My Boyfriend and Brother Left Me in the Escape Room novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Red Keypad

In the lobby Lyla cries episode, Orin plays the Yard camera audio for everyone, and Veronica goes home to a keypad that no longer knows her code and Lyla laughing inside.

"She told me you'd do this," Toby said again, louder, as if the lobby needed to hear it too.

"She told you I'd record you?" I held up my phone. "That's your voice, Toby. Ten minutes, not a second more."

"She said you'd cut it up to make us look bad."

"It's thirty seconds. Nothing is cut."

Lyla pressed both hands over her mouth and sobbed until her shoulders shook.

"Please don't film her," she said to the strangers in the lobby. "Veronica's having an episode. She hears things when she gets scared. She's not well."

A woman in a pirate hat lifted her phone anyway.

Lyla turned to me with huge wet eyes. "Cori, honey, nobody locked you in. Darius typed the code wrong by accident."

"Three times," I said. "On purpose."

"Sweetheart, listen to yourself."

It was the voice she used on her followers, soft and sad and so reasonable.

For one second I almost doubted my own ears.

Then Orin Merritt reached over the front desk and pressed a key on the keyboard.

The big television above the leaderboard flickered from game scores to a gray picture of the Yard.

"The Yard camera records sound," he said. "I'd like everyone to hear what I heard."

Darius's voice filled the lobby, tinny and clear.

"She's out for an hour, Ly. Come here."

"Say you love me," Lyla's voice answered. "Say it before she gets out."

"I love you. Anything for you."

On the screen, Darius's hands were back in her hair. Toby stood behind them against the wall, looking at the floor.

Nobody in the lobby breathed.

The pirate woman's phone sank slowly down to her chest.

"Sixty-minute lockout," Orin said. "I opened it in four. My staff will give a statement to anyone who asks."

Darius's face went the color of paper.

"Ronnie, it isn't what it looks like."

"It looks like what you said," I said. "Every word of it."

He lunged and caught my wrist. "Delete it. Delete it right now."

Orin's hand closed on Darius's shoulder and turned him around.

"Take your hand off her, or the police watch this footage next."

Darius let go. My wrist burned where his fingers had been.

"It's already in my email, Darius," I said. "You're too late."

I took the penlight off my zipper and put it in Lyla's open hand.

"You can keep this. You kept everything else."

Her fingers closed around it. Her tears stopped.

"You're making a huge mistake," she said, very quietly, and only to me.

It was the first honest thing she had said all night.

I turned to my brother.

"Four minutes, Toby. You stood there for four minutes and watched them."

"I was going to open it at ten." His voice cracked. "I swear I was."

"You were going to open it at ten, for her."

"Ronnie, she's my sister too."

"Then act like she's the only one you've got."

He opened his mouth and nothing came out.

I walked out through the front doors in my sneakers and the cold air hit me.

Orin followed me onto the sidewalk with a gray hoodie in his hand.

"You're shaking," he said. "Take it."

I put it on. It smelled like sawdust and coffee.

"I'm sorry," he said. "That room was built to scare people for fun. Nobody should have it used on them like that."

"Do you keep the footage?"

"Thirty days, and I'm keeping this for a lot longer. I'll copy it for you whenever you want."

"Tonight," I said.

He handed me a card with a number written on the back in pen. "That's mine, not the front desk's."

I called a car. I rode forty minutes back to the apartment I paid for with my own money.

Darius and I had signed the lease three years ago, both names on one line.

The hallway light buzzed over our door. I held my key to the lock and found the keypad above it blinking red.

I tried my code again. Red.

Darius had a phone app for that lock. He had deleted my code before my car had left the curb.

My phone buzzed in my hand.

*Stay somewhere tonight. Let everyone calm down. I'll text you tomorrow.*

I stood on the landing with my forehead against the cold door.

I knocked three times. The music behind the door stopped dead.

Nobody came to open it.

I stood there with my wallet, my wrist band from locker fourteen and a stranger's hoodie.

Then the music started again, a clink of glasses followed it, and Lyla laughed, right there inside my home.

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