“We can’t have that,” Dee said. She bit her lower lip as Nyles bound her feet tightly with pieces of his shirt. They throbbed as he tied a constricting knot; then immediately the pain began to ebb.
“No.”
Nyles wrapped his hands in a similar fashion, tightening each knot with his teeth. “She wouldn’t be in the kill room with us, though. Which means she must be up high somewhere. Watching.”
Dee’s eyes drifted up to the metal scaffolding. It hadn’t burned in the fire, and it reached all the way to the top of the wall.
Nyles followed her gaze, immediately grasping her idea. “Stay here.”
He touched one of the metal poles with the back of his hand, as if expecting it to be blisteringly hot. Then, content that it didn’t sear the skin off his body, Nyles hoisted one foot up onto the nearest bar and began to climb.
Nyles reached the top of the wall with relative ease and flattened his body against it. He stared out across the maze for several minutes before easing his way back down.
“There’s a way out of here behind the scaffolding,” Nyles explained. “The maze continues for about fifty feet, then opens into a large penned-in area near the corner of the warehouse.”
“Did you see Molly?”
“She’s perched on top of the wall, dressed like some kind of deranged circus clown.” He shuddered. “We could get to her by crossing the tops of the maze walls, but she’d see us coming.”
A plan was forming in Dee’s mind. “Do you think you can memorize the maze path between here and there?”
“Absolutely.”
Dee held out her hands. “Then help me up. I think I know a way to get Molly off that wall.”
IN A DAY FILLED with disgusting things, extracting Ynona from her waxy tomb was the worst. Even grosser than fishing Hannah’s braided wig out of the still-boiling hot tub and shaking off bits of fatty skin that had adhered to it during its soak.
Okay, maybe that was the grossest, but wrestling Ynona’s wax-crusted corpse into her wheelie chair was a close second.
It wasn’t so much that she was handling a dead body—sadly, that wasn’t a new experience for Dee—but that the wax coating on Ynona was still warm and slippery from the sprinkler bath, which made it feel as if Ynona weren’t actually dead at all.
“She looks surreal,” Nyles said, staring at the ceraceous corpse as Dee arranged Hannah’s wig on Ynona’s head. “Like a Dada painting. Or an Ernst.”
“Do you think it’ll fool Molly?”
“Up close, not a chance. But from above? In bad lighting? It might work.”
Dee wiggled the wheeled chair back and forth to make sure that the colored yarn kept the body secured. Waxy Ynona in Hannah’s gore-splattered dark brown wig would at least make Molly curious.
I hope.
Nyles crouched down and smeared the wax away from Ynona’s feet, exposing a pair of green rubber Crocs. It took some doing, but he managed to pull them from Ynona’s stiffened limbs. Then, kneeling before Dee, he offered to put them on her. “They’re not glass slippers, Cinderella, but they might help.”
“Thanks, Prince Charming.”
The rubber Crocs stretched around Dee’s bandages, and though walking was still painful, Nyles was right—the ache was lessened.
“Shall we?” Nyles asked, straightening up.
Dee nodded. “Cinderella Survivor two-point-oh is ready to roll.”
Dee carefully climbed the scaffolding in the Zoolander room, slowly placing her weight on each foot and making sure her hold was secure. If she made too much noise, it might draw Molly’s attention, and then they’d be screwed.
When she reached the top of the wall, she flattened herself against it, just as Nyles had done, and scanned the maze.
Molly Mauler sat on top of the wall at a corner, using the two converging edges as her seat. As Nyles had described, she wore some kind of circus getup—striped red-and-white tights, a full black skirt with a massive crinoline petticoat beneath, and a black-and-white corset top. Her face was painted with demonic clown makeup, complete with “evil” eyebrows, drawn at a steep angle from her forehead down to the inner corners of her eyes, and the requisite red foam nose.
Molly bounced her legs against the wall like a bored child whose patience had worn thin, and she was entertaining herself with a white plastic object in her hand. She’d press a button and a door on a cage would start to open. There must have been wolves inside it, because they would howl with excitement as the door crept up a few inches, but then Molly would click the button again, sealing the cage tight. She’d whipped the wolves into a frenzy, but even that was starting to bore her. She glanced at her watch, clearly antsy.
You won’t have to wait much longer, Molly.
Dee’s eyes drifted to the right, where Nyles hurried through the twists and turns of the maze, pushing Ynona’s chair as fast as its wax-clogged wheels would go. As he approached Molly’s lair, he slowed, counting his path turn by turn. Left, right, left, right, right, right, left. He stopped cold right before the entrance, and then he gave the chair a massive shove.
Molly was instantly alert. “It’s about time, Cinderella Survivor,” she said, her voice cackling with delight. “I was worried the sprinklers might have drowned you.”
She waited, expecting a response.
But Waxy Ynona wasn’t going to give her one.
“Cat got your tongue?” Molly said. “Or should I say, wolves got your tongue?”
Nice one.
Again, Molly waited for a response, but this time she seemed more suspicious, leaning forward to peer at the body in the chair.
“Is she gone yet?” Nyles panted, his head peeking over the edge of the wall. He’d made it back to her in record time.
“Shh!” Dee held her breath.
“Seriously?” Molly said at last. She placed the white rectangular object beside her, then reached down behind the far side of the wall and flipped something over the top. The wolves began to howl again, sensing new activity, and as Molly turned to climb down, Dee realized she had a rope ladder.
As soon as Molly’s head disappeared, Dee pressed herself up into a standing position. The wooden beams of the maze walls were less than a foot wide, and not particularly sturdy, which made the journey a little bit like running the length of a wobbly balance beam high up in the air on feet that had been numbed up with Novocain. She just gritted her teeth against the stupefying pain and kept her eyes locked on Nyles straight ahead of her.
Below, Molly was examining the body that was strapped to the chair. She lifted a braid of the wig and gave it a tug. The fake hair slid easily from Ynona’s wax-crusted head.
“What the fuck?” Molly said, dropping the wig. Then she turned, looked up, and spotted Dee.
They locked eyes, holding each other’s gaze for what felt like an eternity. Dee saw Molly’s confusion morph into rage and, just for an instant, fear. Then her eyes dropped to the ladder.
At the same moment that Molly broke into a sprint, Nyles lunged for the ladder and started to pull it up. Molly launched her body at it like an NBA forward attacking the net, and managed to catch hold of the bottom rung.
Dee tried to help, but with the advantage of gravity, Molly yanked the rope ladder from their hands. The smooth nylon burned as it whipped through Dee’s palms, and Nyles grunted, his bandages little help against friction. The wolves growled, their guttural rumbles reverberating through the walls, as Molly began to climb.
But Dee wasn’t about to give up. The ladder was attached to two of the stud beams by carabiner clips fastened to metal rings that had been drilled into the wood.
“Nyles, the clips!” she shouted. If they could unlatch the carabiners, the ladder would drop to the floor with Molly on it. They each reached for one, straining against the weight of the grown woman climbing up the other side. Luckily, the nylon rope had some give to it, and by planting one leg against the beam for leverage, Nyles was able to pull the first carabiner far enough to s
lip the rope out.
Its stabilization gone, the free end of the ladder whipped through the air. The wall rocked back and forth as the ladder twisted around, slamming Molly against the cage. The wolves went ballistic, throwing their bodies against the metal bars in an attempt to get a piece of her, and Molly had to kick her feet against the bars to push herself away.
Dee swung a leg off the side of the wall, straddling it for balance against its unsteady motion, but Nyles wasn’t quick enough. Dee watched in horror as he teetered forward toward the wolf pen.
He flailed his arm, shifting his balance just as the wall wobbled in the opposite direction, and instead of falling forward, Nyles stumbled off the other side, plummeting into the darkness below.
“Nyles!” Dee cried. She could barely discern the outline of his body on the concrete beneath her as tears blurred her vision. Was he dead? Had another person she cared about died because of her?
A scream from the wolf pen reminded Dee that she wasn’t out of danger yet. The wolves had caught strands of Molly’s hair in their snapping jaws. She yelped out in pain as the wolf pack pulled chunks from her scalp. Molly pawed at the next rung of the ladder, desperate to escape.
But as the wolves pulled her toward the cage, Dee saw the rope ladder slacken. She reached for the second carabiner and quickly unlatched it. Then, with one final heave, she pulled the nylon loop from the shackle and let the entire weight collapse to the floor.
As she slowly stood up, Molly looked even more demonic: makeup smeared, tights torn, hair a rat’s nest dotted with bald spots. But Dee had to give her credit—she didn’t panic for an instant.
“When I get my hands on you,” Molly began, her voice disturbingly calm, “I won’t need one of my animals to dismantle you limb from limb.”
It wasn’t a threat Dee took lightly. “The Postman wants you dead.” She thought of Nyles, his body splayed out on the ground beneath her. “He wants us all dead.”
“No,” Molly snarled. “Just you.”
“I know about the reward,” Dee said. She wanted Molly to understand what was happening, to surrender to Dee before she had to do something unspeakable to protect herself. “And I know that there’s a new lineup of killers set to arrive on Alcatraz two-point-oh next week.”
Molly’s rage faltered. “You do?”
Dee nodded. “I know he promised to keep you around if you killed me, but trust me, he’s not. He’s going to kill all of us. Your only chance is to let me go.”
Dee watched Molly contemplate this new information. She glanced back at DIYnona dressed in Hannah’s wig. Would she believe the truth? Or would distrust and bloodlust win out?
Molly picked up one end of the ladder. With a loud grunt, she tossed it up toward the top of the wolf cage.
Well, there was Dee’s answer.
The ladder crashed back to the floor, but Dee saw what Molly was trying to do: the top edge of the cage door had a lip on it. If she could get the ladder to catch, she could scale the side of the cage and from there jump onto the top of the wall.
There was only one way to stop her: Dee had to open the cage.
She’d been hoping to avoid that scenario. She’d had no choice with the others, killing them to save herself. But she would have been content to leave Molly trapped in her animal pen where she couldn’t do any harm. The idea of allowing someone to be eaten alive—even someone as loathsome as Molly Mauler a.k.a. Ruth Martinello of 157 Hillcrest Avenue in Marquette, Michigan—made Dee’s heart ache. But she couldn’t let Molly escape and potentially kill her.
Dee picked up the white remote control, closed her eyes, and pressed the button.
The screams were unbearable, and though Dee pressed her fingers into her ears, she couldn’t block out the spine-chilling sound.
It was over quickly, though Dee wasn’t about to look down. She didn’t need to see the carnage to know that Molly Mauler had gotten a taste of her own medicine. And that the wolves had gotten a taste of Molly.
Suddenly the wall shook violently, and Dee had to grip it with both hands to keep from falling. The wolves were still hungry. They threw themselves at the maze wall, bloody paws and snouts splattering the wood with Molly’s remains as they tried to claw up to Dee. They were frenzied, and Dee was afraid they might bring the wall down as they repeatedly launched themselves against it.
Time to leave. Without the benefit of the rope ladder, it wasn’t going to be pretty. She lowered herself down on the far side of Molly’s pen, dangling as far as she could by the fingertips of her good arm, then let herself fall.
The pain of impact rocketed up through her numbed feet to her shins. If her ankle hadn’t been sprained before, it certainly was now, but her left leg appeared to be unbroken, and she was able to crawl to Nyles’s side, urgently seeking signs of life.
“Nyles?” A sob caught in her throat. “Nyles, say something.” His shoulder lay at an unnatural angle beneath his body, but she didn’t see any blood from a head wound, and as she reached a tentative hand toward his throat, she practically shrieked with happiness. His pulse was strong. Nyles was still alive.
She was so ecstatic, she almost didn’t hear the voice behind her.
“Hello, Cinderella.”
Dee’s sobs stopped instantly. The voice was familiar, and Dee knew what she was going to see even before she rolled over to face it.
“Prince Slycer.”
Part of her had always known that this was what she’d find at the end of the maze.
Slycer looked exactly the same as when they’d last met. Well, almost. There wasn’t any blood nor any trace of a stab wound on his stark white Prince Charming coat. But other than that, the costume was identical, as well as the night-vision goggles and the ugly, twisting blade.
Except this Slycer was noticeably shorter.
It was time to end the charade once and for all.
“Take off the mask,” Dee said, her voice remarkably steady as she struggled to her feet using her good leg. “Kimmi.”
Slycer stood utterly still for a moment, then slowly raised a hand to the night-vision goggles and slid them off.
Mara dropped the mask to the floor and smiled.
“YOU DON’T LOOK SURPRISED,” Kimmi said. She sounded disappointed.
Dee limped forward, wedging herself between Kimmi and Nyles. “I had my suspicions.”
“Bullshit,” Kimmi said. “You totally thought Mara was dead.”
The fall from the ceiling—Mara had landed perfectly in the middle of the bed, her face turned away so that Dee couldn’t see her. “You did a pretty good job of faking it.”
“Right? I just had some foam pellets for my mouth, but you totally made that video spikeworthy by climbing up on the freaking roof. The mattress was hard as hell when I landed on it.” She rubbed her lower back. “I might have a bruise.”
You’re going to have more than that when I’m done with you. “Who was she? The real Mara?”
Kimmi shrugged. “Some chick who was scared shitless. Daddy thought it would boost ratings to bring in a crop of young, attractive inmates, but some of them just gave up the moment they arrived on Alcatraz two-point-oh. Mara kept her head down, didn’t interact with people. Can you believe she only had two subscribers to her personal feed? Two! I think a dead cat could get more than that. She was so boring. I did her a favor, to be honest. The day before you arrived, I killed her, dyed my hair, added colored contacts, and presto! You had a new best friend.”
Her callousness at murdering the real Mara was disgusting, but after all that Dee had suffered at Kimmi’s hands, it wasn’t surprising.
“You never even recognized me,” Kimmi preened. “I’ve always been one step ahead of you.”
Not always.
“I searched for you while I was in the hospital,” Kimmi continued, her eyes narrow, her voice sharp. “Daddy helped. But you’d changed your name.”
“Your dad is The Postman,” Dee said slowly, as if she wanted to make sure that Kimmi unde
rstood every word.
Kimmi’s blue eyes, now free of the colored contacts, grew wide. “Yes! I’m impressed.”
“Don’t be.”
“Daddy went to talk to your dad a few months after my trial ended. He wanted to buy the rights to our story and turn it into a reality show. Wouldn’t that have been awesome?”
Dee hadn’t understood her dad’s reasoning at the time. She’d wanted to be Dolores Hernandez, not Dee Guerrera. She’d wanted to stay at her school with her friends, not move to an entirely new city. But her dad, as with all things, had been right.
“But it’s a good thing he didn’t, because Alcatraz two-point-oh is a much better idea for a reality show. I really wanted you to see it. We scanned every school in the country, looking for you. Smart of your dad to keep you in LA. We never even thought to look there.”
“We’re smarter than you give us credit for,” Dee said.
Kimmi glanced down at her knife. “Maybe. But that idiot sister of yours wasn’t. She led me right to you. Can you believe she tried to email me?”
This time, Dee was genuinely surprised. How had Monica been able to track Kimmi down? “What?”
“Oh, yeah. She pretended to be writing an article on teens and mental health for her school newspaper.” Kimmi gave Dee a thumbs-up. “Ooooh, good one, Monica.”
SHUT UP! Dee screamed the words in her head but remained silent. She needed to keep Kimmi talking at all costs.
“Imagine my reaction,” Kimmi laughed, “when I found that you’d replaced me with another sister!” She clicked her tongue. “How could you?”
“You do realize that’s not how it works, right? My dad and stepmom found each other. I had nothing to do with it.”
“You could have shut Monica out!” Kimmi cried. “But no, you had to let her in, let her get close, tell her your secrets. Like a sister. Do you have any idea how much that hurt me?”
Dee clenched her jaw. “You’re not my sister.”
Kimmi exploded. “BUT I SHOULD HAVE BEEN! Not her. Not some stupid girl who only cared about fashion and boys and Gucci Hangman.”
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