Page 51 of Come Fly With Me

“You can’t get in,” the voice said, still trying to sound Australian. “This is a panic room. It’s designed to keep you out. If you all go into the changing room, we’ll leave—”

“And never darken your doorstep again,” said a second male voice with an even worse fake Australian accent.

“That’s Uncle Bob,” Ryan said on a sigh. “That’s hisCrocodile Dundeeimpersonation he does every Christmas.”

“This is the Benson Security panic room,” Callum said. “It wasn’t designed to keep us out.” He opened the panel, typed in a code, and pressed his thumb to the bioscanner.

The door swung open.

Revealing two tiny, retired men and their wives. It was like looking at four of the Cabbage Patch dolls that Julia had collected as a child. They sat on deckchairs, which they’d obviously brought with them. A small table was stacked with scones, cakes, and sandwiches beside a pot of tea and a bottle of gin. All four of them jumped to their feet.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing in here?” Callum stood, legs apart and arms folded over his bare chest. With the towel wrapped around his waist and his metallic prosthetic legs, he looked like a cross between a crazed Highlander and the Terminator.

“Would you mind shutting your legs, son?” Ryan’s grandad, Bill, said. “I don’t want to give the missus any ideas.”

As Callum growled low in his throat, Isobel stepped in front of him. Whether to stop the women from seeing too much of her husband or to stop Callum from staging a massacre, it was hard to tell.

“Granddad. Uncle Bob.” Ryan elbowed his way to the doorway. “Seriously? And you brought Gran and Aunt Matty too?”

“We’re just having a date night,” his grandad said.

“Date afternoon,” his wife corrected, smiling at all of them.

Julia suspected this was one occasion when looking like a traditional grandmother, complete with gray hair and lavender cardigan, wouldn’t help her get out of trouble.

“You were having a date inmypanic room?” Callum’s whole head turned red.

“Ourpanic room,” Rachel corrected because, clearly, that was the most important part.

Bill shuffled his feet, making Julia realize he was still wearing the beige dungarees he wore to do carpentry jobs around the building. Not exactly date attire. But then, the panic room was a weird place to go on a date anyway.

“We were putting up some shelves.” Bill pointed to the shelves in question. “And we accidentally pressed some buttons.” He pointed at the other side of the room, under the wall of monitors.

“You accidentally pushed a button on the other side of the room?” Ryan shook his head at them.

“When you get to our age, son,” Bob said, “strange things happen. It’s best just to accept them.”

“Anyway,” Bill said, shooting his brother a glare, “the cameras came on, and we could see all over the building.”

Ryan’s grandmother pushed in front of her husband. “That’s when he called me. We’ve always wanted to get tickets forBig Brother, but we’ve never managed to.” She looked at her sister-in-law. “It’s one of our favorite shows, afterCoronation Street. This was a great second best.” She beamed at them.

No one beamed back.

She cast a nervous glance at her husband before stepping back behind him.

“We were only going to watch,” Bill said. “But then we accidentally pressed some more buttons, and before we knew what was happening, you were all reacting to the accidents. It felt like we were producers on our own show.”

“I pressed the fog button,” Matty said with some pride, making her husband hiss at her to be quiet. She glared at him but closed her mouth.

“We weren’t really going to let you fight it out,” Bob said. “That was just a joke.”

“Do you know what would be funny?” Callum said in a scary low voice. “Watching your head come off your shoulders.”

And that’s when all hell broke loose.

“You can’t kill my granddad,” Ryan shouted as Callum lunged for Bill, and Joe lunged for Callum to hold him back.

The old women screamed and ran for the console.