Chapter Three
Chapter Three
I went rigid. Excuse me?
“Sorry, I meant, could you please not split me in half?” I signed it again.
The boss thought about it, then quietly pulled up his shirt. “Are my abs really that nice? You want to see them that badly?”
A wall of solid muscle appeared in front of me. I wiped away the tears the fright had squeezed out of me and reached out to touch it, very lightly.
The boss’s neck instantly turned red, and the flush crept all the way up to the tips of his ears.
Seeing that, I worked up a little courage and kept signing:
“Could you let me go? I’d like to live a little longer.”
The boss considered this for a few seconds. “You’re the first person who’s ever said they wanted to sleep with me.”
With that, he scooped me up in one big hand and burrowed under the covers with me.
The two children crawled out of the blankets too and settled down to sleep right next to me.
I wriggled my head out from under the covers so I was face to face with the boss, and kept signing:
“After we sleep, will you let me out?”
The boss stared at my hands for a long time, and his eyes slowly darkened.
“Out?” he repeated slowly. “You slept in my bed, crawled under my covers, and the minute the sun comes up you want to leave?”
He pushed himself up on one arm and caged me in, his voice dropping low. “Fine. You can go. If you really mean it tonight, if you really want to stay and sleep with me, then tomorrow morning I’ll leave that door open for you.”
“But if all you’re planning to do is wait until I fall asleep and sneak out—“ His gaze fell to the sheets I’d rumpled. “You’ve heard what I usually do to people who break into my room.”
He’s giving her an out, right? Just play along and say she wants to sleep with him, and tomorrow she can go look for clues!
Don’t fall for it! If the boss catches you lying, you die worse than if you’d just told the truth.
My fingers froze in midair.
If I went along with his misunderstanding, I could walk out of that door alive tomorrow, get back to the other players, and look for the clues that would get us out of town.
But if I signed “I just want to leave” right now, he’d remember that I was the one who’d broken into his room and slept in his bed.
The boss seemed to run out of patience. He sat up and started undoing his shirt, one button at a time. “Made up your mind? Tell me with your hands.”
I raised my hands.
