Page 118 of Stripping Bare
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Although Tessa’sheart was pounding so hard she thought she could hear it herself, she was relieved that Keith was keeping his gun pointed at her. As they made their way farther into the woods, he remained between Tessa and Jonah’smother.
Miss Joan lagged a step and shot a look at Tessa behind Keith’s back, but Tessa had no idea what she was trying tocommunicate.
He herded them toward a massive red spruce with branches draping the ground. “Get under there,” he ordered. Once they were all hunched underneath the low prickly branches, he told Tessa, “Get the duct tape out of the bag and strap her to thetree.”
Oh, she didn’t like the sound of that. It would mean Miss Joan had no chance of escape. “But how will she play thatway?”
“I decided she won’t. She’d drag down the pace,” he said. “That’s not her purpose.” No explanation for what her purposewasthough.
Miss Joan awkwardly put her back against the tree between two branches, and Tessa began weaving the tape over the wood, behind her back but over her wrists. If she couldjust…
“Not that way,” he barked. “Strap her down at the waist, hips, and shoulders. I don’t want her interrupting thegame.”
Tessa tried to convey how sorry she was through her facial expression alone, and Miss Joan gave her a small smile. When Tessa made a lap around her waist, Jonah’s mom whispered, “I’ll be fine. You just take care of yourself. You can dothis.”
Her words shook Tessa. Obviously, Miss Joan believed wholeheartedly that Tessa could hold her own, that she didn’t have to rely on Jonah to get them out of this situation. Something Tessa had spent the past ten years trying to prove to everyone, including herself. Only to find out she wasn’t exactly the self-made woman she’dbelieved.
How could Jonah have taken that from her? He’d manipulated things behind the scenes while she was completely unaware. No, it wasn’t physical victimization, but he’d still taken away herchoice.
“Tessa,” Miss Joan said. “Whatever my son did, he did because he wanted to protect you, because he cares foryou.”
“People who care for one another treat each other asequals.”
“Equality isn’t the same thing as equity, sweetheart. He wanted justice foryou.”
That should’ve been her choice, nothis.
When she had Jonah’s mom secured, Tessa turned to Keith. “What now?” Because it was time to get on with whatever he had planned. That was the only way to stophim.
“Turn around.” He lifted the back of her shirt and checked the battery pack on her vest. Good thing she hadn’t been able to disengage the wires on this one. He tinkered with the goggles perched on her head and yanked them down over hereyes.
That’s when something dawned on her. She and Miss Joan were suited up, but Keith hadn’t put on gear. Tessa had no understanding of the rules, and she suddenly felt as if she’d been plopped down in the middle of theHungerGames.
His stomach a mess,rolling and cramping, Jonah pulled to the side of the road in front of the house he’d grown up in. His worry wasn’t about defeating Keith Benery in a game of Steele Survivor. Screw the mods. He knew this game backward andforward.
But what if winning couldn’t save his mother and Tessa? Benery had already proven he couldn’t be trusted to play by the rules he himself hadset.
In his rearview, Jonah caught sight of an unmarked car casually pulling to the curb a football field length behind him. Another turned into a driveway on the other side of thestreet.
Jonah got out of the car and under the pretense of adjusting his VR goggles, he inserted a second earpiece and mic. “Everything ontarget?”
In his ear, Maggie said, “Ready in less thanfive.”
That meant his brothers were doing as he’d asked, so he tucked the earpiece and mic into his shirt because he didn’t want Benery to realize he was wired. He ignored Maggie’s tinny voice coming from the vicinity of hiscollarbone.
Jonah pulled down his VR goggles, pressed the attached headset into place and swung the mic up to his mouth. “I’m here, Benery. Let’splay.”
“In the backyard.” For a fucking madman, Benery sounded remarkably sane. And based on the setting for the game, he knew about the significance of thislocation.
It wasn’t a secret that Jonah had first played a sort of real-life version of Steele Survivor with his brothers in the woods behind this house. Once the game had begun to gain real traction, he’d become more careful about telling that story. A few overzealous players had found the address and come by to leave tributes of marbles and trading cards—game treasure—behind thehouse.
Once he’d walked in at Thanksgiving to find his mom had invited a trio of dudes from Minnesota to dinner because they’d been running around whacking at each other with wooden swords on herproperty.
Now, with the VR goggles on, Jonah was plunged back into the surreal zombie landscape Benery had created. The windows on the house had no panes, their emptiness like gaping dead eyes. Shingles that looked like strips of dried skin lay on theground.
Keeping his back to the brick that he knew in reality did not look as if blood had been spattered on it, Jonah edged his way down the side of the house. At the corner, he peeked into the backyard, trying to spotBenery.
