The tunnel echoes with a hollow, reverberatingclick.
Grant frowns, his hands still raised in surrender.
“Huh,” he says. “That’s weird.”
Scowling, Lissa tries again.Click.
“Super weird,” I agree. “It’s almost like someone figured you out and unloaded Higgins and Wiggins before we left the house. Would you say it’s like that, Grant?”
“Yeah, actually. Pretty much exactly like that.”
Lissa’s face is twisted in a combination of rage and shock. “How?” she hisses.
“I have to give Grant the credit on this one,” I say. “He’s a great guesser.”
“Credit a lifetime of overthinking,” he says, dropping his hands. “Let’s start with right now: you know we can hold our own, self-defense-wise. Or, okay,Roxiecan hold our own.”
“You’ve come a long way, though,” I point out.
“I have a good teacher,” he says.
“A cool one, too.”
“The coolest.”
“UGH,” shouts Lissa pointedly.
Grant clears his throat. “Anyway,” he says, “you’re outnumbered and certainly not going to risk us beating you or getting away, so it made sense that you’d opt for guns.”
“Two,” I say. “One for each of us. Harder to disarm.”
Lissa glowers at me. “And what makes you so sure Grant’s on your side?”
“Basic trust, for one thing.” He smiles at me, and I smile back, and Lissa makes a retching sound. I snap back to her. “Also, I happen to know that Grant wields a mean Oxford comma. You should keep that in mind next time you try to frame him with fake messages.”
“Advertising that you have hacker friends wasn’t a smart move, either,” adds Grant. “But thank you for the reminder to change my password.”
Lissa’s eyes flutter closed as she heaves the mother of all exasperated sighs, finally lowering the useless guns.
“Fine,” she says. “Very impressive. Doesn’t explain how you knew it was me, though.”
“We had to narrow it down,” says Grant. “Wally was definitely a front-runner, with all his hostility toward Lesley. But it didn’t fit with their past.”
“Lesley knew too much,” I say. “Wally would’ve taken him out long ago. He only ever cared about justice, and bringing it about properly.”
“Alistair seemed like a possibility,” says Grant. “And clearly you wanted us to think so, too, with thatThree Musketeersquote and his alleged disappearance from the Fake House. But the thing is, he’d never even read the book. I’m guessing you threatened him into playing along with the interrogation and then just lied about his escape at the end.”
“Oh, you think?” Lissa’s voice is high with sarcasm, then plummets as she pins him with a glare. “Duh, Grant. He exploded.”
“There was also his dingy house and beat-up car,” I point out. “He may have been an aristocrat, but he was broke.”
Grant nods. “He couldn’t afford to fund the whole thing. He was playing to win.”
“Which leaves you,” I say to Lissa.
She frowns at me, her eyebrows pinched like some kind of cheap Grant wannabe. “It could have been anyone,” she says. “Anyone at all. A complete stranger.”
“No,” says Grant. “It had to be someone we knew. You don’t introduce a new villain out of the blue at the end; it would be so anticlimactic. Also, your name is an anagram forSHE’S A LIAR, which is a little corny for my taste, but whatever.”
