The Rules (12 page)

Robin reached into the pocket of her bomber jacket and pulled out a couple of paper napkins from McDonald’s. She handed one to Beth, who began to wipe her fingers. Robin wrapped the other napkin around the hilt of the knife.

“Sticky. Corn syrup,” Beth confirmed. “It’s all in fun, Thea. C’mon.” She dropped the dirty napkin in the sand. “Let’s go inside while we’re here.”

“Are you nuts?” Thea said. “Do you
want
me to die of a heart attack?”

“We have what we came for,” Robin pointed out. “We should hustle back to August as fast as we can.”

Beth crept forward and peered into the cave. “Hellloooo?” she called in a singsong voice. “Anybody in there? Oh my God!”

“What? What?” Thea covered her eyes.

“Nothing, you big baby.”

Beth dissolved into helpless laughter. Thea crossed her arms, whirled around, and started heading in the direction they had come, toward the path.

Robin sighed. “Must you?” she said to Beth. “Hey, it’s okay, Thea,” she called after her.

“Stop laughing at me!” Thea yelled.

“I’m not laughing at you,” Robin yelled back.

“Hey, wait,” Beth called. “Wait, I think someone really is in…Hey…what’s this?”

The zombies began to moan and clank and whirr. Robin rolled her eyes and bounded after Thea as she picked up speed. Beth stayed behind.

“You can’t fool us anymore!” Thea said. She started up the path.

“Robin. Oh my God, Robin,” Beth said. Her voice was strained; she sounded genuinely frightened.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me,
Robin thought, and she kept going.

“Robin!”
Beth shrieked.

Robin slowed. Then she turned around. Beth was cowering beside a boy zombie that was wearing a do-rag, a basketball jersey, and enormous polyester shorts. There was something in his mouth, and when Robin’s flashlight passed over it, a reflection glinted off something small and metallic.

Beth was staring at the object; then she shifted her gaze to Robin. She was silent, wild-eyed. As Robin drew near, the boy zombie writhed and moaned, the object in his mouth tumbling to the ground.

Robin bent over and shined her flashlight. The yellow cone of light caught the glitter of a ring whose rhinestones spelled
MVP,
and below the
V,
a shiny enamel
C
gleamed.

It was Cage Preston’s ring.

Firmly lodged on the pinky finger of a bloody, severed hand.

“Robin!” Beth shouted. They had bolted together but after a few steps Beth had stopped running. Within seconds, Robin and Thea both were scrabbling up the path to the top of the cliff like a pair of mountain goats.

And in those seconds, Beth had time to process. To think about what she had really seen. A prop. A fake. Just one of the many melodramatic pranks. A typical August prank, actually. She and he used to pore through special effects catalogs the way some people drooled over fashion magazines. A corner of August’s bedroom was piled with computer parts, servos, soldering equipment, bottles of corn syrup and red food coloring, rubber shrunken heads, tarantulas, and snakes.

“Thea! Robin! It’s a joke!” she yelled.

Beth heard the crash of a wave and then frigid water swirled around her ankles. She squeaked, running toward the big-game hunter and the cave. The foamy surf bubbled around her.

Robin had the flashlight, but by the dim light positioned inside the cave, Beth could watch the water recede into the ocean. One or two of the zombies jerked their heads and arms, but then they tipped over, clattering facedown into the water and the moans died out.

She tried to see if the hand had washed away as well, but the light was too weak. Even now, accepting that it had been a planted joke, she shuddered. It had looked so real.

A chuckle bounced inside the cave and she turned around. Larson was leaning against a stack of wooden crates, mischief twinkling in his eyes.

“Boo!” he said.

Her heart skipped a beat. She darted a quick glance around for Praveen but didn’t see her. She crossed her fingers mentally that Larson was alone.

He ambled toward her, lanky and broad-shouldered, and her knees turned to rubber. She was so glad to see him that she couldn’t hide a genuine smile, and he grinned at her in return.

“I scared the crap out of you,” he preened.

She gave her head an imperious toss. Time to turn on the hard-to-get vibe. She hadn’t forgotten the way he’d pushed past her on the way into the party. Larson had to know he couldn’t take her for granted.

“Sorry to disappoint you, but it was August’s zombies that scared us. More like they scared Robin and Thea and just startled me.”

He bent down and picked up a piece of seaweed, shaking it at her. He snickered when she wrinkled her nose and let it fall to the ground.

“Actually, the hand scared them,” she said.

He waited a beat, then shrugged. “What hand?”

“August keeps leaving us these gory presents,” she said, debating the wisdom of revealing anything more. She didn’t want to give him an advantage in the hunt.

Unless he fully appreciated such generosity and reciprocated his knowledge.

He raised his brows. “Like what?”

“Why should I tell you?” she challenged.

“Because I’m nice?” he asked, walking closer, and she made a show of snorting with derision. In reality, though, little tingles of excitement were practically electrocuting her as she stood there. Larson was so hot. She knew he was a player, but there had to be one special girl who could tame him. Where chicks were concerned, Larson had a little ADHD problem. The trick was in getting him to focus.

“You are not nice,” she said flatly.

“Oh, Beth, Beth, you know me too well.” His smile was slow and sly. “Okay, how about this? We could form an alliance. I’m pretty much on my own at this point. Praveen is a complete psycho and I think she decided to go home. I’m hoping, anyway. She threw a brick at me.”

Beth’s lips parted as she filed this choice bit of gossip under
usable.
“No way.”

“Okay, she didn’t throw it, but I think the only reason she didn’t was because I was out of range. Seriously, Beth, I always knew she was wound pretty tight but
damn.
If we ever have another hunt, don’t even invite her, okay?”

We.
It was her new favorite word. The tingles became sparklers of joy that skittered over her nerve endings. Larson obviously assumed she had helped to organize this hunt just like all the other ones. He didn’t realize that August had broken the Pact. But she knew she needed to maintain her advantage in the eternal battle of the sexes. Playing hard to get was the only way to convince Larson to focus.

“That settles it,” she said. “August and I were discussing her last night. We almost didn’t invite her this time.” She mimicked drawing a line through a name. “Next year when I run the hunts by myself, she’s deleted.”

“You don’t need to do this one by yourself,” he said.

“An alliance.” She tapped her chin thoughtfully. “I believe that would be cheating.” She put a challenge in her voice.

She knew from the other hunts that Larson lived for cheating. He really shouldn’t have won first prize last time, but August told Beth privately that Larson had cheated the least. Except for Kyle. He and his little-miss-whoever date hadn’t cheated one jot.

Which is why they hadn’t completed the hunt when August called time three hours later than scheduled.

Now Larson tsk-tsked and rose to the bait. “No one would have to know that we cheated.”

“But if August’s spies see us together, we’ll be busted,” she argued, but then Larson wove his arms around her waist, making her unable to think straight.

“We can make them think we’re hooking up.” He moved a step closer. “There’s nothing in the rules about that. Just no maiming.”

Maiming. An image of the hand flashed through her mind. August had truly outdone himself with the realism. And the ring had looked exactly like Cage’s. A tour de force. She should have been there when he’d had it made. Shared in the accomplishment. The gloating.

“Are you okay?” Larson asked, and she caught herself.

She thrust out her lower lip, giving him her cutest pouty face, and said, “I was just thinking about the hand. It was
freaky.
”

He let go and moved past her toward the mouth of the cave. “Cool. I want to see.”

“No,” she said breathlessly.
Not
in her game plan. “It got washed away by the tide.” She looked back over her shoulder; the light in the cave glowed from one of the portable lanterns, which Larson must have brought with him from the warehouse. There were splotches of something dark around the lantern’s base. Probably more candy blood.

“If we go back via the beach, we’ll get washed away, too,” she said. “Where does this tunnel go?”

He lingered just inside the mouth of the cave, framed in the soft light as if he were a model in a photograph for some sexy men’s fragrance. “There’s more than one tunnel, and they go all over the place. One of them was really nasty. The other one…” He made a face. “I’m wondering if someone’s using it to smuggle drugs or something. There are boxes from floor to ceiling. Did you guys check this place out? I mean, what if the cannery is being used by a Mexican drug cartel or something? And they find us all here?”

“What?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I mean, they might shoot us or something, you know? Or hang us. They’re totally into that. I saw it on the news the other night. They hung some American undercover guys from a bridge in Tijuana. You
did
check it out, right?”

Are you kidding?
Beth thought. Check out a scavenger hunt location to make sure there weren’t any
drug lords
? Was he just trying to scare her?

“I want to see the boxes,” she said. “The ones you think mean there are smugglers.”

Shaking his head, he moved into her way. “The tunnels are way too gross. And I got lost at least three times. It’s like a big maze.”

He was actually blocking her. Was there something he didn’t want her to see? Her stomach knotted. Was some other girl down here with him already? Not Praveen. Praveen was too weird and too prissy. But Heather maybe.

He laced his nice strong fingers through hers. “Let’s go out this way.” He looked down at her feet. “The water doesn’t matter. Your shoes are already soaked.”

That was true. Not only soaked, but her feet were also freezing.
Why
had she worn her good boots? Because she was used to orchestrating the hunt, not playing in it. She’d wanted to look fabulous. The last hunt. The last chance to make a fantastic impression.

Larson was wearing sneakers that were already fairly trashed. He extended one long, muscular leg out of the mouth of the cave and onto the sopping beach, then the other, sucking his breath between his teeth as the breakers splashed his jeans. He hunkered down and stretched his arms behind himself, like a diver about to bounce off the board.

“Here, I’ll carry you. Take the lantern and climb on,” he told her.

She didn’t need to be asked twice. Her face went hot and then she was hot all over as she put her hands on his shoulders and he bent lower, catching her around the thighs as she saddled up piggyback style. His fingers gripped her for balance while she maneuvered the heavy lantern so that it rested at an angle against his shoulder, casting light downward like a desk lamp. She wanted to feel his skin against hers; she was sorry she was wearing tights, especially since they were soaking wet from the backs of her calves on down.

His curly chestnut hair was silky and she inhaled the smell of tobacco. It was so Larson. She just couldn’t believe this was happening. This was the beginning of something wonderful. She just knew it.

He straightened his knees as a larger wave crashed against the beach and lapped at his shins. The water was rising.

“Tide’s coming in fast,” he said. “You guys must have forgotten about that.”

I wouldn’t have,
she thought, but she didn’t say anything. She spared one more moment to wonder why doing this was better than going through the tunnels—the water was
cold
—but she didn’t figure he would have carried her if they’d gone that route, so she forgot about it.

“Look out for the zom-bots,” she said, giving them a name, an implication that she had had a hand in putting them in the hunt. “They might float back to shore.”

“And since they don’t have to breathe, they won’t drown, wahahaha,” he said. “Okay. Here goes.”

Seagulls wheeled and called to the moon as he slogged down the beach. Larson was walking like a zombie himself, and she didn’t know if it was on purpose or because she was too heavy for him. The idea mortified her.

She monitored the light and looked up the hill for the two cowards Robin and Thea. She wouldn’t put it past Thea to abandon her, but Robin was a different story. Robin was the goody-goody. The nice girl. It surprised her that Robin hadn’t doubled back to check on her.

“Hey, I think…,” Larson said. “Is that the hand you’re talking about?”

She tried to look around his shoulder but couldn’t see. He rocked forward, staggering a little under her weight, and she was suddenly very anxious.

“Don’t,” she said, but he was already fishing around in the water.

“Got it.” There was a beat as he lifted it up and she could see it. “Oh God.”

Everything in her froze. Her heartbeat blared like a siren in her head. The hand was fleshy and bloody, with bones and tendons trailing out of the wrist.

It is real.

LARSON’S RULE #2:
Know who your friends are.

“Beth,” Larson ground out. “Beth.”

Larson knew Cage Preston well. Knew that he had given himself a homemade tattoo of the letter
U
at the base of his middle finger. Most people missed it, but Larson had been at his house the night Cage had done it.

This hand bore the same tattoo.

He dropped it and began to lurch sideways. Beth was bellowing in his ear and the lantern splashed into the water. He backed away. Beth kept howling. With no light but the moon, he looked everywhere. For whoever had done this.

For more of Cage.

It’s just a joke. A joke.
He staggered around.
Pick it up. Take it with you.

Shrieking, Beth leaped off his back and sloshed past him. He caught up to her and they ran together for a couple of steps before he passed her easily. He saw a path and angled for it as she screeched at him to wait for her. But he couldn’t slow down. He was on autopilot as he charged up, reaching the top of the cliff and barreling over crushed shell as he threw himself at the warehouse door and flung it open.