Page 48 of Safari Murder Party
They wedged the door wider, Fletcher caught behind it. Amber bulbs illuminated a sauna. The walls were ribbed with wooden paneling, and the air tinged with spruce and sweat. The sauna!
Contorting her body, Fletcher flipped another switch. A robotic voice chimed, “Sauna activated. Adding humidity.” Steam swirled down from the ceiling, turning the air soupy and fogging up Brian’s glasses. The perfect distraction.
Fletcher skirted around the door while their backs were turned and made it halfway into the hallway before a hand clamped aroundher arm. Other Brian reeled her toward him, the tiles beneath their feet slippery with condensation.
“Tell Bertram he’s never receiving an Edible Arrangement ever again.” Fletcher stretched her free arm to its full wingspan, and with the tips of her fingers, she dragged open a towel warmer. Snagging the top washcloth, she rubbed it against Other Brian’s arm.
He yelped, trying to bat it away. Failing.
“What’s going on over there?” Brian wiped the steam off his glasses lenses, just for them to fog up again. “I can’t see anything.”
Other Brian grunted, but Fletcher replied, “A little good old-fashioned team building.”
She dug her elbow into his side, and when that wasn’t enough, she flung the hot washcloth toward his face. His hands flew toward the towel, and Fletcher took that as her cue to escape.
Garage. She needed to get to the garage. Her timer was definitely running out. It was all too easy to think of Waylon in the front seat of a Land Rover, ringed fingers drumming against the steering wheel, biding his time until he could leave Fletcher for good. She couldn’t let that happen.
The Brians were coming, their shouts echoing in the sauna, mad now. Fletcher looped back to the theater (How’s that for your 36.8 percent?) and watched as the Brians spun circles in the hall before creeping into door number three.
Fletcher bolted. Rooms bled together as she raced through the halls. When they arrived at the manor, Fletcher had glimpsed the garage on the far end of the complex, doors facing the open wild. All she had to do was get there. The food bag thumped against her back with every step, and the hand that wasn’t holding the machete’s hilt kept the pith helmet attached to her head.
Behind her, the Brians wised up and sprinted after her, yelling, “This way!”
Desperate to throw them off her trail while avoiding any other close encounters, Fletcher envisioned each person’s daily routines and mapped them to the estate.
Deepti could be counted on for partaking in any wellness fad promising to get rid of hip dips or buccal fat or whatever other ordinary bodily occurrence women were being shamed for these days. Without Raul, she’d be on the hunt for someone else to form a symbiotic relationship with.
Melv almost certainly jogged the perimeter, itching to get his daily steps in. Meanwhile, Bertram would be heads down, nursing a bourbon with a splash of milk like a Madison Avenue advertiser from the ’60s. Which put him roughly in the vicinity of the conference rooms. Fletcher skipped that wing entirely.
In the afternoons, Jackie usually dipped out to meet with a personal trainer—and when Fletcher snuck past one of the workout studios, there was Jackie, strapped into a VR headset, bopping around the room with an aggressive assortment of mixed cardio moves.
Fletcher swerved past the gym and darted through a full-blown bowling alley, trying to lose the Brians while they slipped and slid on greased lanes. She lost track of them somewhere around the concert hall, but ran into them again as they each opened doors on opposite sides of a Roman-inspired bath.
And froze.
Floating in the saltwater tub was a twelve-foot crocodile that must have wandered in, taking advantage of the disengaged fences. Gold eyes, sharp teeth. Hungry.
Fletcher gulped, eyes meeting the Brians’ as the crocodile growled, beastly head pivoting between them. Deciding who to attack first.
She slammed the door behind her and didn’t stop running until she reached a gold-and-glass atrium, lush with tropical plants. Inside, a few wrought iron benches dotted the room. The kind of place thatlooked like its only purpose was for tea parties or clandestine meetings. Birdsong chirped from the palm fronds, a few parrots flitting from tree to tree.
The windows boasted an unimpeded view of the savanna. Grasses billowed in the wind. In the distance, a herd of zebras gathered, a mirage against the horizon. And at the far side of the room? A second arched door.
Salvation if she’d ever seen it. If she could make it outside, she could circle back to the garage from the exterior and avoid the Brians completely.
To catch her breath, she ducked behind a leafy palm with waxy leaves fanning toward the glass ceiling. Its trunk slanted into a beautifully manicured planter, spilling with plumeria and ginger lilies.
This was fine. Everything was going to be totally fine.
Or it was, until something splattered on the curve of Fletcher’s shoulder.
Wet. Sticky.
Fletcher peeled her eyes upward, half expecting some medieval torture contraption dangling from the ceiling with one of her colleagues strapped to it.
An exhale. No ceiling fan murder devices here.
Instead, it was a giant blue bird. The macaw responsible flapped its wings, happily unaware that it had defecated on her shoulder. Just a bunch of birds, pissed off about being trapped inside the atrium glass.
