Page 98 of Puzzle for Two

The jaunty refrain kept time with the pound of his feet as he jogged down the cobbled streets, watching for security cameras, sticking to the shadows as much as possible.

Maybe the phone callwasa prank. Because as far as Zach could tell, he was the only person in the entire amusement park.

But no, Flint was here somewhere.

Now that he was moving, Zach felt a little less shaky, a little more focused. He was still fearful, but waiting and wondering had been worse.

In two weeks, on Halloween night, the park would open for twenty-four hours before completely closing down for the rest of the season. But tonight, it was a ghost town. Sheeted figures and grinning skeletons were posed along the way, peeking out of doorways or around corners. Zach cut down a narrow alley and came out on a grassy village square designed to accommodate an enormous pumpkin merry-go-round with skeleton horses.

From where he stood, he could see the tippy top of the pointed roofs of Malice Mansion behind the rows of crooked, thatched roof shops and cafés lining Goblin Street. He ducked down another alley and came out a bit to the west of the two-story building with its purple fish scale-shingled roof and arched windows.

For a minute or two he waited beside a life-sized—presumably life-sized—plastic goblin, trying to catch his breath and sizing up the situation.

A massive pair of fiberglass troll sculptures guarded the closed and barred entrance to the mansion. Clearly, no one had entered the building that way.

Had anyone entered the building at all? Because, as far as Zach could tell, it was completely dark and utterly silent.

Should he try phoning Flint?

But if he called Flint, was he liable to reveal Flint’s location to whoever had lured them here? Zach had put his phone on vibrate, and he assumed Flint had done the same, but was that a chance he wanted to take?

Where the hell were cops?

Zach gnawed his lip and tried to decide what to do.

Malice Mansion was the site of whatever was supposed to happen, so he needed to get inside that building. The caller’s assumption would probably be that he’d try to sneak in through the back. Right?

Instead, Zach would try to get in through the side as close to the front entrance as he could manage.

He nerved himself for the sprint across the cobblestone lane, and took off, rubber soles soundless on the cobblestones, landing without incident in a small hedge of what turned out to be real and very prickly bushes. Above the hedge was a row of hollow windows covered by plastic that was painted to look like dusty glass and cobwebs.

He waited, heart pounding, for signs he’d been spotted.

The only sounds were dead leaves scraping along the pavement, the creaking of signs in the night breeze.

Zach crept quietly along the building and quickly realized that the structure wasn’t actually two-stories. In fact, behind the façade of pointed rooftops was a long utilitarian building with a flat roof. That simplified the situation.

Or did it just make it more dangerous?

He used his penknife to slit the “glass” of one of the fake windows, climbed onto the sill, and leaned his full weight against the plastic and fiber webbing until it gave and he half-fell, half-jumped into near-total darkness.

Zach picked himself up, righted the pistol in his waistband. As his eyes adjusted, he could make out the sickly glimmer of scattered emergency lights and the outline of tracks and electrical equipment. It felt like he was standing in a large warehouse. The air was cold and quiet and smelled strongly of plastic, wood, and dust. In fact, it was so quiet, he felt sure he could have heard a spider spinning its web.

Cautiously, Zach picked his way through an obstacle course of gears and shafts, passing the blinking lights of metal boxes storing electronic equipment and a long row of still and silent animatron skeleton horses harnessed to a small train of half-shell pumpkin carriages.

At last, Zach came to a wide doorway and pushed through strands of fake cobweb. He found himself in a long dining room with artistically curling wallpaper and still more cobwebs hanging from an ornate chandelier. Rubber tarantulas and mechanical red-eyed rats were frozen motionless on the dining table and velvet-upholstered chairs. Fake flames, surrounding a grinning demon face, filled the faux fireplace at the end of the room.

He stepped forward and, disconcertingly, the floor beneath his tennis shoes seemed to turn soft and mushy, as though he were sinking into quicksand. The pallid glow of the emergency lights was reflected time after time in the row of mirrors that alternated with the creepy portraits lining the wall. As Zach crept past the mirrors, he could see flashes of himself, stretched to an unnatural length one moment, as wide as a sumo wrestler the next.

His footsteps slowed. He came to a stop in the middle of the narrow room.

Where the hell was he going? What the hell was he doing? Where was Flint? Where were the cops?

Had he made a serious miscalculation by coming—

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The eerie atmosphere was shattered by the sound of gunshots fired in quick succession. One. Two. Three. Instinctively, Zach dropped to the floor and realized the carpet was actually covering what felt like a thick layer of bean bags.

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