She turned off the engine. No point in wasting gas. They’d have to be careful about wasting anything now.
They’d be more comfortable in the backseat, but since Lily was already asleep and Heather doubted she would sleep at all—it wasn’t even six o’clock—she reached into the back and shook out all the things from the comforter. Stuff that had only an hour ago been littering their beds, the floor of their bedroom. Their home.
Homeless. It was the first time the word occurred to her, and she pushed it out of her mind. It was an ugly word, a word that smelled.
Runaways was better, a little more glam.
She spread the comforter over Lily, careful not to wake her. She found a hoodie in the back and put it on over her shirt, pulled up the hood, cinched the drawstrings tight. Thankfully it was summer and wouldn’t get too cold.
It occurred to her that she should turn her cell phone off too, to conserve battery power. But before she did, she typed out a text to Nat and Dodge. She included Bishop too. Like he’d said, he was in it, one way or another.
Changed my mind, she wrote. I’m back in.
She was playing for keeps now. For Lily. Forget the promise she’d made to Nat. The money would be hers, and hers alone.
That night, long after Heather had finally drifted off, head back in the front seat of the Taurus—when Nat was curled up in bed with her computer, searching for funny videos—when even the bars were shutting down and the people who wanted to drink were forced to do it outside, or in the parking lot of 7-Eleven—Ellie Hayes was woken up by two masked figures. They hauled her roughly to her feet and handcuffed her wrists in front of her body, as if she were a convict.
Her parents were gone for the week—the players knew what they were doing. Her older brother, Roger, heard the noise and the scuffling and burst into the hall, holding a baseball bat. But Ellie managed to cry out to him.
“It’s Panic!” she said.
Roger lowered the baseball bat, shook his head, returned to his room. He, too, had played.
Ellie’s biggest fear, other than floods, was enclosure, and she was relieved when instead of being packed in the trunk, she was guided roughly into the backseat of a car she didn’t recognize.
They drove for what seemed like forever—long enough that she began to get bored and fell asleep. Then the car stopped, and she saw a vast, empty parking lot, and a fence enclosed by barbed wire. Before the headlights cut, she saw a weathered sign tacked to a sad, saggy-looking building.
WELCOME TO THE DENNY SWIMMING POOL.
HOURS 9 A.M.–DUSK, MEMORIAL DAY TO LABOR DAY.
The padlock on the gates had been left undone. Ellie remembered, as they passed through it, that Ray Hanrahan had done maintenance at the Denny Swimming Pool last summer. Could he be in on this?
Across the wet grass, the squelching mud, to the edge of the pool, which sat glimmering slickly in the moonlight, faintly lit up from below, electric and improbable.
The fear came rushing back all at once. “You have to be kidding me.” She was at the edge of the deep end, trying to backpedal. But she couldn’t move. They had her tightly. Something metal bit into the palm of her hands, and she curled her fingers instinctively around it, too frightened to think or wonder what it was. “How do you expect me to—?”
She didn’t get to finish before she was pushed, roughly, headfirst into the water.
Flood. A flood of water everywhere: mouth, eyes, nose.
She was underwater for a little more than a minute before she was hauled roughly to the surface, but she would afterward swear it was at least five, or seven. Endless seconds of her heartbeat thudding in her ears, her lungs screaming for air, her legs kicking for purchase. So many seconds of panic—so complete, so all-consuming, it wasn’t until she was once again in the open air, taking deep, grateful breaths, she realized that all along she had been clutching tightly to the small metal key that fitted her handcuffs.
Dodge’s gamble at last paid off. In the morning, the story of Ellie spread, and by noon the betting slips had once again appeared. This time, they were passed from hand to hand, secretively, cautiously. Zev Keller and Ellie Hayes had both failed their individual challenges. They were out of the game. Colin Akinson, too. He’d been the first to flee the Graybill house—rumor was he hadn’t stopped running until he was almost to Massachusetts.
Dodge, Ray, Heather, and Nat were still in. So were Harold Lee, Kim Hollister, and Derek Klieg.
Only seven players left.
WEDNESDAY, JULY 27
dodge