve shirt, which he wore as a tunic. Black boots laced up past the ankle, but they were scruffy and well worn, the leather creased near the toes, as if he’d hiked halfway across the country in them. Only the executioner’s cowl—his signature look—appeared professionally designed and not thrown together at the last minute.
This manifestation of Robin’s Hood certainly didn’t match the dapper-dandy highwayman persona that graced all his merch, which seemed highly suspicious until Dee remembered that Robin hadn’t actually appeared on the video during Dr. Farooq’s murder. Had that been a last-minute assignment? Had Robin been given insufficient time to plan an elaborate costume? Possibly. But it was pretty clear that Robin hadn’t left the island after Dr. Farooq’s death, so his current outfit had been cobbled together from whatever he could find.
Hannah Ball, on the other hand, had come prepared. Of course, her costume wasn’t nearly as complicated. The chef with a penchant for human flesh dressed as…a chef. She wore a white double-breasted coat with black buttons running in parallel rows down the front, and sleeves cuffed just above the wrist, paired with matching white pants and black kitchen clogs. Her dark, wiry hair fell in two tight braids in front of her shoulders, peeking out from beneath her quintessential chef’s hat, which was tall and poufy, inflated like a balloon. But instead of sitting on her brow, the brim of the hat extended downward to the bridge of her nose, covering her forehead and eyes, with two oval holes cut into it so that she could see.
“Greetings, dear Cinderella!” Robin cried, his voice loud and booming with an affected pomposity that made him sound like an actor at a Medieval Times restaurant. “We are honored to be the first to welcome thee to this maze of delights.”
The first? So Robin and Hannah didn’t know that Dee had already disposed of Barbaric Barista? Interesting. Dee wondered what, exactly, The Postman had told his Painiacs to get them into the maze.
There was an awkward pause, as if both Hannah and Robin were waiting for the other to speak. As far as Dee knew, there had never been a Painiac collaboration, so these two clearly weren’t used to working together.
After a few seconds, Robin cleared his throat and nodded his head in Hannah’s direction, prompting her to say something.
“Right, sorry,” Hannah muttered, then jutted out her chin. “You’ve arrived just in time for dinner.” Her voice, also in character, was high and snooty, like a bad impersonation of Julia Child. “I’m planning one of my specialties.”
“Let me guess,” Dee said, channeling some of Griselda’s snark. “Filet of Cinderella? Cinderella fricassee? Princess soufflé with a side of Cinderella sauce?”
“Er…” Robin exchanged a confused glance with Hannah. “No?”
“No!” Hannah repeated, stomping her foot for emphasis. The scaffolding rocked back and forth. “Tonight I shall demonstrate my sous-vide technique with kabob of Cinderella.”
Dee had no idea what sous-vide technique might be, but she guessed that it had something to do with the bubbling hot tub. She eyed Robin’s quiver of arrows. The kabob part was self-explanatory.
“This hot tub,” Hannah explained obligingly, “has been heated to exactly two hundred and twelve degrees Fahrenheit, the exact temperature at which water boils.”
Great.
“The meat,
” she continued, “once impaled upon the kabob, is sealed in an airtight plastic container before it is submerged in the water bath, thus providing an even cooking time—”
Robin interrupted her. “While you, dear princess, suffocate and bleed to death while you’re being boiled alive.”
Yeah, because she totally hadn’t put those pieces together already.
Hannah was clearly annoyed at being cut off during her soliloquy. “Even. Cooking. Time,” she said, emphasizing each syllable.
Robin bowed at the waist. “A thousand pardons, good lady.”
“Hmph.” Hannah drew herself up, puffing out her chest before continuing. “And ensuring that the inside of Cinderella is properly cooked without charring the delicate flesh on the outside, while…”
Dee had heard enough. She wasn’t going to become sous-vide anything. She slipped her hand into the messenger bag, and pulled out a Frisbee.
She’d only get one shot, maybe two, before Robin realized what was going on and peppered her with flaming arrows. Unlike the Frisbee field, where she’d had plenty of room to maneuver around Barbaric Barista’s slow-moving projectiles, this tight space had little room for Dee to navigate in, and Robin, who was an excellent marksman, had weapons that moved a hell of a lot faster than flying plastic discs.
Meanwhile, Dee hadn’t thrown a Frisbee since she was a kid, and as she carefully hid the bright red toy behind her body, she hoped her crappy throwing technique didn’t produce some kind of boomerang effect and send the explosive directly back to her.
There was only one way to find out. With a flick of her thumb, she threw the switch arming the Frisbee, then twisted her body and uncorked her weapon.
It was a thing of beauty watching that red plastic disc soar through the air, and Dee could have sworn that time slowed down as she, Hannah, and Robin all stared fixedly at the lawn toy, which slowly glided down to the floor to rest peacefully at Robin’s feet.
“Fuck!” Dee said. Seriously? She’d gotten the one dud in BB’s arsenal. Could her luck be any worse?
Robin crouched down and picked up the toy. “What confounded contraption of the Devil is this?” he exclaimed, as if he’d never seen a Frisbee before. He turned it over and stared at the underbelly, and Dee noticed that the red light that indicated the armed status of the device wasn’t flashing.
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