Wicked Games (Hartley Grace Featherstone Mysteries Book 3) by Gemma Halliday (books for students to read TXT) 📕

And I steeled myself for what was about to come next.

Only it wasn't the sharp stab of a bullet ripping through my body.

It was a turtle.

I blinked back the tears and tried to focus.

No, not a turtle. A Squirtle.

And a Pikachu.

A Pikachu that had a large black game console in her hands as her yellow foam limbs lifted it high above her…

And slammed it down.

Right onto Sophia's head.

Or, it would have been her head if Ellen were as tall as a model. As it was, the heavy box hit her in the shoulder of the arm holding the gun.

Sophia let out a sharp cry, the gun fell from her hands and clattered to the floor, and Sophia crumpled into a moaning pile.

Ellen and her date stood there looking totally stunned.

"Ohmigosh, ohmigosh, did I kill her?" Ellen asked, her big brown eyes wide behind her glasses.

I scrambled to pick up the gun, its cool metallic surface feeling foreign and uncomfortable in my hands, knowing what it was capable of. What it had almost done to me.

But I put emotions on the back burner, pointing it at Sophia's form.

"No. She's making too much noise to be dead," Squirtle said. He looked up at me. "Are you okay?"

I shook my head in the negative. "Call 9-1-1," I choked out. My eyes went to the storage room. "And tell them we need an ambulance."

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The rest of the evening went by in a blur. Someone called 9-1-1 (possibly Ellen), someone ran to the storage room to find Chase groaning and holding his head (I think it was me, but it had been hard to see clearly through all the tears clouding my vision), and someone (probably Squirtle) had alerted security that we had a murderer cornered in the VizaSoft booth. Before long, the entire main floor was crawling with security guards, uniformed officers, EMTs, and last but not least, Raley.

Luckily by that point I'd mostly stopped crying and shaking, and I had just finished telling my story to the third police officer in a row who'd asked me what had happened there. I wasn't sure if it was intentional on their part, but every time I told the story, it felt a little more coherent and less hysterical. I'll admit the first one had probably been hard to decipher at all, most of my attention having been on the EMTs who'd immediately descended on Chase, strapping his head to a board in case of possible spinal damage and lifting him onto a gurney. Chase had given me a weak smile and a thumbs-up that had been equally hard to believe. Clearly all was not well. But, he wasn't dead, and his thumbs were working, so that had been something to be thankful for.

So was Ellen's excellent timing.

It turned out that Ellen had felt bad about keeping the fact that she knew Tyler from us. As she'd told me as we'd waited for security to arrive, she hadn't meant to keep it a secret. She was just naturally kind of reserved, but she realized afterward how it looked. She'd wanted to apologize and had gone looking for me just as I'd left the ballroom and she'd spotted me going into the main hall. She and Squirtle had roamed the closing booths for a while before finally hearing a noise from inside the VizaSoft booth. They'd walked in just in time to see the tail end of Sophia's confession and save me from coming to the same fate as Connor.

For which, I would always be grateful, I'd decided as I watched Sophia get handcuffed and put on a second gurney, nursing an injury of her own. Even as I detailed her confession to uniformed officers, I could hear her ranting to whomever would listen that she wasn't guilty and it was all a huge misunderstanding. I wasn't sure her lawyer would have any more luck than she was at making that sound convincing, but as the crowd from the Pixel Ball slowly made their way toward the center of commotion, I could see lots of people with their phones out, filming her fall from grace. At least she'd get one of her wishes—she was going to be pretty famous by the end of the night. Just maybe not for what she'd hoped.

Some of the very first of the crowd from the Pixel Ball to arrive on the scene had been Sam and Kyle, their faces wearing matching ashen looks of concern as they'd raced toward the crime scene tape. Which was pulling double duty now that the booth was once again the scene of an attack. Sam had tackled me in a linebacker worthy hug and cried how sorry she was that she'd left the booth. Of course I'd told her there was nothing to forgive—it wasn't her fault she'd believed Sophia's lies to lure her away. Heck, in her place, I might have done the same thing.

We were still hugging and both talking at the same time about what had happened when Raley approached the three of us.

"Hartley," he said.

I sucked in a deep, fortifying breath. "Raley."

To my surprise, instead of giving me a lecture about being at a crime scene again, he put a warm hand on my shoulder. "You okay, kid?"

The tender gesture caught me by surprise, and I felt a lump form in my throat again as I answered. "Mostly."

He nodded, a frown of sympathy on his freckled face. "Can you tell me what happened?"

I took in another breath, letting it out on a shaky sigh. "I think so."

And I did, this time leaving nothing out. Which might have been a rookie mistake since I fully expected the entire story to trickle down to Mom in no time, but I felt I owed Raley the whole truth