Moment in Time Part 3

Chapter 48

The Blame Game

Part 5

Simon paces nervously around the room. "What is my wife doing here?" He stares at Castle. "And yours?"

"They must be leverage," Judah figures, "to make sure we follow the rules or they get hurt."

Muscles pop on Castle's jaw. "Or we're the leverage."

Judah turns his gaze to Todd. "But what about you? You don't have anyone in that room."

Simon smirks. "He's a priest. They're celibate."

Todd shakes his head. "I'm a minister. The rules are different."

"So, is there a Mrs. Minister that isn't in there?" Simon questions.

"No, but that doesn't mean there aren't people I care about. And if something happened to one of them, I don't…."

"Look," Rick interrupts, "we don't know enough about what's going on to worry about that."

Simon glares at Rick. "Being locked in a room with a loaded gun and instructions to kill each other is what I'm worried about. And who elected you to be in charge, anyway, Mystery Writer?"

"No one. But I seem to be the one doing most of the puzzle-solving so far. And that's what we need to escape."

"Or maybe there are no more puzzles to solve," Simon retorts. "And you know what the last one said. That's why you won't let any of us have the gun."

"There's another puzzle all right," Rick returns. "We saw that symbol on Todd when I opened his shirt. I don't have one, but I saw one on my wife. Do either of you have them or did you see them on the other women?"

"I don't have one, but I think I saw one on Patty," Judah recalls.

"I have one," Simon admits, "but I didn't see one on Meadow."

"So following the pattern, half of each pair has one," Rick realizes.

"What about me?" Todd asks.

"I don't know," Castle concedes. "But it could be that the ones marked with the symbol are important to our would-be puppet master, and the rest of us are the leverage. But leverage for what?"

Kate pulls a slip of paper out of the cigarette pack. "The key is salvation."

"What f***ing key?" Meadow exclaims. "There's no key!"

"But there's a lock on the door," Kate points out, going over to examine it. "That's not a standard keyhole. It has ridges. Look around for something with ridges that match."

Searching the room, Patty regards the handle of the fire ax. "The top of that has grooves to hold the head on."

Meadow rushes over to see. "A trap, huh? The answer was right here all the time." Picking up a kid-sized chair, she smashes the glass and grabs the ax.

Patty pulls off the head. "It's rubber!" She fits the top of the handle into the lock and turns it. A panel pops open. She sighs. "Another mind game."

Folded paper falls to the floor as a gun is revealed. Kate quickly takes the weapon and reads the note. "The last one standing will be freed." Kate checks the chamber. "Two bullets."

"And three of us," Patty notes. "Clearly, our captor's trying to turn us against each other."

Beckett puts the gun back in the panel. "Well, he's not going to. We're going to work this out together."

Meadow lunges for the gun and points it at them. "There's nothing else to work out. It's called survival of the fittest."

Judah finishes using a chair to bash a hole in the wall. Castle feels inside. "Just more concrete. I don't believe we're at 143 Nicholas Street. That building wasn't put together with concrete walls. If anything, it looked like someone used the flimsiest materials possible. This whole place is set up to play out a twisted scenario."

The television lights up again, showing Meadow holding a gun on the two other women. While the other men are distracted, Simon grabs the gun from the small of Castle's back. "Sorry guys, but my wife has the right idea."

As Simon cocks the gun, the TV shuts off.

Patty holds out her hands. "Meadow, you don't have to do this."

"Look, it's nothing personal," Meadow assures her. "I like you – better than Ms. take-charge-everything's-a trap."

"The gun is a trap, Meadow," Kate insists."Even if you do make it out of here, you won't be with Simon or anyone else. You'll go to prison for the rest of your life for murder. That's not surviving."

"And who's going to tell?" Meadow throws back. "The guy running this circus? I don't think so."

"I investigate homicides. Believe me. There will be enough clues here, whether anyone else survives to talk or not. You'll just be the last pawn in the game."

"Bull! It's either you two or me." Meadow pulls the trigger, but the gun clicks on an empty chamber. "Fuck! You unloaded it."

Patty releases a deep breath. "Thank God she did."

"Simon, shooting us isn't going to get the door open," Castle argues.

Simon takes a step toward the other men. "You don't know that! The note says only one of us survives. I'm going to make sure it's me."

Todd steps between Simon and his other targets. "Don't go down this path."

"Sorry, Preacher." A gunshot echoes through the room, and Simon falls to the floor.

Todd feels for a pulse. "He's dead."

Rick grabs the weapon. "The barrel's blocked. It was another sick trick. The gun was rigged to kill whoever tried to shoot the others."

Kate uses the brightly colored strings from the toy shelf to tie Meadow's wrists behind her back. "These will have to do until I can get some real cuffs."

"Can't we work something out?" the prisoner begs. "I wasn't myself. It was fight or flight. Pure animal instinct."

Kate double-checks Meadow's bonds. "I'm a cop who just witnessed an attempted murder. I couldn't let you go if I wanted to. But when we get out of here, a good lawyer can plead you were under extreme stress."

"And how are we going to get out of here, now?" Patty questions.

"This room has things that would never belong in an actual classroom, like the cigarettes. Let's look around some more. Maybe there's something else we can use."

Patty searches the shelves and lays a box on the teacher's desk. "There's a science kit."

Kate opens the lid. "These containers are mislabeled."

"How do you know?" Patty asks. "More cop stuff?"

"No. I went to Stuyvesant. I thought I was going to be a lawyer like my parents. A lot of kids who want to be lawyers go there, but it's a tech school. We all had to take all the sciences, whether we wanted to or not. I recognize some of the chemicals. If somebody tried to use this stuff and didn't know better, they could poison themselves." She opens the small jars and starts to sniff. "This is charcoal. And the yellow one is sulfur. And this might be potassium nitrate. We'll have to test it. Those three make gunpowder, which is something cops do know about. We can make just enough to blow the lock on the door."

"How do we test it?" Patty asks.

"If we mix it with blood, it should turn it bright red."

Meadow's eyes narrow. "You're not using my blood."

Kate shakes her head. "Relax, we can use mine."

Todd covers Simon's body with his jacket while Judah tries again to bust through the door.

Rick puts a hand on Judah's shoulder. "It's not happening. We need to try another angle. If we can find something to use as a pry bar, we can get it between the lock and the frame. Then maybe we can pop it open."

"Like picking a lock with a credit card."

"Yeah, except I don't think even a titanium card would work for this. We need some good old-fashioned iron or steel – like the legs of one of these old-fashioned student desks."

Judah handily breaks the metal loose.