My first attempt at choking someone out hadn’t gone well. But I had managed to steal the headset, inflict some windpipe damage, and get out of the room before he could pull a gun on me, so it wasn’t a total fail.
I heard him yelling when I hit the stairs to the second floor and hoped that he was calling Nikos and Dilton. If the three of them were busy looking for me, they couldn’t go on a murder spree.
I burst into the foyer where Nikos and I had entered and looked around. I could make a run for it outside, but more than an escape route, I needed a phone or someway to contact Nash. I propped open the exterior door to make them think I’d made a break for it, then chose a door at random. It led to a long, dark hallway.
I was using my hands to guide me down the hall as quickly as possible when I heard something.
A faraway voice coming from…my hand.
Holy.
Shit.
Duncan’s gamer headset was still connected to the Wi-Fi signal.
I slipped it over my head, wrenched open the door closest to the office downstairs. If I could stay hidden and connected to Wi-Fi, I could call for help.
“Hello? Can you hear me?” I whispered into the microphone.
“What’s with the heavy breathing? Did someone let a creeper perve into the quest?” An unfamiliar, childlike voice said in my ear.
I heard the door I’d entered through bang open.
“Shit,” I muttered.
My hands found another wooden door just as the lights in the hallway blazed on.
I caught a glimpse of a furious Hugo running toward me before I shouldered my way through the door.
The door—thank you, lucky stars—had a dead bolt on the inside. It wouldn’t hold him long, but it would at least slow him down. I slid it in place just as the door handle jiggled.
“The longer you make me chase you, the more I’ll let Dilton hurt you,” he snarled from the other side of the wood.
I hurried away from the door, holding the microphone close to my mouth. “Hello? Is anyone there?” I said as loud as I dared.
The flooring was different in here. It felt like brick and there were windows high up on both walls. It was a dark, cavernous space with what I realized were a dozen horse stalls divided down the middle by a wide brick aisle.
“Are you gonna stop screwing around, KingSchlong, and help us kill these ogres, or am I gonna need to use my stunner spell on you again?”
It was a child’s voice. From the sound of it, an annoying child.
“My name is Lina Solavita and I’m being held at gunpoint by Tate Dilton and Duncan Hugo at Red Dog Farm in Knockemout, Virginia,” I whispered into the mic as I hustled down the aisle between the stalls.
The doorknob jiggled behind me and then there was a loud thud.
I sprinted to the end of the dark room and ran into a chest-high wooden wall, knocking the wind out of myself.
“Ow. Fuck,” I wheezed.
“Is this real?” a snotty prepubescent voice demanded.
“It’s probably just KingSchlong messing with us, Brecklin,” another kid said.
“Listen, Brecklin, do your parents know you’re playing online video games with a criminal?” I hissed as I got back to my feet.
Another loud thud came from the far end of the room, accompanied by the splintering of wood. It sounded an awful lot like a body trying to break down a door.
He was coming and I didn’t have time to find a way out. My only option was to hide as long as I could before making my stand here.
“Narc,” a kid muttered in my ear.
“Oh my God. I swear to you on Justin Bieber or Billie Eilish or whoever you’re into, I’m telling the truth. I need one of you to call 911 now.”
There was another loud thump and more wood gave way.
A loud bing-bong noise in the headset startled me.
“Jesus. What the hell was that?” I whispered.
“Chill out, lady. WittyInPink just joined our quest,” Brecklin said.
“I’ll chill out after you call 911!”
“Lina?”
The familiar voice almost brought tears to my eyes. “Waylay?”
“Where are you?”
“I’m close. Are you safe? Is Naomi safe? What the hell are you doing on here?”
“After Uncle Nash called and asked me what Duncan Hugo’s username was, I figured I might be able to help find him through the game.”
“Waylay, you beautiful little genius! I’m very, very proud of you and also you’re probably in huge amounts of trouble.”
“Yeah. I figured,” she said, sounding bored by the concept.
“Listen to me, you need to call your uncle Nash and tell him that Duncan Hugo is sending Tate Dilton to your house to…”
How was I supposed to tell a twelve-year-old someone wanted to murder her?
“To take out me and Aunt Naomi?” she guessed.
“Whoa,” one of the other kids gasped.
This time when Hugo hit the door, broken pieces of wood fell to the floor.
“Shit, yeah. Listen, I’m trying to distract them, but Nash can’t come here, because they’re setting a trap for him. He needs to go to your house and make sure you’re safe.”
“Where are you?” Waylay demanded.
“It doesn’t matter. Just tell him that I love him.”
“She’s at Red Dog Farm,” Brecklin’s snotty little voice announced.
“Shut up, Brecklin!” I hissed.
Two shots rang out.
“Ready or not, here I come,” Hugo sang as the door smashed open.
I chose a stall at random and yanked the bottom half of the door closed behind me as quietly as possible.
“Listen, I gotta go. Duncan is coming. Tate Dilton is with him,” I whispered, easing deeper into the stall to duck behind a stack of plastic tubs. “Tell Nash I love him.”
“Wha—”
“Break—up…”
Crap. The Wi-Fi signal was weakening. I crawled forward on my hands and knees toward the stall door.
“You’re supposed to say AFK,” Brecklin’s snooty voice crackled in my ear. “It means away from keyboard.”
“I don’t have a goddamn keyboard, Brecklin!” I hissed.
But there was only silence in my ear as the signal dropped again.
Great. I wasted my last words yelling at a child. Oh well. She’d deserved it.
“You can’t hide in here forever.” Hugo’s voice echoed eerily through the space.
I flattened myself against the wall and realized it was cool and smooth. Like tile.
Memories of my short-lived experience at summer horse camp surfaced. I was in the wash stall, essentially a shower for horses.
As the soles of Hugo’s shoes scuffed against the brick, my fingers found what they were looking for. Horses were bathed with a hose and nozzle, but some stables had pressure washer wands installed for cleaning the stall itself.
A loud crash scared the bejeezus out of me. It was the sound of wood and metal crashing into stone. I fumbled the hose and smacked my elbow off the faucet. Pain radiated up my arm.
A flashlight beam cut through the dark. “Not in this one,” Hugo sang to himself.
There was another crash, this one a little closer.
He was yanking open stall doors one by one until he found what he was looking for.
My heart was doing its best to explode out of my chest.
I crouched down, trying to calm my breath. I needed to stay alive, stay hidden. In that order.
Silently, I whipped off the headset and tossed it toward the front of the stall, hoping it would reconnect to the Wi-Fi signal. I really didn’t want to traumatize a bunch of kids with making them listen to my death. Except Brecklin. She seemed terrible. But hopefully one of them was smart enough to record the audio so Duncan wouldn’t get away with this.
I closed my hand over the faucet handle and held my breath. The door to the stall next to me smashed into the exterior wall, and I used the noise as cover to give it a good twist.
Please let there be water. Please let there be water.
He was close enough that I could hear his heavy breathing.
Now or never. I had to time it perfectly or I’d never have the chance to tell Nash to his stupidly handsome face that I loved him.
The door to my hideaway yanked open and splintered against the exterior wall. I didn’t hesitate. As the flashlight beam swept over me, I gripped the wand and squeezed the trigger.
A gunshot rang out.
