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“What do you think she’s going to do?” I asked, breathless from running down the steps.

“I don’t want to think about it.” Mason shuddered.

“It could flood the whole resort.” I shivered at the picture in my mind, the ocean crushing everything above us. It was too much. I groaned.

“It doesn’t matter.” Travis’s voice grounded me. “Engineering is safe. It won’t want to kill everyone else after going through all that trouble. Not just to get to us. It’s a machine.”

I nodded. I’d saved their skins as much as they’d saved mine. I needed to own that and fight harder when it came to my anxiety. I’d more than proven I could face those fears head on and come out on top. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling there was something we hadn’t accounted for.

“Mason?” I said, bringing them both to a halt. “What you said about it being the fault of whoever drugged the water… That wasn’t the AI. Someone had to have planned this. And if they planned it, then wouldn’t they have made sure they weren’t in danger?”

“It could have been someone who never came down with us at all,” Mason said. “One of Bennet Systems’ rivals, perhaps.”

“But why us? Travis and I? I mean, someone wanted us specifically to black out and think we may have been responsible.”

Candice’s AI voice chimed in. “Oh no. You did do it. That was the whole point.”

I was sick of the damn computer and the way the sound of it made my skin crawl with unseen mites. “What are you planning to do now, annoy us to death?”

“I can think of much more creative ways to kill you.”

Mason and Travis stood in front of me, arms spread as though protecting me. I ground my teeth against a curse because I couldn’t see the threat, thanks to their chivalry.

Shoving between their arms wasn’t easy, but eventually I got a peek.

The real Candice stood dead center of the sea of stasis beds filled with the sleeping bodies of the other passengers, pointing a gun in our direction. Just as stunning and plastic looking as ever, her hair smoothed back into a bun, she wore a pair of creased silk pants that matched her pink lipstick perfectly. “If I had known what a pain in the ass you’d be, I would have chosen to drug someone else. Still, you two were the best candidates, between your abilities and your physiological susceptibility.”

My mind blanked. Candice? Plastic, ditzy-seeming Candice? How was that even possible?

She laughed at the look on my face. “Just because I act like an idiot doesn’t mean I am one. I run this company. Yet Mason, his mother, and sister never considered me as good as family. If it weren’t for me and my ability to smooth over messes like Mason here thinking only with Little Mason, Bennet Systems would have gone under years ago.”

Mason’s face flushed dark in the dim blue light that bathed us.

“This isn’t about PR,” I said.

Candice laughed again. It was girlish and giggly. “Oh yes it is. It always is. Public perception is everything. And can you believe she hired that charlatan, Graham? It was a pleasure to suggest he’d make a great guinea pig. Exactly where he belongs, face down in the pool.”

I pictured Graham’s body and felt ill all over again. “He didn’t deserve to die,” I said.

“Yes, he did!” she screamed.

Travis and Mason’s arms stiffened in front of me once again. I swallowed.

Candice considered me, smoothing the side of her hair. “And so do you, little Sammie Sunshine. You remind me of Stacy Bennet. Always so self-righteous. Even when you were working for me during the blackouts, you were constantly correcting me. I designed the fucking AI in the first place. Who do you think you are?”

“I didn’t help you,” I said. “I wouldn’t have. Travis wouldn’t have.”

Candice’s thin lips oozed upward in a dangerous smile. “But you did. You didn’t have a choice. Among other things, when you mix the drug with alcohol, you become extremely susceptible to suggestion.”

Her words pelted me like stones. Alcohol. “But I only drank occasionally.”

“That you were aware of.” Candice snorted.

Travis’s arm trembled in front of me.

“I used both of you like puppets, and you never knew it. It was the perfect crime. If you ever did discover who was behind it, you would have incriminated yourselves. I was clean. Am clean.”

“Not anymore. I heard your whole confession,” Mason said. “We all did.”