#NoEscape (Volume 3) (#MurderTrending)

by Gretchen McNeil

  “I’m going to try to make it to the altar,” she said, pointing toward it. “The exit’s got to be up—”

  But whoever was controlling the room wasn’t about to make it that easy. Before Persey even finished speaking, both of the platforms within leaping distance shuddered, dropped a few inches, then crashed down into the fire.

  So much for that.

  “Confess something else,” Kevin suggested. He was the closest to the altar but hadn’t attempted to jump onto it. “See if another one moves.”

  Easy for you to say. “I’m glad you think I have so many sins at my disposal,” she said, glaring at him.

  Mackenzie rolled her eyes. “Little Miss Perfect doesn’t do anything wrong, huh? Except she’s a cheater. I bet that’s how you passed the Hidden Library.”

  “Is it possible to cheat on an escape room?” Kevin asked, head tilted to the side.

  Mackenzie smiled at him wickedly. “Ab-so-fucking-lute-ly.”

  “Perhaps…” Neela started tentatively. “Perhaps if you had something, um, bigger.”

  “What do you mean?” Persey asked.

  “Well, if cheating on a test moved one platform, maybe a bigger confession would move more of them?”

  “Don’t say anything else,” Riot said, holding up his hands as if to prevent Persey from making any further confessions. “I’ll do it.”

  He was trying to protect her, which was sweet. But Persey felt a sense of responsibility for this mess, for not being strong enough to stand her ground in Boyz Distrikt after she found B.J.’s body. If she’d let the clock drop to zero, Arlo might still be alive. She’d let herself be persuaded away from doing what she knew was the right thing, and now it was her job to fix it.

  Persey squared her shoulders, faced the altar, and thought of the actual worst thing she’d ever done.

  “Wait!” Riot cried. But Persey ignored him.

  “I told my father I hated him and wanted him dead,” she said in a strong clear voice. “And I meant it.” So much.

  This time there was no hesitation. Four slabs slid into place, creating a straight line from Persey to the altar.

  “HONEY, WE’RE NOT ATTACKING YOU. I DON’T WANT YOU TO feel attacked.”

  Persey’s mom held a stemmed, half-full glass of chardonnay, which she brought to her lips between the sentences. Maybe she was hoping her husband would pick up the thread and save her the effort of having to voice the second one, or maybe she needed the liquid courage to so openly defy him. Because saying “I don’t want you to feel attacked” when Persey was having a come-to-Jesus conversation with her dad was sort of like telling a postal service employee that you don’t want them to feel wet while they’re delivering your mail in the middle of a rainstorm. It doesn’t matter what you want: someone’s getting drenched to the bone.

  Which is what every conversation with her dad had been like lately. This was just more of the same, but Persey’s mom was trying her best to play mediator between the two parties, even if she was probably (definitely) too drunk to be of any significant help.

  She wanted to say all of this, or at least half of it, but if there was one thing Persey had learned in her sixteen years in this family, it was that when her dad was on a tirade, he didn’t expect her to respond. Doing so only made it worse.

  Instead, she kept her head down, mouth shut, and waited for the storm to pass.

  “Why shouldn’t she feel like she’s being attacked, huh?” He paced back and forth between the kitchen island and the family room, arms gesticulating like an octopus mid-swim, literally unable to keep still. “Nothing else has worked to motivate her. Maybe your daughter needs a little attacking.”

  It was always “our son” but “your daughter” when he was talking to his wife. As if their children were fathered by different men.

  We weren’t.

  “Sweetie,” her mom drawled, reaching out to her husband as he approached the sofa. It sounded more like “Shweetie” due to the constant stream of chardonnay, which she’d just refilled from a bottle in a cooler sleeve on the coffee table. “Please, don’t.”

  Persey cringed. She appreciated her mom’s well-meaning intervention and realized it came from a place of real, though weak, kindness, but telling her dad what he could and couldn’t do was a losing tactic.

  “Don’t what?” he roared. “Parent?”

  Her mom took a slow sip and remained calm. “Sweetie, it’s not like you haven’t tried this before. I’m pretty sure we’ve all heard this conversation.”

  Only like a million and one times.

  “Well, your daughter clearly isn’t listening. Have you seen her grades?”

  Three Bs, a B-minus, and a C. If her dad had spent even twenty seconds processing her grades in reference to what they were versus what he expected of her, he’d have realized that this was a huge improvement over her progress report a few months ago. Only algebra continued to thwart her. An engaged parent would have been encouraging. But Persey’s dad just used grades as an excuse to remind her what a disappointment she was. A loser. Worthless.

  “Why can’t you be more like your brother?”

  Persey let out a long, slow breath. It always came down to this.

  Her dad stared out the kitchen window, the sharp, hard lines of his face softening as he thought longingly of his firstborn. “He understood the importance of grades, of what it meant to his future. Of what it meant to his parents. Of what he owed them.”

  Owed them? What her brother owed them was about a hundred grand so far in legal fees and spending money, all of which they’d handed over willingly, and that didn’t even include what he’d stolen. One hundred thousand dollars. And counting. Which would have been fine, Persey was pretty sure, except her parents were heavily invested in a new project at work, so cash flow had been tight. Even her dad, who usually did whatever his son asked without question, had looked strained during their last call. Worried (disillusioned). Pinched.

  Her brother was spending all that money wandering around Southeast Asia. On Daddy’s dime. The official line Persey’s parents used for their friends was that he was taking a gap year to explore and improve the world around him before returning to college. No mention of the police investigation at Columbia. No mention of the missing girl. The reports of violence. The civil lawsuit. It didn’t matter that her brother was probably a sociopath. It only mattered that he’d gotten straight A’s at Allen and gone to an Ivy League college.

  Her dad’s priorities were so fucked up.

  “These grades are worthless,” he was saying, pointing at his open laptop screen. “How is she possibly going to go to college with these?”

  “I’m not going to college.”

  The words dropped like an A-bomb. There was a moment of silence, the instant of detonation when she thought maybe the fuse was a dud, the bomb was impotent, the words hadn’t actually come out of her mouth. Then the flash of light as a nuclear reaction was ignited, followed by the mushroom cloud of her dad’s fury, billowing upward.

  Her mom sucked in a sharp breath, understanding even in the dizzying haze of her alcohol that Persey had just started a war.

  “WHAT?” Her dad’s face was tomato red. Already.

  “I’m not going to college.”

  “Who told you that was an option?”

  If her dad had spent five minutes talking to her instead of at her, he’d know that she already had a plan post–high school. It just wasn’t the plan he wanted.

  “You’re not pretty enough to find a rich husband if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “What? No.”

  “You’re not smart or charming, so the only thing you have to lure a decent man is my money. And don’t think for one second that you’re going to get your hands on it.”

  Money? He thought she gave two shits about his money? Years of neglect and emotional abuse, of being cut off from kindness, isolated from any expression of love…She’d have given up the money, the house, the private drivers
and fancy cars for one heartfelt hug from her father, and instead, he accused her of being a money-grubbing parasite.

  I hate you so much.

  “So what do you expect to do with yourself, huh?”

  I hate you.

  “Live here?”

  I wish you were dead.

  “And freeload off me?”

  “It’s working for your son.”

  This time it was Persey who sucked in a breath. Had she really just said that out loud? Her self-control, usually so strong and well-honed when it came to dealing with her dad, had slipped.

  “You’re done!” he roared. “Do you hear me? The second you graduate from high school you are out of this house and dead to us, do you understand?”

  “Sweetie, please.” Her mom’s protest was feeble, but at least it was a protest. “That’s not fair.”

  “Oh, it’s more than fair. She’s lucky I’m not charging her rent now.”

  “But…”

  “Don’t defend her. You women are always defending each other.”

  “I never did that well in school,” her mom continued, “and look where I am now!”

  Her dad’s laugh was biting and harsh. “Yeah, married to me.”

  “But she’s trying,” her mom pressed, undeterred. It was the most vehement she’d seen her mom in years. “She studies all the time. Tests just aren’t as easy for her as they are for her brother.” Actual tears from her mom now as she struggled to her feet, though she still didn’t stray far from her wine bottle.

  Persey’s dad ignored his wife’s emotional display, whirling on his daughter with an accusatory index finger. “If you don’t go to college, you are cut off the moment you get your high school diploma. No money. No cell phone. No cushy bedroom. And most importantly, no inheritance. Understand? As of that day, you are dead to us.”

  Persey could have cried, begged, asked for a chance to prove herself after high school, but she knew such protestations would fall on deaf ears. Her father’s rage and misogyny needed an outlet, and she was it. Though she had no idea where she’d go or what she’d do, Persey accepted her fate as an accomplished fact. There would be no reprieve.

  Without another word, she trudged to her bedroom. Her mom was weeping, her dad already on the phone with his lawyer explaining that he and his wife were planning to change their will.

  She was about to be an orphan.

  HER FIRST FEW STEPS WERE SHAKY: PERSEY COULD FEEL HER knees wobbling as she tentatively moved from stone to stone, expecting at any moment to feel the ground drop out beneath her and to plummet to a hideous, fiery end. But the platforms held—springy with her shifting weight, but firm—and soon she moved with more confidence, her stomach less fluttery, her panic less palpable.

  But she still let out a huge sigh of relief when her foot met the solid stone slab on which the altar stood. As soon as she landed, the path she’d been on shifted out of place to ensure that no one else had direct access to the altar.

  “The. Fuck,” Mackenzie said. Only, her voice contained less of a sneer than usual. “It worked.”

  Kevin clapped his hands and jumped up and down on his slab, tempting fate. “Okay, everybody! Start your confessions!”

  “When I was seven, I broke three of my nani’s Hummels,” Neela began without hesitation. “And blamed my little brother for it.”

  A platform groaned across the gap and tapped against hers.

  “And I lied to my parents about why I was coming to Vegas this weekend,” she continued quickly, only she dropped her voice this time, as if afraid her parents might hear her. From Philadelphia. “I told them I was at a leadership conference.”

  Two more sections of wood slid in front of the first, giving Neela a clear shot to the altar. She quickly scrambled across them, landing beside Persey. She smiled, then threw her hands around Persey, hugging her tight. “We made it.”

  Persey wished she could feel as much relief. They’d made it to the altar, but as she coughed on the smoke that was rapidly filling the Cavethedral, she wasn’t yet convinced that they were safe.

  Another piece of the floor fell away, this one just behind Wes. He flinched as smoke wafted up from the new opening. “That’s what counts as a confession around here?”

  Neela looked hurt. “Placing blame on an innocent party, even for something as seemingly innocuous as a broken collectible figurine, is a heinous crime.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” Persey said. She wanted to make Neela feel more comfortable with her confession. “You don’t really want to be the worst person in this room.”

  Meanwhile, Riot was staring up the fire pole to where the trapdoor still gaped open in the ceiling of the Cavethedral. “I bet I could shinny up the pole,” he said, reaching across Arlo’s covered corpse to try to reach it. Persey’s discarded T-shirt was now completely soaked in blood. “Maybe backtrack from there to the library where we started and—”

  The section of the floor that anchored the fire pole shuddered. Riot leaped back just in time: the platform he’d been standing on collapsed into the furnace, taking 80 percent of Arlo Wu, the pole, and Riot’s escape plan with it.

  “Or maybe not,” he said.

  “Just confess something, dude!” Kevin said. “I’m sure you got some deep, dark librarian secrets lying around.”

  “Funny.”

  As they continued to bicker, Neela was kneading her hands together, her mood darkening by the second. “I’m sorry about your dad.”

  “Hm?”

  “That you hated him, I mean. Have you two made up?”

  Persey had to fight to keep from laughing. The idea that she and her dad could have any sort of reconciliation was ridiculous. “No.”

  “Do you think you ever will?”

  The urge to laugh vanished, replaced by a dull ache in the pit of Persey’s stomach. “He’s dead.”

  “Oh.” Neela paused. “Oh, I get it. So telling your dad that you wanted him dead…before he died…that was the worst thing you’ve ever done?”

  It was. “Yeah.”

  Two dull crashes from behind signaled that more of the floor was disappearing, a reminder of the excruciating demise that might await them if they didn’t find the escape mechanism for this room. But instead of jumping into action, Neela merely stared off into the distance while she chewed at her upper lip.

  “Because mine wasn’t,” Neela said at last. “I mean, it was the worst thing I’ve done consciously, so maybe that’s what the litmus is for this test, but I still can’t help feeling like I should have confessed that other thing.”

  Other thing…“You didn’t do this other thing consciously?”

  “I know that sounds like a total cop-out, but it’s true. I was just solving a puzzle, you know? Or so I thought. I didn’t know it would be—”

  “Hey!” Kevin called out from his platform. “What are you two whispering about? Secret plots to win the game?” He was joking (accusing), and though Kevin was the closest to the altar, Persey doubted he could have actually overheard their conversation.

  “We’re just wondering why the hell we’re the only ones with big enough balls to make a confession,” she said, not about to give up Neela’s confidence.

  “Fine!” Wes stood up, hands on hips. “I’ll whip it out.”

  Mackenzie grimaced. “Please don’t.”

  “I stole a Snickers bar from the drugstore when I was twelve. Happy?”

  “Seriously?” Persey had grown up rich herself, and while she would have turned in all of her family’s wealth to have had a happier home life, she certainly never felt the need to steal anything. Especially a candy bar. “Boarding school kid can’t afford a Snickers?”

  “What?” Wes shrugged. “I was hungry.”

  “And you didn’t have, like, a buck fifty to your name?”

  “Oh, honey,” Mackenzie said, simultaneously condescending and commiserating, “rich people don’t carry cash.”

  That’s not true.

  “Hey
,” Wes said, scanning the room. “Why isn’t the floor moving? I made my confession.”

  There was a groaning noise, and for a half a second, Persey thought this lame confession might actually have worked, but instead of moving toward him, another piece of the floor near Wes broke away and tumbled into the inferno.

  “Your confession sucked, dude,” Kevin said.

  Wes pointed at Neela. “It was as good as hers.”

  “Different strokes for different folks.” Then Kevin turned toward the altar and pressed the palms of his hands together as if he was praying. “When I was in college, I accidentally killed someone.”

  Accidentally?

  Two sections of wood immediately created an easy pathway for him, and as Kevin gingerly picked his way toward them, Persey desperately wished he’d elaborate about what happened. Only, she didn’t want to ask. And he clearly didn’t want to share.

  “How do you accidentally kill someone?” Wes asked, voicing the question in Persey’s head. Well, one of them.

  “I believe that is referred to as involuntary manslaughter,” Neela said, shaking off her reflectiveness from moments ago, “and carries a federal sentencing guideline of ten to sixteen months.”

  Kevin flashed her a double thumbs-up as he stepped up to the altar. “Good to know.”

  “Twenty minutes.”

  Right. They weren’t out of the woods yet. “The platforms led us to the altar for a reason,” Persey said, arguing out loud. “So the exit must be here.”

  Neela rounded the sold marble slab. “These engravings are so weird. Intricate patterns, but none of them match up.”

  “The markings don’t make sense!” Riot called out. He still hadn’t made a move toward confessing, which made Persey wonder what he, and everyone else, was waiting for. “But maybe it’s a code?”

  A code. They might need their resident cryptographer for that. “Shaun! We need you over here.”

  “Yeah, Shaun-bot,” Kevin added. “Let’s hear that confession!”

  Shaun stood near the wall, staring away from Persey toward the auto-da-fé quote, and made no effort to respond. He didn’t even flinch as a nearby piece of the floor between himself and Mackenzie fell away.