Page 103 of Close Your Eyes and Count to 10

“Wait!” Maverick ran after the car a few feet, then came to a stop. But Tavo was gone, heading back to the site. Angeline had the keys to the Rover that she and Tavo had arrived in.

“Fuck,” Maverick yelled at the sky. “I must have left the keys in the ignition.”

The look of despair on his face. That’s when she knew what was in the bags. Their heft. Even the scent that came off them. It was like him to be suddenly careless, to leave the bags unattended even after he’d not left them out of his sight for a minute. Was it a form of self-sabotage?

“Let’s go anyway,” she said, feeling desperation tug at her, too. “Let’s just go home. Face whatever comes next. Together.”

He shook his head slowly, watched Tavo until his taillights were swallowed by the night. Finally, tired of waiting, Angeline got in the driver’s seat. After another moment Maverick climbed in beside her, his big frame slumped.

“We need to get the other Range Rover,” he said. “There’s something in there that I need.”

“We don’t need it. We don’t need anything. Let’s leave it all behind.”

He looked at her in the dim light, half his face in shadow. Now it was his turn to balk. “I…can’t.”

It was then that she’d seen how trapped he was, like the monkey with his hand in the candy jar. He would never be free because he could never let go of the sweets. The money, the toys, the views. There was never going to be a moment when it was just the two of them, without an audience, without the toys and the next big adventure. Because that Maverick—he simply didn’t exist.

Here in this concrete dungeon, bound to a chair, she saw it all so clearly. Too late. The bill had come due, like Petra promised. And Angeline would be the one to pay.

“Why are you doing this? What do you want?” asked Angeline now. A sob crawled up her throat, anger, terror.

There in the corner, she saw a blinking red light.

“Are you…filming this?” she asked. “Are welive?”

No answer came from the form standing in the darkness.

40

MAVERICK

Maverick geared up, the image of Angeline unconscious, bound, seared into his brain. That feeling of powerlessness, helplessness that he had when his mom was dying swelled and expanded inside him, pushing the air from his lungs. He wanted to run.

“Whereis she, Hector?” he asked again, shouldering his pack.

“The hotel?” he answered. “On the video, it looked like itcould bethe lower level of the hotel.”

Hector was hunched over his keyboard, tapping. The power was out, but they still had battery life on the laptops, the cellular hot spot on the phone. Angeline’s PopMap locator was off, so Hector was trying Find My Device, where all the company phones and laptops were registered. Nothing.

On the other screen, Maverick could see Malinka, Cody, and Adele, their tracker dots pulsing—even though he’d promised them that they wouldn’t be tracked unless necessary. Their dots all went in different directions. It didn’t matter now, when an hour ago the challenge was the only thing on his mind. All that concerned him now was Angeline.

“Oh, my God,” said Hector. “The cameras I set up. I had them set to Record. Maybe they caught something before they went dark.”

He rolled his chair over to the other monitor and tapped on the keyboard.

Maverick stood behind Hector as he fast-forwarded through recorded footage. Hector setting up the camera, looking comically into the lens, his fingers huge as he adjusted the camera like a boomer on Zoom.

“There,” said Hector after another minute of scrolling. “There she is.”

On the grainy video footage, Angeline was standing on the path, looking at someone off camera, her hands up, eyes wide. Maverick watched as someone came up behind her, unidentifiable in the dark. Then the dollface mask filled the screen, and the picture went black.

“Where is that camera?” asked Maverick.

Hector pointed to the survey they had open on the table near the computers. It was a proper command center inside the trailer, except that they’d lost all control of the game.

“Here,” Hector said, pointing to the spot where the path veered in two directions, one trail leading to the casitas, the other leading to Enchantments.

“Okay. I’m heading out.”