Matchstick Excerpt 11: The Choice

There wasn’t a magic signature at all. Whatever this was, it wouldn’t blow up if I touched it. I carefully opened the door. It was a piece of fabric, roughly cut, that had been rolled up and laid across the floorboards. I glanced around quickly to make sure no one was paying attention to me. I carefully unrolled it. I didn’t want to alert anyone else just yet. No need to send everyone running if they didn’t need to. There was a note and a couple of pictures attached to it.

You are not as smart as you think you are, it said across the top.

Underneath it were Polaroids of Arthur and me from today. One from each location we’d been to except this one. My jaw clenched. I was tired of this bullshit.

Tick Tock. Who will you save? was scrawled across the bottom.

My heart dropped, and my hands started to shake as I tossed the fabric square back in the car.

“She knows we are all here,” I said frantically. “There was a note in my car. It asked me who I was going to save.”

“I haven’t seen anything on the cameras,” Elise said.

“I’ll come to you,” Mel said. “I can get my car later. Arthur put a call into Annabell. We need to bail.”

“I’m not calling her. I’m going to her. If they know we’re here, there’s no need to pretend,” he said.

It sounded like he was jogging. As his breathing picked up, so did my heart rate. I was paralyzed. I didn’t know where to go or who would need it. These games made me want to scream. She was always a step ahead of us, playing with our lives.

“There wasn’t a picture of Mel,” I said quietly.

“What?” Elise and Arthur said.

“There wasn’t a picture of Mel,” I said louder. “Bethany doesn’t know she is here. Don’t come to me, we need to go to them. It asked me who I would save.”

Just as I started moving toward them, two shots rang out. Arthur cursed and dropped off the call.

(All excerpts are taken from a lightly edited first draft. Contents are subject to change or may be removed from the final novel entirely.)