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Maire followed suit and reached for her glass and took a sip of the deep red wine.
“Do you taste the vanilla?” Fern asked. “It comes from oak aging.”
“I taste it,” Ned agreed, taking another thoughtful sip. “And hints of black cherry and green pepper.”
“Yes!” Fern cried in delight. “So fun to have another wine connoisseur in our company.”
Camille and Samuel exchanged a look. How could Maire and Ned not feel the tension in the room? Or maybe they did and were just playing the game better than she and Samuel were.
“Shall we get started?” Fern asked. “Like I promised, this challenge does not have the physical element that the others had, but you will need to be mentally sharp and make split-second decisions. This is a game of wits.”
Camille released an internal sigh of relief. Every single muscle in her body hurt from the last two challenges. There was no way she could run, swim, or climb anything.
“This game is called Spin, Speak, Shoot,” Fern said, then paused.
“Shoot?” Samuel asked. “Shoot what?”
This was Camille’s immediate question as well.
Fern gave an enigmatic smile and Camille was surer than ever that Fern was the woman who called herself Nan. The woman who said that her boss was obsessed with retribution. Camille watched as Fern reached beneath the table and pulled out an object and set it in the center of the table.
A gun. A long-barreled, sleek revolver.
This wasn’t a Taser or even a shotgun used to strike a paper target like in the earlier challenges. This was a weapon that was meant to kill.
“Don’t look so scared,” Fern said, teasingly. “Obviously it’s not loaded.” To prove her point. Fern lifted the gun, barrel pointed straight up, and pulled the trigger. Camille flinched but the only sound was an anemic click, like a tongue clucking the roof of the mouth. “See,” Fern said, setting the gun back down. “Empty.”
“So, what’s the game?” Ned asked.
“You’ve heard of spin the bottle, right?” Fern asked.
“I’m not kissing anyone,” Maire said, flatly.
“I bet you would for ten million dollars,” Ned said.
“You wish,” Maire shot back.
“Not really,” Ned said, offhandedly.
Camille wished they would just shut up.
“No kissing,” Fern said. “But it’s called Spin, Speak, Shoot for a reason. But instead of spinning a bottle, you spin the gun and wherever the barrel ends up pointing, that is who must answer a question.” Fern once again reached below the table and pulled out four decks of cards. Each deck was a different color: pink, green, yellow, and orange. “If the barrel of the gun stops in front of you, I’ll draw a card from your pile and then you will answer the question written on the back.”
“Sounds easy enough,” Samuel said. “What’s the catch?”
“Excellent question,” Fern said. “A question may pop up that you don’t want to answer. That’s perfectly acceptable, but if you choose not to respond, that’s when you must pick up the gun and put it to your head and pull the trigger.”
The room became thick with stunned silence.
“That’s sick,” Camille said, finally speaking.
Fern kept her face passive, businesslike. “Obviously, it’s symbolic. But if you refuse to answer three questions, you lose. You are out of the competition and at risk for being voted off the show.”
“What kind of questions?” Camille asked, noticing the way Maire kept looking across the table at Samuel.
“Well, why don’t we find out?” Fern said, giving the revolver a spin. “Shall we begin?”
Camille watched as the gun whirled, a black-and-silver pinwheel. It spun past her again and again. She didn’t want to be the first one to answer a question and willed it to pass her by. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to run. The gun flew past Ned, Fern, and Maire before beginning to slow. At first, she was sure it was going to stop in front of Samuel, but it crept past him and came to rest right in front of Maire, its barrel pointing directly at her.
