He jumped onto the bed where Khan laid me and snuggled into my side, huge eyes looking up at me as he licked my hand.

"I'm not dying, right?" I asked Khan who was checking my throat again.

"No, but it could have some lasting damage on your throat and brain," he said in a blunt tone. "You should rest for a while and drink some warm tea or soup for your throat."

"I can't rest," I said, trying to get up. "We don't have much time left and we still have no idea who killed her."

He pushed me back down. "And you're not going to get anything done after what you just went through."

"Yeah, we got this for now," Yaz said, sitting in the recliner, taking out her iPad. "We'll search through the past footage to see if anything sticks out for now."

"I'll help Yaz with that," Sebastian said, not looking at me as he went to go sit in the corner. "I'll let you guys know if I see anything strange."

"Are you hungry?" Rucker asked me, looking at the ceiling as he scratched his head. "I can make you some soup or something." He trailed off on the end.

I think my almost-dying incident really affected him. I didn't know why though. Maybe he let someone down in the past, and it brought up old feelings.

I should feel furious at both him and Sebastian, but maybe I was too tired or lost too much oxygen to the brain or something, but I didn't have any animosity toward either of them.

I suspected that Gmie and Demo would come after me, so I should've known better than to get so absorbed like that and not pay attention.

I'd give them both credit where credit was due; once they set their mind on something, they really followed through — or tried at least. They both wanted me dead, and I think Demo's destroyed eye added more fuel to their motivation.

I let out a yawn, hurting my throat. "I'm okay and don't feel bad — either of you." Sebastian wouldn't lift his head, just kept staring down at his iPad. "Demo would've probably found a way in there either way. It's whatever. I'm alive, and I should've been paying more attention too." My throat still felt raw, and my words still stumbled a bit, but I could feel myself returning to normal a bit.

"But you could've died, and I made a vow to protect you." Rucker clenched his fist. "It won't happen again. Trust me." A hardness colored his last statement, lingering with a bit of confidence. I believed him.

After that, the tension in the atmosphere lifted a bit, becoming airier and more freeing. Everyone sort of got into their own element, researching the past camera footage or analyzing pictures.

Even though my head started to return to normal, the dizziness and lightheadedness still there, I couldn't sleep or even relax. I just shifted on the bed with Duke snoring behind me. Khan made me some tea, milk added last, and I devoured it, loving the way it soothed my throat.

I did let my mind wander for a bit, which was what it did best, and something crossed my mind. I stabbed Demo in the eye with a pen, and Layla was stabbed in the eye with a pen. Did my team suspect me now?

They all seemed to be acting normal, but they kept telling me to rest and sleep. Was it because they wanted to talk about me in private? Or was I simply overreacting?

I went to turn over onto my back, but something dug into my skin — Layla's clue. I forgot I pocketed it earlier. The dark teal box tumbled through my fingers before I pulled off the cover, revealing four boxes with different numbered dice printed on them.

"I haven't seen one of those in years," Khan said, bringing my attention to him. He held another saucer of tea in his hand, putting it on the nightstand next to the empty one.

"What is it?" I said, sitting up slowly.

He sat on the edge of the bed, taking the box from my fingers. "It's one of those 'which one doesn't belong' boxes," he said, playing with it. "My parents got them for me a lot as a kid. They have them for adults too."

"So, one of them doesn't belong?"

"That one," he said, pointing to the top left-hand corner one.

"This is Layla's clue," I said, wiping my hair out of my face. "Does it mean she didn't belong here?"

"Or she was the odd one out somehow," he said, moving the puzzle around in his hand.

"She wasn't the most stable person here," Rucker said with a snort from the corner on the air mattress. "Her secret was probably something to do with her crazy family and their secret 'cleansings.'"

"Maybe," I said, taking the puzzle from his hand.

Khan watched me through thick eyelashes. "You think it means something else?"

"I'm not sure," I said, lying back on the bed, holding it above my head.

"Don't think too hard, get some rest," Khan said before moving back over to his monitors.

Everyone was still looking through the footage of the last few days, and they were still coming up short. Something told me that they were wasting their time, that the real evidence was on the footage before her death.

I eventually drifted off to sleep for a while and awoke to everyone else sleeping, except Khan. Rucker and Yaz were on air mattresses, and Sebastian was in bed with me. But Duke laid oblong between us, using his long body to keep us apart.

I snorted at the overprotective sleeping pup. He was slowly melting the cage around my heart. I was getting attached. I couldn't help it.

The question of why my sponsor gave him to me still lingered in my mind. I knew it couldn't be good, but I've been blocking it out, trying to ignore it or it would drive me crazy.

"Good sleep?" Khan asked, turning around in his chair.

"Sort of," I said, rubbing my throat. It was still sore, but my voice came out a bit better. "What happened?"

Khan leaned back. "I told everyone to get some sleep, that I'd wake them in a few hours."

"Aren't you gonna sleep?"

He shook his head. "Can't. Once my mind gets a problem, I have to solve it, or it'll keep me up. My mind just keeps racing."

"I'm like that too sometimes when I have a question I can't get answered," I said before letting out a yawn, which hurt. "Are we any closer to her killer?"

"I knocked off all of us," Khan asked, staring around at our teammates. "I've been around them, studying them and I didn't get any sneaky or hiding vibes, so I'm trusting my instincts on that. Fee's crossed off too. I agree with Rucker on the battered body thing."

"You really think I'm innocent?" I asked, sitting up, surprised. "I thought people would suspect me because I stabbed Demo in the eye with a pen."

"And since Layla got stabbed in the eye with a pen too," he said, reading my thoughts exactly. "You thought you'd jump to suspect numero uno?"

"Well, yeah."

A light, sporadic chuckle floated from his lips, eyes crinkling. "I think we both know that you're very dangerous."

"Dangerous?" My mind instantly swarmed with Tini moments — cutting up two corpses, licking organs and choking Layla. "Umm yeah, I guess you could say that."

He slouched forward in his office chair, hands on his knees, eyes staring directly into mine. "But you didn't kill her."

"How do you know that?" I asked. "I have motive and opportunity."

"Everyone did," he said with a slight nod. "But there's one difference between you and everyone else."

"What?"

"You're the only one who showed any grief over her death," he said, eyes boring into mine. "You looked sad, upset — you still do. I read it on your face sometimes."

I clutched my knees to my face, throat throbbing a bit. "I feel bad — like if I would've just opened my door, she'd still be alive."

"You can't think that," he said. "These are the cards that we've been dealt. We're in a game, and death is gonna happen. It's unavoidable."

"I know — but...," I said, trailing off. "I don't know. I just feel like it's my fault."

"Just keep telling yourself it's not," he said. "You can't get boggled down by emotion here. You need to stay alert and ready and keep it moving if you want to survive."

He was right, but I didn't know how to just shut off these feelings. I'm used to keeping my feelings to myself, but I could never get them to just go away.

"So, there's only Gmie, Demo, Chi and Aries left," I said, wanting to change the subject.

Khan rubbed his face. "And we have no real way to narrow them down. They all have a motive and they all had the opportunity."

"So, we're still nowhere?"

"At the moment, yes," he said, looking annoyed at the situation. "I'm going to go look over Layla's footage again."

"Me too," I said, grabbing my iPad off the nightstand. "Something's bothering me about it."

That what we both did for a while, obsess over her footage and talked about things until my face turned blue and I had to pee from all the tea drinking from earlier.

Washing my hands when I was done, I went to walk out of the bathroom, stepping on my dirty clothes, hearing a loud crunch. Digging through it, I spotted the note that I picked from Layla's dead body. I totally forgot all about it.

Opening the crumbly piece, it was illegible, like the pen was out of ink, so I could only read some letters.

"What's that?" Khan asked when I emerged from the bathroom with the note in front of me.

"I forgot I found this on Layla's body," I said, standing near his chair. "A note, but I can't read it."

"A note?" Khan took it from my hands, rubbing his hands over the page. "There seems to be some indentation." Going to his desk, he brought back a pencil and began shading the page.

It helped a bit. There were multiple words on the page, but we only could read two and a letter — I'm sorry and B.

"This could've been an apology note to you," Khan said, putting the note on the keyboard. "Maybe that's why she was in your room. She wanted to apologize. She was there earlier before her death, asking for Lily."

"Maybe she knew she was going to die," I said, my body growing cold.

"And she wanted to apologize and be with someone that reminded her of family," Khan said in a soft tone, eyes twinkling.

I closed my eyes, feeling my chest grow heavy. That might've been why she was there earlier. She just wanted some comfort before she died.

TINI? But as quick as she was there, she was gone. I couldn't feel her, but she was just there for a moment, a soft flicker. My pride would never admit that I missed her, but I didn't need her. I didn't. I DIDN'T.

But rechecking Layla's route in person like I was doing before I got choked sounded like a good plan.

♟♙♟

We wanted to see the body again before retracing her route.

We left everyone asleep still, thinking it was best to do this alone. More people meant more noise and less thinking silence for us.

The door to my room was still open when we got there, and it was empty of people, except for Layla's body. Her skin was still slightly warm to the touch, iciness slowly seeping in.

Staring at her feet, the scuff marks were still there and on the floor. Thinking back to the footage, the scuffs probably came from her stumbling around. She kept almost falling; she might've even fallen in here once.

Moving from her feet to her neck, I saw nothing different from earlier until I got to her face. Her lips were parted now.

"Was there something in her mouth earlier?" Khan asked, squatting next to me. "Yaz's pictures didn't go inside her mouth, but I don't remember them being parted."

"I noticed that too," I said, moving my fingers to her lip. Using my index and thumb, her lips moved further apart like the red sea.

Khan leaned in close and brought out a pair of tweezers. The silver tongs entered her mouth and latched onto a patch of hair — red hair.

"It looks like Chi's hair," he said, moving the hair chunk back and forth in the light.

"Why would her hair be in Layla's mouth?" I asked.

"If Chi is the killer, maybe Layla bit off a piece before dying?"

"But I don't remember seeing her lips parted," I said, shaking my head. "They were closed."

"Which could mean the hair was placed post-death," Khan said, putting the hair back. "Chi or someone else could be trying to trick us into choosing the wrong person. Or it could've been there the whole time, and we didn't notice. Her lips were closed when we were here, but bodies do shift and move on their own after death. Her lips could've just parted on their own at some point after we left."

I have heard of dead bodies farting on their own. So, her lips parting on their own sounded like a realistic possibility. Shit.

"And since we can't see any of the camera footage in here, we have no way of seeing if someone planted it," I said, shaking my head. "I swear this shit gets trickier by the minute."

Which was it — was someone trying to trick us, or was it there the whole time?

♟♙♟