Just the same, she definitely wasn’t interested in Mr. Cho. At least not in that way. He simply was not her type, aside from his wealth. But her husband already had money, so what good was that alone in another man? Parker was the one guest who had definitely caught her eye, but for now he was off gallivanting with the two younger people. So, as it were, she let David think she might be interested in him. After all, any attention that he devoted to her still felt good, even if the bearer of it was a complete bore.
Frank and Thomas had wandered into the trophy room. Mounted animal heads lined the walls on all sides. There were deer, a mountain lion, a gazelle, a pair of tigers, and even an elephant’s head. A bearskin rug sprawled across the floor in front of a massive fireplace.
Frank sat on a red velvet couch beneath a wall of trophies. He gazed up at a massive swordfish hanging from chains above him. Then he grinned for the first time since he’d arrived. The smile looked somewhat awkward on the ex-sheriff’s naturally stern face.
“I like this couch,” he said, shifting in it purposefully. “It’s way more comfortable than it looks.”
Thomas, the nerdy-looking engineer, nodded as he stood nearby, examining a small animal he didn’t recognize mounted above the fireplace.
“This room is so garish,” he said quietly, moving his gaze from one animal to the next.
“What?” Frank said. “This is a man’s room! I mean, just look at that swordfish. It’s a beauty. I caught one just like it. Two… no, it was three, yeah, three summers ago, when I was in Puerto Vallarta with my wife. She always insists that I need to get out more. She usually gets me to go on her damn vacations by allowing me at least a day to fish. I didn’t even want to come here this week. But she insisted. I still don’t know why she had to enter me into this damn drawing.”
“You had to be dragged here?” Thomas asked. “I like my job and all, but this is paradise.”
He certainly sounded enthused, but there was something about the way he said it that didn’t ring true for Frank.
“I don’t know, I definitely didn’t sign up for some god-damned silly game or whatever that Brit was babbling about,” he said.
“Look, just try to relax, Frank,” Thomas said in an oddly stiff sort of way. “You might enjoy yourself.”
“You sound like my wife now,” Frank said, but then reluctantly smiled. He once again leaned back on the sofa and looked up at the swordfish. “Maybe you’re right,” he admitted, holding up his glass of Dalmore forty-year reserve. “Especially in this room, on this couch, with scotch this good in my hand.”
Thomas nodded and smiled awkwardly. He let a few moments of silence pass and then asked what he’d been dying to since they’d been dismissed.
“So, what do you suppose the game is going to be, anyway? The one that the butler was talking about?” he asked.
Frank looked at Thomas for a moment. He realized he didn’t have an answer for him. Thomas seemed to pick up on it and they both shrugged in unison under the watchful, glassy-eyed gaze of the beasts hanging all around them.
Elsewhere in the mansion, other guests were wondering the exact same thing. Some were even openly speculating.
“Maybe this is, like, some sort of new reality show or something. And there’s, like, hidden cameras all around us?” Bryce said as he leafed through a huge book with leather-binding.
Bryce, Emily, and Parker, the three youngest guests, had found their way to the massive library. It was two stories of wall-to-wall books of all kinds. Several ladders with wheels on tracks were spaced throughout the room. Emily had led them there in hopes of discovering some sort of clue as to who the owner of the mansion might be.
“Yeah, but what would be the point of the show?” Parker asked.
“I don’t know, dude,” Bryce said, getting more excited as he got further into his theory, “maybe, like, they put us all in a house together and then see how we all interact? Kind of like The Real World, except nobody knows, right? You know, since, like, people act differently than they really would when they know they’re gonna be on TV? It’s, like, hidden camera Real World! Hidden World!”
“Maybe,” Parker said, trying to decide if Bryce was joking or just simply stupid.
“That’s not what’s going on,” Emily said. “I mean, you need to sign waivers and stuff like that to be on TV. Besides, they’re not going to serve you, a minor, alcohol and then film it and air it on ABC. This isn’t a TV show, no way. I wonder if it’s going to be some kind of ‘Most Dangerous Game’–type thing.”
Bryce, looking every bit the unemployed stoner he likely was, and Parker, seemingly a typical, douchey jock, just looked at her with blank stares. She had to hold back a laugh.
“It’s this story,” she explained, “where this rich guy hunts people for sport.”
“Oh, crap!” Bryce said. “That better not be what this is.”
“It’s not—that’s completely ridiculous,” Parker said.
“Look, guy, you never know,” Bryce said.
Parker rolled his eyes and then the three of them laughed. Just then one of the maids entered the library with an empty tray and asked them if they wanted more beverages. All three ordered another without hesitating.
Jacqueline and Darrel were the first to find what was perhaps the mansion’s most grandiose display of luxury and excess. After a quick stroll through the gardens, and brief passes through a study and then a gaming room, which contained a pool table and several LCD TVs, they stumbled upon the mansion’s aquarium.
The aquarium room was lined with massive fish tanks from wall to wall. Each tank had a label next to it, describing the species of sea life found within its confines. There were aquarium staples, such as a tank containing a puffer fish, seahorses, and several other brightly colored tropical fish. There was a tank of piranha, one with a large octopus, and many others housing wide varieties of familiar and unfamiliar sea creatures.
But the showpiece was the huge tank at the far end of the room, taking up one entire wall. It was almost as large as the tanks at commercial aquariums. Swimming around behind the glass were some stingray, a few larger fish, and several full-grown sharks. The biggest was at least nine feet long and circled around and around in slow, smooth strokes, gliding as if it were being propelled by stealth engines rather than natural biomechanics.
“Hey, wow, it’s a bull shark,” Darrel said. “That’s pretty unusual for an aquarium. It’s actually the most dangerous shark species known. Even more dangerous than great whites.”
“Really?” Jacqueline asked, genuinely fascinated.
“Yeah, it’s the most aggressive species in the world. I’ve heard bull sharks have higher testosterone levels than any other animal in existence. Not just other sharks, but more testosterone than all animals. They’re basically the perfect killers. Aggressive, powerful, and completely remorseless.”
“How do you know all this?” Jacqueline asked with a grin. “Are you some sort of marine biologist or something?”
Darrel laughed and shook his head.
“No, Shark Week!”
Jacqueline laughed back. Her laugh was grainy and full, the sort of laugh that can only be achieved by years of smoking. But there was something about it that Darrel liked. It was loud, almost too loud, but it also was infectious. It made him want to laugh along with her.
“Yeah, I’m really just a high school science teacher and football coach,” he said.
“Don’t you do that!” she said.
“What?”
“Don’t say ‘just’ a teacher,” Jacqueline scolded. “Teachers are the fabric of our society. Without them, there’d be no doctors or marine biologists or lawyers or anything like that. Be proud!”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Darrel said with a grin. “What about you? What do you do?”
“Me? I’m retired, honey!” she said. “Me, working at this age, no way. But before I retired, I was just a nurse.”
Darrel opened his mouth to give her the ve
ry same lecture, but she slapped him on the arm playfully before he could say anything.
“Don’t even say it, Shark Man!” she said, and then downed the rest of her champagne.
The only guest who didn’t really explore the mansion was Guadalupe. She instead retreated to her room to take a bath. Bubble baths were one of the few luxuries she allowed herself regularly. They helped ease her mind, helped her stay focused. She knew she needed to relax and try to have fun more often, but at the same time, recreational sloth was a virtue of the unsuccessful. It was frivolous. She’d grown up poor enough to know that she never wanted to experience being poor again. The shame of having a father who was out of work slightly more often than he was drunk, which was a considerable amount of time, was worse than having no father at all in her opinion.
But the bathroom attached to her suite was immaculate, and the sight of it had made taking a predinner bath nearly impossible to resist. The tub itself was a thing of absolute beauty and perfection, unmatched by almost anything she’d ever seen before. It was a claw-foot tub, larger and deeper than any she’d been in previously. The four claw feet were made of polished silver, and even she could plainly see how expensive they were. But the tub also had Jacuzzi jets. Twenty-eight, by her count.
She’d long dreamed of owning a tub like this. Antique styling, modern amenities. That was Guadalupe’s taste in a nutshell. She knew from her own searching that tubs like these often cost at least $3,000, usually more. It wasn’t that she couldn’t afford one. At least, technically that wasn’t true. She did have the money. But at the same time, such purchases were reserved for retirement. She had to prioritize her budget until then.
Regardless, the tub was here, now, in front of her. And she was going to take advantage of that as often as possible during her week’s stay at Westlake Estate.
CHAPTER 5
THE GAME BEGINS
The first guest showed up in the large formal dining room at 6:39 P.M.
“Ah, Mr. Gatling, you’re early,” Giles said as he noticed that the man still had not changed out of that horrible short-sleeved oxford shirt.
“Yeah, sorry, I, uh, hate to be late,” Thomas said. “You know.”
“Very well, sir, no problem at all,” Giles said. “Please, find your seat and I will have someone out here for a drink order right away. Please do not touch anything on the table until the dinner begins.”
Thomas circled around the huge dinner table. It was large enough for thirty place settings but was presently set for just ten at one end. Above each salad plate was a folded placard with names printed on them in gold foil. He moved around the table until he found the placard that read: THOMAS GATLING.
He sat down and looked around at the rest of the dining room. It was vast, with ceilings easily forty feet high. Two elaborate crystal chandeliers were suspended above each end of the table. The walls were covered in framed paintings, surely originals, spaced between gold sconces. At the far end of the dining room, directly opposite where the places were set, was a marble bust of the god Eros on top of a stone pedestal.
Each of the ten spots at the table was set with the same items: one small salad plate, a full array of sterling silver flatware, a maroon napkin with gold thread accents, a water glass, a wineglass, and a party popper. Thomas picked up and examined his party popper. It appeared to be just a run-of-the-mill party popper, the same kind he used to get as a kid on New Year’s Eve. The kind where you grab each end and pull, resulting in a loud bang and mild explosion of confetti and strings.
“Put that down, please,” Giles said behind him. “No touching until all of the guests arrive.”
“Sorry,” Thomas mumbled, and set down his party popper.
“It’s quite all right. Unfortunately, our waitstaff is currently busy helping the chefs plate the first courses. Can I personally get you something to drink besides water?”
Thomas shook his head.
Giles nodded and left the room again. A short time later, the second guest arrived. It was Frank Ponder, the former sheriff and apparently avid sport fisherman. He was wearing a dress shirt and tie, and he looked as uncomfortable in them as he likely felt.
“Hi, again,” Frank said as he searched for his spot. “Thomas, right?”
“Did you stay on that couch the whole time?” Thomas asked, not bothering to answer Frank’s question.
Thomas had left the trophy room after only a half hour. The creepiness of the staring animals had been too much for him. When he’d left, Frank had still been parked on the sofa underneath the swordfish, sipping on his third glass of aged scotch.
“Of course!” Frank said. “That is my idea of heaven. That sofa with that scotch. I’m really starting to appreciate that my wife nagged me into doing this.”
He laughed at his own joke and Thomas forced a few chuckles in return. What else was he supposed to do? He’d never really been very good at small talk.
One by one, the other guests began arriving and finding their assigned seats at the table. Giles greeted each of them with the instructions to not touch their place settings until told to do so. It didn’t take long for the chatter to begin. The guests really hadn’t stopped drinking since they’d arrived, after all, save for the past hour when they’d each retired to their suites to change into more formal attire for the welcome dinner.
The predinner conversations ranged from what they thought was going on, to the lavishness of the estate, to what they did for a living. Sophia was the last to arrive, making her customary late entrance. Giles gathered the attention of the room with a standard, preemptive clanging of a spoon against a glass.
“Thank you all for attending our wonderful welcome dinner,” Giles said, reciting another memorized speech from a set of instructions he’d found in his quarters an hour after he’d welcomed the guests to the estate. “Congratulations on being here and winning the online sweepstakes contest. On behalf of our wonderful and gracious host, I wish to once again welcome you to what is sure to be the most exciting week of your lives. To kick it all off with a bang, I’d like you to pick up your party poppers at this time. On the count backward from three, let’s pull them apart and get this marvelous week started in style, shall we?”
There was a nervous pause and excited murmurs as the ten guests raised their party poppers. Then the countdown began, disjointed at first, but totally in sync by the time they hit two.
“Three!”
“Two!”
“One!”
There was a relatively loud chorus of bangs as they all pulled apart their party poppers. Confetti soared across the table. And then there were the sudden screams as they realized that the guest seated at the head of the table had burst into flames. Flames so hot they glowed blue and white instead of the more traditional orange and yellow. The guest let out a single, horrifying scream that momentarily drowned out everything else, before slumping over onto the floor, still ablaze in a flaming pile of former estate guest.
CHAPTER 6
THE RULES
For a few seconds, nobody did anything but scream and gasp.
Then Sophia kicked away from the table as the body fell beside her chair. Her reaction seemed to ignite a sudden flurry of other activity. Frank was the next to move, rushing toward the flaming guest with a napkin in his hand.
Darrel reached for his glass of water as more cries echoed throughout the room.
“Don’t!” Frank shouted. “That little bit of water won’t put these flames out. We need to smother it.” He looked at the tiny napkin in his hand and seemed to realize that it would also do nothing to extinguish the almost unnaturally hot fire.
But then Giles burst into the dining room from the kitchen with a red fire extinguisher in his hands.
“Step aside,” he demanded in a calm but authoritative way that the former law enforcement side of Frank had to admire.
By the time Giles had sprayed enough white foam onto the body to extinguish the fire, the rest of the guests had grouped at t
he other end of the room by the marble bust of Eros. They huddled together, some crying, others simply gaping at the partially charred and motionless body lying on the floor in a heap of white foam across the room.
“Into the foyer, all of you. Right now,” Giles ordered.
As the nine remaining guests hastily exited the dining room, Giles knew it was time for the sealed envelope in his back pocket. It was time for the game to begin. That fire had been no accident—it couldn’t have been. People don’t just burst into searing blue flames right before eating dinner. Giles removed the envelope from his pocket, quickly opened it, and began reading.
Out in the foyer, the guests began to take stock of who was missing. Who had been the poor soul they’d just watched get burned alive? It didn’t take long for them to piece together that it was David Cho, the fifty-something patent lawyer. Had the death been less horrific and less real and less immediate, perhaps at least one of them would have let fly some lame and clichéd joke about the ironic lack of tragedy surrounding the untimely death of a lawyer. But no such comments were made. Mostly there was simply fear, and whispers, and soft sobbing. Young Emily, in particular, seemed especially hard to console.
After ten or fifteen minutes of confusion and horror and shock, Giles entered the foyer. He had their attention almost immediately. They were obviously dying to know what was going on.
“Ladies and gentlemen, as some of you may or may not have already guessed, what we all just witnessed was no accident,” Giles said, looking down at his set of instructions and pausing to allow time for them to digest and react accordingly. “And so, our game begins as promised. It is a game of life and death, you see. And, like all good games, it has rules. First, there will, of course, be a winner. And, in turn, losers. Except in this game, the stakes for the losers are of the utmost importance. Because the stakes are your very lives.”
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