“I’ll tell the mayor that you have three people and get you disqualified,” I said. That was the only card I had to play. And in that moment, I didn’t even remember that the race was no longer technically on. I had bought my own lie. There was no one to even tell that Claire was breaking the rules.
But she didn’t know that. And she just threw it right back at me.
“Well, what about the fake clue you slipped to us!” she said, outraged.
I shrugged. “You’ve got no proof that I did that.”
She was fuming. But then the outrage on her face turned to a little smile. “Well, in the end, it gave us an advantage. So I suppose I have you to thank for that.”
“Why? What did you find out in The Horseshoe?” I asked, stepping right up to her. My heart was pumping. Surely she hadn’t found an actual clue there.
But then I saw her face turn a little sad. Then I realized. She’d found something there all right, but not a treasure hunt clue. It was something to do with the death of Brett Falcon.
“You found out something about Brett?” I asked softly. Maybe it was only a temporary truce, but I no longer cared about her having a third person, or breaking the rules, or even who was going to win the race. None of it.
She shook her head. “I can’t tell you…”
“Claire, this is about more than just the race,” I said. I was starting to think that maybe we ought to combine what we knew. “I’ve already told you what I know about Anna, even if you refuse to believe it. Okay? I think she’s lying to you.”
Claire huffed and puffed for a moment but finally, she told me what happened in the bar. The other three were just out of earshot. Giving us our space. They probably thought we were patching up our friendship. “Brett won the treasure hunt last year, did you know that?”
“I—” For a second, I was stunned. I’d always prided myself on knowing everything about the race, inside and out. But I’d skipped the previous year’s when I was overseas. It only hit me then that no, I’d never known who had won. Or at least I hadn’t retained that information.
“But that’s a motive to kill him,” I whispered.
Claire nodded. “Exactly.”
I started to get a theory forming in my head. But I hadn’t quite pieced it together yet. “Did you learn anything else while you were at The Horseshoe?” I asked, suddenly glad that I had come up with that little detour for them.
Claire hesitated again. But then she told me. “Brett was supposed to team up with this girl called Stacey. But some time before the race he switched partners on her.”
I glanced over my shoulder at the girl with the pitch-black hair. “And do we have any ideas on who this new partner might have been?” I raised an eyebrow.
“It wasn’t Anna, okay? She didn’t even have a partner. That’s why she was doing the race by herself. Why would she kill Brett and then keep racing?” But she didn’t seem entirely convinced about this.
I decided to backtrack a bit. If Brett was the expected winner, then anyone desperate enough for the prize money could have killed him. “We know how completive the two of us are,” I mused, thinking out loud. “But which other team rivals us?”
Claire let out a short laugh. “I met one team just earlier. Pretending to be super friendly. But they were desperate for the cash. Something about a wedding or an engagement, I believe. But no one will be happy if they win. They’re not even from this town.”
“Oh no, not the Swedes,” I said.
“You know them?” Claire asked, surprised.
I nodded. “And while we’re out here arguing with each other, they’re getting further and further into the lead.”
Claire nodded. She understood perfectly. “Better one of us win than them.”
17
Claire
We hadn’t exactly put all our differences aside and made up. No official treaty. But maybe we were kinda on the same side again. We all wandered down the street away from Captain Eightball’s, a little unsure of what we were supposed to do next. But a team of five was just taking the whole thing too far. It was just getting silly.
“I guess this is where we part ways,” I said to Alyson when we got to the end of the street. But before we actually split, she pulled me aside out of earshot of the others.
“Just keep an eye on Anna, okay? Believe me. You can’t trust her.”
I sighed and said I would. Then I reached out to shake her hand. “Let’s make this a fair fight, okay?”
She nodded. “May the best woman win.”
Rather than give us energy, all the food we had eaten seemed to be slowing us down. Probably because it had contained nothing but cheese and salt. Matt was dragging his feet and I was starting to get very, very tired.
But Anna had a little pep in her step. “So where is this wave?” she asked us. She just kept repeating ‘wave’ over and over like that would help, and I kind of just wanted to push her over to make her stop.
Oh boy, I was tired.
2am.
We needed to figure out this clue. I put out my hand and told Anna to give me the clue.
I shrugged. “We know it’s not the visitor center.” The Swedes had already been up that way and had to double back. That was one good thing. And we knew it wasn’t the beach. “But where is it? What do waves have to do with…” And then I caught the back of Alyson’s head as her and Troy crossed the street a little further in front of us.
“It’s the hair salon,” I said to Matt quietly and put up my hand for a very quiet high-five, then shushed Anna. I didn’t want any other team to hear us. And I had no intention of sharing my break-through with Alyson.
18
Alyson
“Waves, waves, waves… I don’t get it!” I said, throwing the clue to the ground. What was the point of carrying it around? It wasn’t like the letters were going to magically rearrange themselves to form a new clue that made sense. Stick a fork in me, I was done. I may as well quit and go home to bed.
“Maybe it is about new wave music,” Troy said, picking the clue up and dusting it off. “Maybe we should head toward the record shop?”
I rolled my eyes. I hadn’t meant to be so rude, but come on, Troy. New wave music? How old was this guy? “That’s not it,” I snapped.
“Well, sorry,” Troy said. “I’m only trying to make a suggestion.”
“Well, make better suggestions next time.”
“Hang on, do you see that?” We’d wandered onto the next block of shops and I could see movement in the dark on the other side of the street. One, two, three figures. Claire’s team. I looked up at the sign above the shop they were in front of. “Janet’s Super Cuts,” I murmured and then slapped my head. “Of course, duh, Troy! Waves as in waves in your hair!” I started to pull him across the street.
“I thought it was against the spirit of the game to follow another team…” Troy said, jogging behind me.
“Yeah, well, it’s more than just against the spirit of the game to have a third team member.” Looked like I still hadn’t quite let go of that one. I wondered what I would have done if the race was still technically going. Would I have actually turned Claire and Matt into the mayor for breaking the rules?
Probably.
Oh well, they never had to know that.
Even from a slight distance, I could see how many clues were still in the bucket. It was almost full right to the brim. Hmm…either we were really far into the lead or the other teams had realized that the race had actually been canceled and gone home. No way to tell whether or not the Swedes had been here yet. Claire had only said that they were as stumped by the ‘waves’ clue as we all were. But they’d had the chance to get ahead while we were all eating. They could be close to the end of the race for all I knew.
“You followed us!” Claire yelled. Did she always have to be so outraged?
I planned on sticking my ground. Or at least, I planned on sticking to the lie I had already come up with as fact. “We figured it out
on our own.”
“Yeah, right.”
I stepped up to her. “Yeah, well, so much for joining forces to make sure that the Swedes didn’t win. You clearly don’t want our team to get any clues and you were hunting around for this one in the dark without even a flashlight.” She’d stuck to our deal for a whole zero minutes.
Maybe it was the time of night. The lack of sleep. Our competitive, animal instincts coming out in full force. But when I knelt to grab a clue out of the bucket, Claire shoved me out of the way.
I stood up. My mouth fell open. “Oh, you did not just do that.”
She shrugged and reached over to shove me again.
I pushed right back.
“Hey, you two, stop it!” Matt yelled at us. But he looked at a complete loss for what to actually do. He didn’t want to try and get into a fight between two women. I wasn’t sure what happened next because I was too busy getting into a slap fight with my bestie, but I think Matt must have told Anna to try and do something.
“What does this matter to me?” I heard her say in a sullen way, reminiscent of a teenager. She even got her phone out of her pocket and started scrolling through it. Even though there was a full-on brawl breaking out in front of her.
“Anna, come on, help me!” Matt said. “Someone is going to get hurt!”
Anna sighed, put her phone away, and stepped between Claire and I. “Get out of the way, Anna!” I said as I tried to sidestep her so that I could grab Claire again and wrestle her for the clue.
But it wasn’t Claire I grabbed. It was Troy who ended up on the ground.
Someone did get hurt.
The nurse looked stern as she finished wrapping the bandage around Troy’s wrist and told him to try and rest. They were keeping him for observation due to the knock on the head he had received and due to his general medical condition. “No doubt the dehydration didn’t help,” she said in this lecturing way, as though I had purposely dragged Troy Emerald around all day and refused to let him have water stops. Well, that was unfair. That was only kinda what I had done.
“I didn’t know you were still so unwell,” I said, taking his hand, more out of automation than anything. I mean, that was what you were supposed to do when someone was laying in a hospital bed, wasn’t it? You were supposed to take their hand.
But the truth was, I had seen the signs that he was struggling, I just hadn’t wanted to admit it to myself or to him. It was easier to look the other way, and focus on something that didn’t really matter. Like the race.
“I’ve been coping,” he said, trying to smile. “I think it just got too much today.”
“Anna will not get away with this,” I said, trying to make it seem like less of my fault and more like hers—mostly because I didn’t know what I could do to make him feel better, so taking revenge on Anna seemed to be the only action I could take.
“It was an accident,” Troy said.
I nodded and told him I needed to get some water. Talk about your unscheduled stop in the race. A trip to the hospital had not been on my list of things to prepare for.
“He’s sleeping,” the nurse said when I returned.
“Oh.”
I stared down at him. Then looked at the time. 3am. There was still nine hours left in the race. The home stretch was coming up.
I should stay, though, right?
But what could I do while he was sleeping?
The nurse was still looking stern, but slightly more sympathetic this time. “You can go home, get some rest yourself.”
I pretended I was thinking this over. “Hmm. Yes. I think that would be for the best. Please call me if anything changes.”
19
Claire
“This has gone too far, Claire.”
I hated it when Matt was disappointed in me. Which happened more often than I would have liked. He had put up with a lot that day, but apparently me getting in a brawl with his sister and someone ending up in hospital was the final straw.
We were lingering in the ER just in case there was news. None of us were sure what we should do. I wanted to keep going, solve the next clue.
But Matt was calling it.
Anna was standing by, smirking a bit, waiting for us to figure it out. Oh well, she was my backup. And now we could win fair and square in a team of two. “Go then,” I said. “I’d rather compete without you than to hear you guilt-tripping me for the rest of the race. It’s not exactly fun, Matt.”
Partly that was true. I didn’t want to hear it any longer. But really, I was only hurting his feelings on purpose to push him away. The cord needed to be cut. Matt just shook his head and walked off into the night.
Anna was making a big show of yawning and stretching. What was she up to?
“You know, I think I’m gonna call it a night myself,” she said.
“Geez, it’s only three a.m.!” I found myself shouting at her, even though it was incredibly rare for me to raise my voice. It wasn’t dignified.
“Fine, go home to bed like a little baby then. Go!”
I found myself alone on the street, my eyes stinging with tears of frustration, or maybe I was just overly tired… But after all this work, all this trouble, I was still no closer to figuring out who had killed Brett Falcon. And I was further away from being able to win the race than I ever had been. I couldn’t compete as a team of one.
Part of me just wanted to admit defeat. To go home, take my heels off, climb into bed, and try and pretend this whole treasure hunt had never ever happened.
But what would Matt say to that? It would just be proof to him that Alyson was more competitive.
The doors to the emergency room opened and out waltzed a girl with long wavy hair and cargo shorts.
“Alyson?” I called.
She walked toward me slowly, without the usual spring in her step, but when she saw me, she lit up a bit. “Where’s Matt?”
I had to explain the whole thing.
“So. Three becomes one,” she said with a raised eyebrow. But there was a plan brewing in her mind. I knew there was because I had the same plan brewing in mine.
It was just a matter of which one of us was going to swallow our pride and ask the question first.
Alyson may have been the more competitive out of the two of us, but I was the more stubborn. So, it was she who held out her hand first for us to shake on it.
“So, teammates?”
20
Alyson
“It’s quiet,” Claire said, walking slowly down the road while I lit the way with a flashlight. She looked frightened. “It’s like a ghost town.”
“It’s three-thirty in the morning,” I pointed out. “The witching hour where all the spirits of the dead come out because there’s no one out here watching.”
She ignored that in favor of more practical concerns. “Yeah, but it’s hunt night. The streets are usually still full of people.”
I shrugged and quickly came up with an explanation. “That only tells us that the next clue is leading us back out of the town center again.” Claire still couldn’t find out that the hunt had been called off.
After the kerfuffle at the hair salon, I had somehow managed to actually grab the next clue. I unzipped my bag and pulled it out. “Never thought I’d actually share this with you.”
“Gee, thanks,” Claire said.
She was rubbing her wrist a little. “I didn’t realize you got knocked over as well,” I said, frowning.
“Just an old injury. Sometimes it acts up.”
“Oh.” I remembered the accident well. Because if Princess had never fallen that day, she may never have left Eden Bay. She went super quiet as we walked along.
“You’re back now and that’s all that matters,” I said and kept walking. “Don’t worry about what happened in the past.”
We were almost at the end of the race and this was where the clues started getting trickier. And we still had eight hours left on the clock and at least another three clues to get through. I
stopped under a street lamp and read the clue out loud. “Santa Clause is in pole position,” I said. “It indicates we need to go north.”
“It’s ambiguous,” Claire said and took it from me to read the clue again. “North? But that takes us out of town again. That doesn’t make sense.”
“Hmm, I don’t think it means north as in a map,” I said, nodding toward the roof of the pet shop we were passing. “I think it means ‘up’.”
“What?” Claire said.
“Clause means claws,” I said, noticing a familiar blue bucket on the top of the shop. “And we’ve just found our next clue.”
21
Claire
The sun was starting to break through, signaling the end of a very long night. “It’s one heck of a climb,” I said. There was a ladder propped up against the side of the shop for racers to use, but it still seemed like an unfair stop. What were the people who had a fear of heights supposed to do?
Alyson glanced over at me skeptically. “How are you going to manage with your wrist acting up?”
I shook my head. “It’s psychological, I think.” Like the very thought of having to climb to a great height could cause it to ache. I was starting to sound like Alyson, though. Talking about how our thoughts created our reality. “I can do it.”
“No,” she said, sounding worried about my safety. “I’ll do the climb and get the clue. You wait here.”
“O-Okay.”
The question was, though: did I trust her? Would she actually return to the ground with the clue or would she make a run for it?
I leaned against the side of the building, trying to remain out of sight in case another team spotted us. Not that there were any other teams around. Very strange. A little suspicious.
Homicide on the Hunt Page 8
