Sebastian grasped the object of the new game almost immediately.Chortling with triumph, he passed a screwdriver, a wrench, and, after a bit more coaching from Alice, a hammer.
“Good work, buddy,” Owen said.
Sebastian preened.
Owen picked up the hammer. Alice took the wrench.
“Yardley had to hang the doors on something,” Owen said. “With luck, the walls will be standard stud-and-drywall framing.”
He raised the hammer and slammed it into the bare wall between two doors. The drywall shattered, revealing a wooden stud and drywall on the other side.
“We may have just gotten very lucky,” Owen said quietly.
“There’s no such thing as luck,” Alice said. “We took a calculated risk.”
“We’re not in the clear yet. There may be nothing but bricks on the other side of the wall.”
“Think positive.”
“Right. Positive.”
He slammed the hammer into the second sheet of drywall. The board shattered. Alice was thrilled when she realized there were no bricks on the other side, but some of her enthusiasm evaporated when she saw a darkened chamber.
“The third game room,” she said. “Damn. I was hoping for an entrance into the tunnels.”
“I don’t think it’s an escape game room,” Owen said. He aimed his flashlight through the opening he had made in the drywall. “I see glassware and metal instruments and workbenches. Pretty sure it’s a lab. A real one, not a model.”
Alice peered past his shoulder. “You’re right. I can smell chemicals and herbs. This must be where Rose Ash formulates the sedative and the hallucinogenic vapors in the hotel escape games.”
“Looks like it,” Owen said. “Stand back.”
She got out of the way and watched him use the hammer to remove enough drywall for them to move through.
Sebastian went first, fluttering into the other room without any hesitation. Alice and Owen followed. On the other side they paused to have a look around with their flashlights.
The light glinted on glass and metal and cabinets filled with bottles of chemicals.
“This is a working lab,” Alice said. “You were right, there never was a third game room.”
“The Gamer didn’t intend for any of his victims to escape his museum, so there was no reason to build one. He just used that line as a lie to encourage his victims to open one of the doors.”
“So that he could watch them die a slow, agonizing death.” She shuddered. “It’s hard to believe that such evil exists.”
“Believe it,” Owen said.
He spoke with the cold conviction of a man who had witnessed too much of the dark side of human nature.
She heard a chortle in the shadows and swept the room with her flashlight again, searching for the source. The beam landed on Sebastian. He was bouncing up and down in front of a door.
“He looks as eager to get out of here as we are,” Owen said.
He started down an aisle created by two workbenches, heading toward Sebastian. “That’s a good sign that whatever is on the other side of the door, it won’t kill us.”
Alice hurried after him. Halfway down the aisle, her flashlight skimmed over a leather-bound volume. Her intuition stirred. She stopped and took a closer look.
“What is it?” Owen asked.
“A logbook, I think.” She slid it across the bench. “Probably formulas for Rose’s hallucinogenic vapors and her poisons.” She flipped open thecover to take a quick look, recoiled in horror, and dropped the book. “It’s a record of the Gamer’s murders.”
