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Normally, Tempest Raj processed large amounts of information in a short space of time. She had to. On stage, with thousands of people giving their full attention to you, it was essential to make calculations so a routine would go off down to the fraction of a second. Live on stage, there were no do-overs. A hiccup in the stage lighting had to be accounted for. A distraction from the audience had to be ignored. Landing on the stage a few inches out of alignment after spinning into a tempest had to be rectified invisibly.

But this? Lucas was truly dead long before a trickster trapped them in the escape room. Sanjay was really in danger. And a bullet hole wasn’t really a bullet hole?

None of this made any sense. It couldn’t really have been Harold’s ghost, could it?

“We saw a bullet hole. Lucas—” She broke off with a gasp. “He was stabbed by something that made a round hole that looked like a bullet hole?”

Blackburn perked up. “You have an idea what that could have been?”

“I know exactly what it was. An ice pick .”

“You saw an ice pick? Our team didn’t find it.”

“It’s a prop for a block of ice. Our mystery play is set in the 1930s, so we sprinkled in bits of authenticity, including a block of ice for drinks.” She pressed her fingertips to her temples. “We’re supposed to have an ice pick… but I didn’t actually see it before we started our rehearsal that night.”

She wanted to think it was because they didn’t have an ice block in place either, but realistically, that meant the murder was premeditated. Someone had already pocketed the ice pick. To kill Sanjay. She felt ill.

“Let’s go over the events of that night.”

Tempest shook her head. “I need to find Sanjay—”

“Our team is already looking. I don’t really think he’s in immediate danger. The patrol car was just a precaution. We all enjoyed your grandfather’s shortbread, by the way. He gave Kwan enough cookies for everyone in HCPD, as well as the county’s forensics team.”

Tempest relaxed for the first time since she’d arrived at the station. He was right. It would be stupid for the killer to try again when there was so much attention. Even though Sanjay had shaken his tail—thanks to her stupid-yet-successful idea for Gideon to take his bowler hat—and had gone off on his own, he was most likely fine.

“I need to let Sanjay, Gideon, and Ivy know about this,” Tempest said as she reached for her phone. “Then I’ll give my statement about that first night.”

“Put that thing away. Ivy’s already on her way in to give a statement, but we haven’t reached Sanjay, and Gideon wasn’t there the night of your dress rehearsal. You ready?” Blackburn started a recording and said the date and their names.

“Ivy and I wrote a short murder mystery game,” Tempest began. “One of those dinner theater plays, with a few actors. It’s supposed to have a preview night tomorrow, and we have a full opening two nights from now.”

“As part of the Hidden Creek summer stroll.”

“It’s sold out all weekend. Two shows a night Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. We hired three actors from the Creekside Players. They’re all amateur actors having fun.”

“Tell me more about them.”

“You already know—”

“You know how this works, Tempest. Details matter.”

“Sanjay was never supposed to be there that night, so none of us knew until that afternoon that he would be there.”

“Mr. Cruz canceled that day?”

“Lucas called him earlier that day, saying he couldn’t make it to the dress rehearsal and asking if Sanjay could fill in for him. Nobody was suspicious at the time. It’s not like Lucas was a professional actor, so we thought maybe life got in the way or maybe he was just a flake. But then we learned otherwise.”

She took a deep breath to make sure she’d recount the information correctly. She was a terrible eyewitness in the sense that everyone was. Her own preconceived notions shaped what she experienced and what she remembered, but the truth was in there somewhere. She’d been there when Lucas was killed. She simply had to put the pieces together of what had really happened.

“Lucas told Sanjay he wanted to pull off a stunning magic trick to impress Kira, who he had a crush on. You met Kira last night, since she was with us in the escape room.”

“Ms. Kendrick,” Blackburn acknowledged.

“So Sanjay brought over his magic trunk, which has two false bottoms and plenty of air holes for someone to hide in. They arranged for Sanjay to play Lucas’s character for the first few minutes, then when the lights went out for just a moment, the two of them would miraculously swap places. Lucas would appear, and then Sanjay would appear a few minutes later at the front door, carrying a bouquet of flowers for Kira, courtesy of Lucas.”

Blackburn looked skeptical.

“It’s an impressive trick on stage,” Tempest said. “And Kira is a performer—both a singer and actor—who likes theatrics, so it was a plausible story for Lucas to tell Sanjay to get his help.”

“What happened during the performance itself?”

“I was sitting in the back of the room in one of the folding chairs we rented to have room for the audience. We rented furniture to have enough seats for attendees. Ivy, Cameron, and Enid were sitting in the larger pieces of furniture in the front. The four of us were the audience for the dress rehearsal. Kira and Milton were performing in front of the fireplace, and Sanjay came into the room through the archway leading to the kitchen and dining room. Then the lights went out.”

“The power went out?”

Tempest shook her head. “No. Milton turned off the lights, like he was supposed to in the script. He fired a cap gun—the one the officer took to humor us, even though it was just a toy. When the lights came back on a second later, Sanjay was lying on the floor like he was supposed to be—only it wasn’t Sanjay. It was Lucas.”

“Where was everyone in relation to one another?”

“The furniture was set up in a U shape, facing the fireplace, where there was room for the actors to perform and address the audience. After Sanjay walked on stage, he took center stage in front of the hearth, right behind the trunk. Milton and Kira moved to the two sides of the fireplace to give him room for his speech, and also for Milton to cut the lights at the planned time.”

“Mr. Silver, who was outside with Sanjay last night. Everyone knew he’d be the one turning out the lights?”

“Yes. And everyone knew exactly when the lights would go out.”

“But only Sanjay was close to the trunk where Lucas was hiding?”

“He was the closest. Sanjay opened the trunk for Lucas, then slipped out through the back door in the kitchen—except we didn’t know that at the time. What we saw at the time was that a man we thought to be Sanjay was lying on his stomach. We thought he’d forgotten his lines, since he was supposed to be on his back to point at a clue on a bookshelf. When I turned him over, it was Lucas.” She pressed her eyes shut. “And he looked dead. Because he was .”

She should have listened to her gut at the time, but she hadn’t, because it had seemed impossible for her to believe her eyes.

Someone involved in their murder mystery play had killed Lucas Cruz right in front of her two nights ago, and then the body had simply vanished. She’d convinced herself to believe the only rational explanation—that Lucas had walked away. But Lucas hadn’t walked away. How did he vanish? What else was she wrong about?