HOW THE hell was I going to get out of this? I peered around, focusing on Rucker and Sebastian, wondering which of them would reveal my secret.

"Yaz was in her room," Rucker said, folding his arms over his chest. "I took a long shower before getting dressed and stalking the halls for Layla." He shrugged. "I'm not gon lie. I wanted her dead. But I couldn't find her."

Yaz shivered. "I'd kill her too after what she did to you."

His face hardened, eyes darkening. "Don't remind me," Rucker said before sighing. "That's why I was the first one at the body, after Gmie and Demo. I was looking for Layla and heard Gmie scream."

"What was Fee doing?" Khan asked.

"He was moving in and out of the kitchen," Rucker said. "He was bloody and dirty, but he had cleaning supplies with him sometimes so I'm guessing he was cleaning his farm."

"My turn." Sebastian cleared his throat. "Aries and Chi were in the kitchen eating. Chi was furious, still talking about Gmie and Demo, and Aries kept trying to calm her down."

My eyes swung over to Sebastian, knowing he must've been the one in charge of tracking me. He met my intense gaze for a second, completely unreadable, which wasn't his normal self. I could always read him; he was an open book most of the time, but not now.

My heart dropped into my stomach, pooling at my feet in a thick sludge of despair and anxiety. "Shit," I whispered to myself. Should I say something first? Just tell them the truth about the room and everything?

Before I could even decide, Sebastian got there first.

"I was in my room, cleaning up," Sebastian said, looking at everyone else but me. "And Betinia was in the kitchen eating for a bit with Duke and then she went to the pool area where she fell over that plant and spent the rest of the time cleaning up before the footage cut off." It came out natural and fluid like it was the truth, but we both knew it was a bold-faced lie.

Fucking holy shit. He saved me. A piece of my chest warmed a bit, my fingers tingling. Thank you, Sebastian. I owed him.

"None of that helps us," Yaz said before letting out an irritated breath. "Demo was the last person near her before she died. And she has a big motive."

Rucker folded his arms. "She does. Layla basically almost killed Gmie. And Demo is fucking obsessed with Gmie, so seeing Gmie suffer might've pushed her over the edge. Or Gmie could've ordered the hit herself."

"That all makes sense, but we need proof," Khan said, tapping his keyboard. "We need proof on the killer or everything's just speculation. All of us had a big motive. She tried to kill every single one of us."

He was right. We needed hardcore evidence, or we might come to the wrong conclusion.

My mind went back to the footage, seconds before the footage clipped off. Layla was looking behind her, almost fearful. Was someone about to chase her? Or was she just being paranoid?

And why was she wobbling? It started in the hall and into the laundry room. Was she poisoned then somehow?

Ughh! I couldn't answer any of my itching questions, and it just lit my brain on fire. What if we couldn't solve this? I would be going back into the Bloody Doe Three, with maybe a chance of getting out, but it wasn't guaranteed.

I fucking hated this game.

♟♙♟

We spent the next couple of hours bouncing ideas off of each other while trying to analyze Layla's dead body pictures, seeing if anything looked off.

"So she grabbed the pen herself," Rucker said, elbows on his knees. "Maybe Layla stabbed and killed herself? And the foam was just an after-death effect."

Yaz winced. "Stabbing yourself in the eye takes some major balls."

Rucker scratched his face. "Anyone who can eat their own shit is capable of anything. That bitch could probably levitate for all we know."

"I did read that a foamy mouth could happen from a seizure, which is possible after a pen to the eye," Sebastian said, tapping his iPad. "Poison does the same, along with an allergic reaction as well."

"She could've gotten sick from eating her shit," Rucker said with a grimace.

"The allergic reaction sounds possible," I said. "Maybe it wasn't poison, but they gave her something normal, something she's allergic to instead."

"The physical reactions are similar," Khan said, tapping his chin. "So that theory is possible."

"The only thing she consumed in the footage was laundry faucet water," Rucker said. "I don't think she's allergic to water."

"Did anyone ever think that maybe she was poisoned before all of this?" Sebastian asked, looking around.

"You mean before she drugged us?" Khan asked, tapping his chin. "Not all poisons are fast-acting. It's very possible she was poisoned twenty-four or even forty-eight hours ago."

"I never even thought of that," I said with a sigh. That idea just made everything ten times harder.

"That's a lot of footage to go through — forty-eight hours? From everyone's point of view?" Yaz scratched her nose, letting out a harsh breath. "Thank god there's five of us."

"We better get started," Khan said, turning around toward his monitors.

My gut told me that I should look at the footage again, that I was missing something. When I really thought about it though, I didn't even need to see the footage again — I needed to see everything in person. Experience what she did, firsthand. Touch what she touched.

Like the common room where she knocked stuff over and ruffled through it. What was she doing? And in the laundry room, a weird noise went off in there when Layla entered. I didn't notice it at first, but during the second playthrough, I noticed it. Small things like that led to big discoveries, and we needed one of those right now.

"While you guys do that," I said, "I'm going to go trace her route in person. My gut's telling it's the right move."

"Good idea," Khan said, facing me. "Video footage can only do so much. There could be evidence that we're missing that we can't see on there."

"You still have a mark on your back," Rucker said, standing. "I'm going with you."

I almost forgot about that — if one of the contestants killed me or Aries, they got a special perk. Fuck you, Jookie.

Sebastian stood next. "I'll go too."

"We don't need you, dryer lint," Rucker said, which started an argument between them.

"Just take them both," Yaz said, slapping her chair. "Khan and I can hold down the fort for a while."

"I'll be back as soon as I can to help," I said, slipping out the door with Rucker and Sebastian behind me, still arguing.

I ignored the bickering of Sebastian saying Rucker was a murderer and evil while Rucker called Sebastian soft things, mixed with other boyish nonsense. I couldn't think with all their loud talking and yelling.

I backtracked my way from her room to the kitchen to the common room, seeing nothing out of place or weird.

Sebastian and Rucker argued all the way to the common room, and I told them to wait near the door if they were going to keep yelling — which they did, this time getting more intense.

Rolling my eyes, I peered around the common room, searching the area like a cop at a bank robbery. The clues were still on the floor where Layla knocked them over. Searching over them, I saw her clue, the box puzzle. I pocketed it for later, but I saw nothing abnormal.

I stood there, hands on my hips. She spent a few extra seconds here, messing around in the clues. What for? Because I saw nothing abnormal.

Going over to the desk, I spotted the open drawer and saw all the messy papers and pens. One of the pens dug into my palm when I tightened my fingers around it as the sharp tip blazed gold in the skylight. The edge looked extra sharp and slick. The perfect weapon.

Keeping it in my hand to take back with me, I continued to search, trying to see if anything else stood out to me, but nothing did, except for the clue pile. Something kept nudging me over there.

Bending over the rumpled mess again, I checked over the clues again, really analyzing, hoping something would spark in my mind. But then, my mind stopped when the lights blinked off, blinding me.

Followed by the loud bang of the door slamming shut, the tumbling of the lock deafening.

Before I could even make the decision of fight or flight, something thin and metal wrapped around my throat like a snake bite, digging into my skin so hard it cut off my breath and caused me to bleed, a prickly sensation running up my neck.

Thick fists pounded on the door, yelling for me to open up. But I couldn't yell back, and I couldn't get out of the iron grip of my attacker either.

Darkness and white stars consumed my sight as I gasped for oxygen, arms canoodling around like a monkey in heat, trying to get out of the tight grasp of my attacker.

That only made them squeeze harder, bringing thick tears to my eyeballs, lungs burning like lava on flesh as everything grew heavy yet light at the same time.

I couldn't breathe. I was dying.

♟♙♟