Drama, Deception, and Double-Cross

Sneak Peek

The Morgue You Know - Samantha

I always figured I’d end up as a spy—just not as a cadaver.

A metallic slam reverberated in my skull as the morgue drawer sealed shut, leaving me in pitch-black nothingness. The air was stale, thin, the kind that clung to the back of your throat. A wave of claustrophobia bucked in my stomach, but fear was for other people. I could wrestle mine into a corner with logic. The faint hum of the ventilation system and the reminder that no TV network wanted ‘contestant suffocates mid-mission’ splashed across the tabloids steadied my nerves. It was all a mind game, and I intended to win.

The polished steel pressed cold against my skin as I shifted. For a reality game show, Spooks had a way of feeling a little too real.

I swept my hand to find a flashlight and a folded slip of paper.

“Welcome, Spooks! Your next mission begins now.” The vintage PA croaked to life, dragging Robby York’s smug voice across the airwaves. The cheerful tone was almost worse than lying on a slab in cold storage. “You are locked in the hospital morgue, and the only way out is to work together…or betray each other. The first team to escape earns safety at the next elimination. Let the games begin.”

I flicked on the mini-flashlight, already irritated. First, I’d sniffed out my twin sister as the show’s double agent, only for Robby’s latest curveball to blow up my hard-won partnership by splitting us men versus women. Great.

It stung to lose my first alliance. I managed to rope in two unlikely partners—Joe Nedemyer, my boss at the Lake Falls Gazette, and Tom Sweeney, a McCain University golden boy whom Lizzie nicknamed Tom Terrific.

Joe was a natural teammate: sharp-eyed, dependable, the kind of mentor who could edit my articles and cover my back in emergency surgery. Tom, on the other hand, had that irritating talent for being good at everything. Sports, puzzles, singing cowboy ballads—you name it, he excelled. Usually, that sort of perfection would grate on me, but his easy grin and steady nerves had a way of balancing my own intensity.

Together, the three of us formed a strong team: Joe with the experience, Tom with the charm, and me with the logic. Now? The production assistants locked them in the morgue on the opposite side of the game, and left me saddled with the ladies-only alliance Robby cooked up for drama.

After three eliminations in the first few hours of the competition, we were down to thirteen contestants. Lizzie was the first successfully burned double agent, meaning at least one more—or possibly two—lurked in our midst. And when we eliminated one double, we received a clue to the identities of the others.

I unrolled the slip of paper, the tiny pin light barely illuminating the words: 86 Last is first.

Theories and random associations raced through my brain as I tried to justify the message. Eighty-six had colloquial meaning as ‘to get rid of’ or ‘do away with’, but it couldn’t be so simple. Could it be a cipher? Numbers to letters?

A knock on the side of my drawer drew me from my thoughts. The message, the clue, would have to wait until later.

“Hello, is anyone in there? Can you hear me?”

“Loud and clear.”

“Samantha? Please tell me you are alive and not a ghost.”

Even through the thick steel wall, the chatter was unmistakably Patsy Steffanelli’s, a forty-something newscaster who picked the wrong week to visit her mother and got roped into participating in a game show.

“I have no earthly idea how I let Mama talk me into this Survivor-meets-Clue-with-a-spy-twist,” she muttered. “Sounds awesome in concept, but nobody mentioned being slapped in the deep freeze between Walt Disney and Teddy Ballgame.”

“Calm down, Patsy, and tell me what you see. There is a trick to escape these drawers.”

“I can’t see anything,” she said.

“They gave me a small flashlight. I’m sure you have one too. Feel around and find it.”

She huffed. “I should have known this was a bad idea when the release form was longer than War and Peace.”

I could hear the frantic energy in her voice and the way she used humor to deflect her fear. A classic avoidance mechanism. At least according to my senior-level psych class. With my ability to learn and master a subject, I’d soon be as good as Lizzie at reading people.

While she looked for the light, I inspected my drawer. I ran my hands along the walls, searching for a lever, a key, something, anything to help me out. But all I found was a camera in the corner, activated with night vision.

“Okay, I’m looking at a slide puzzle,” Patsy said. “It’s hooked to my door. I think I have to solve it to get out, but I’m horrible at puzzles. Do you have one?”

“No.” I drummed on the lid. “I think each drawer is different. But I can walk you through how to solve the slide puzzle, using a simple trick.”

“A trick, huh? Some sort of Beautiful Mind memorization, beating Vegas at the blackjack table kind of thing?”

“No. You solve the top row, then the left column, and work your way inward.”

“Samantha, that’s not a trick. That’s a strategy. That’s like telling someone who’s never played chess that you win by sacrificing pawns and protecting your horsey guys.”

“That’s a terrible chess strategy.” I frowned. “But let’s focus on the slide puzzle first. Does the puzzle have numbers or pictures?”

“Numbers. Fifteen is the highest.”

Meaning it was a four-by-four slide puzzle. “Read out the numbers left to right.”

I closed my eyes and pictured them as she called them out. With a few quick and easy moves, I solved the puzzle in my head. My eyes popped open.

“Okay, Patsy. Follow my instructions exactly. Ready?”

“Go for it, Brainiac.”

I recited the moves, and several minutes later, Patsy squealed. “Freedom! I don’t know what kind of Rain Man mind voodoo you did, but I’m out.”

“How’s it looking on the outside?” I asked.

“There’s a keypad on the outside of your drawer.”

“I meant, how are the guys progressing? Do they have anyone out yet?”

“Um, let’s see. Oh yeah, they already got three people out and on their way to their fourth. That Boone guy is getting them out fast, but he’s a magician or something. How is that fair? He does escapes for a living.”

“Magicians aren't just good with their hands; they're masters of misdirection and human behavior. They use psychology to control their audience, to make them see what they want them to see.”

Patsy snarled. “Right. It’s cheating.”

We were several people behind. We needed to catch up immediately. “Did you notice anything in your drawer that might hint at the combination lock?”

“Well, I mean, the slide puzzle was full of numbers, but I’m not sure how that helps us.”

I shook my head. “It doesn’t.”

“What about that rolled-up clue they gave us—the ‘86 first is last.’ Maybe that’s eight-six-six-eight or something.”

I considered her suggestion. “I don’t think so. I believe it’s something to do with the game, not this challenge.”

“Try four-seven-two-three,” a voice above me said. “It’s written on my shoe, but I don’t know what it means.”

Patsy punched the numbers into the keypad. A beep and a satisfying thunk unlocked my drawer.

I squinted as I adjusted to the sudden light. The greenish tint of the morgue felt harsh after twenty minutes in the pitch-black drawer.

Patsy helped me to my feet, towering over me like a chic blonde giraffe in leopard-print slacks. At five-nine, I wasn’t used to looking up at women, but Patsy had me beat by a couple of inches. Her shoulder-length bob framed a face made to anchor the evening news, but her wardrobe was a carnival of vintage prints that shouldn’t have worked, and yet somehow did.

Before I had the chance to take in the chaos of the morgue, a faint knock echoed from another drawer.

“Hope y’all didn’t forget about me!”

I grinned. “That’s Mattie.”

Patsy clapped both hands over her mouth and let out a dramatic groan. “Mama? Oh, thank heavens. I worried they stuffed you in with the leftovers. Are you okay?”

“Get me out quick.”

Patsy clawed at the drawer. “I knew this was a bad idea. You don’t do well in enclosed spaces.”

A muffled sigh came from behind the steel. “Quickly, because we’re in a competition, not because I’m claustrophobic.”

“Remember the time you hyperventilated in the coat closet at Mrs. Ruby’s?” Patsy asked.

“That had nothing to do with the space and everything to do with that wicked woman’s perfume. Now hush up and get me out of here.”

“She sounds way calmer than you did” I said, unable to stop my smirk.

Patsy threw a glare at the camera over our shoulder. “Don’t encourage her. If she comes out looking fresher than I do, I’ll never hear the end of it.”

The drawer rattled again, followed by Mattie’s even-keel voice. “There’s a code wheel attached to my door. I can feel the ridges, but I can’t see the numbers from inside.”

A code wheel. Tricky, but not impossible. Patsy crouched beside it, squinting at the tiny dials. “Mama, who designs these things? The numbers are microscopic. I need a magnifying glass and a chiropractor to read them.”

“Let me give it a try,” I said, kneeling next to her.

As Patsy grumbled through the sequence, I pictured the alignment. It wasn’t a simple five-digit lock—it was a rotating cipher wheel, numbers paired with letters. A word puzzle disguised as a lock. Cute.

Patsy fiddled with the dials. “If this thing shocks me, Mama’s paying my hospital bill.” A click echoed, but the drawer stayed shut. “It’s not PLEASE.”

Mattie’s dry voice floated out: “Try ‘EXITS.’ These producers aren’t exactly subtle.”

“No go.”

“It must be something we’ve come across,” I knocked on the drawers of our other teammates. “Does anyone have a word or letters?”

“I do!” Sheriff Andi Montgomery yelled from a drawer on the top row. “Try ALIAS.”

When Patsy spun the dials again, the wheel gave a satisfying click. The drawer slid open, and Mattie emerged with the composure of someone stepping off a first-class flight, not cold storage.

Her long blonde hair shimmered under the fluorescent light, not a strand out of place. She smoothed the sleeve of her tailored blazer—navy with just enough pink trim to suggest style, not frivolity. Petite, polished, and perfectly unruffled, she looked like she’d been waiting inside with coffee and scones instead of recycled morgue air.

“Took you ladies too long to crack the code,” Mattie said. “We’ve fallen way behind the fellas.”

Patsy flung her arms around her. “Mama, how are you not freaking out? You’re supposed to be the delicate one!”

Mattie patted her daughter’s arm. “I raised three kids, survived newsroom deadlines, and lived through shoulder pads in the ’80s. A morgue drawer doesn’t even make the top ten.”

I bit back a laugh. Three down for our team. Maybe we weren’t out of this mission yet.

I chanced a glance at the other side of the morgue. Tom Terrific led the charge for the men’s team. They were only one more escape from victory. I inspected our remaining three drawers. We’d need a miracle to pull off a win.

The guys cheered as the final contestant, Joe Nedemyer, spilled from the drawer.

“Seriously, that’s totally not fair. They have a magician. They just got to pick all the locks instead of solving the puzzles.” Patsy twirled, a hand on her hip. “How are you not outraged?”

“It’s a game, Patsy. A spy game at that,” Mattie said. “They get to use whatever skills they have.”

Patsy flicked an eyebrow. “Just like Samantha used that handy-dandy photographic memory to solve my slide puzzle from next door.” She narrowed her gaze. “That’s really kind of creepy, by the way.”

My mouth twisted. “Thanks?”

“Well, it is! My mind does not work that way.” She pointed to her temple. “It’s a scattered ball of chaos up here. Nothing’s organized. Files are spread all over the place and mislabeled. Useful, important things—like the capital of North Dakota—are buried under ten feet of useless factoids about every television show since the dawn of time. Like, if you want to know where Lucy Ricardo lived—623 East 68th Street—I got you. But don’t ask me about the chemical formula for glucose.”

“C₆H₁₂O₆. And Bismarck.”

“See? That’s what I mean.” Patsy grinned. “But could you tell me the Professor’s real name on Gilligan’s Island?”

I smirked. “I suppose not.”

“That’s okay. We can’t all be brilliant.” Patsy winked. “Roy Hinkley, by the way.”

Patsy might be a master of trivia, but I was a master of the mind. And in a game where everyone was playing a part, the mind was the only thing that mattered.

I bent down and scooped up the cowboy hat I’d been forced to abandon before the mission. Ten gallons didn’t fit in the drawers.

The producers insisted on signature looks for each contestant—me in denim-and-boots to contrast Lizzie’s college girl style, Patsy in animal prints loud enough to be heard from space, Mattie in pearls sharp enough to double as weapons…

I cut my gaze across the hall to the men’s team. Tom Terrific joked with a sound guy, flashing his toothpaste-commercial grin like juggling reality TV and spy games came naturally. I told myself I watched him for intel. My ears betrayed me by heating up anyway.

“You’ve got to be careful with that one,” Patsy stage-whispered, gliding in at my elbow like she’d been cast as meddling sitcom mom. “Oh, trust me, sweetheart. It’s not worth pining when you’re in the friend zone. Brutal place to live.”

I opened my mouth to protest. “I don’t—”

“My Henry’s just a smidge older than you. Naval Academy, bright as a button and training to be a pilot.”

Mattie appeared before I could escape, posture ramrod straight, expression like a drill sergeant on her last shred of patience. “This is exactly why we’re losing. You’re matchmaking instead of strategizing.”

Patsy rolled her eyes so hard I thought they might detach. “I didn’t want to play this silly game. You insisted, Mama.” She flapped her hands in air quotes. “In the name of mother-daughter bonding.”

“Wrong,” Mattie snapped. “You told the producers we were a package deal. And I quote: ‘If you cast Mama, you cast me.’”

Before their bickering could escalate to a duel, Robby York’s voice boomed through the hospital corridor. “Ladies and gentlemen, congratulations! The men’s team is victorious.”

The men cheered. We groaned. Standard procedure.

“As their reward,” Robby went on, milking the echo for drama, “they receive the antidote to a poison planted by our dastardly double agent. One of you…” He paused so long that even the boom mic operator shifted on his feet. “Will not be so lucky.”

The overhead lights flickered, the kind of cheap horror effect you couldn’t buy in post-production. Somewhere, a door creaked shut.

Robby’s voice dropped into its best campfire-ghost-story register. “The slide puzzle you so valiantly tackled? Laced with a transdermal toxin. Slow-acting, but effective. Which means…” He swiveled toward Patsy, and the cameras followed like trained bloodhounds.

Patsy pressed a hand to her chest, milking it for all it was worth. “Well,” she said, eyes sparkling under the harsh lights, “At least I get to deliver a dramatic death scene. I’ve been practicing my faint.”

Then she collapsed, arms spread, head tilted like an actress auditioning for Gone with the Wind: The Musical Remake.

The cameras ate it up.

---

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