Glorious Rivals(96)

“True or false.” Gigi met his eyes through the dark. “You’ll miss me.”

“Slate.” Eve’s patience was clearly evaporating.

Gigi decided not to wait for an answer that probably wasn’t going to come. She set her sights on the building in the distance and made it all of three steps before Mattias Slater spoke behind her.

“Let’s play a game,” he said. “It’s called You Don’t Need to Prove a Damn Thing. To anyone. It’s called You’re Already Strong.”

Gigi stopped walking, but she didn’t look back. She didn’t let herself look back. Still, she had to ask: “Were you ever out there?”

How many times in the past year-and-a-half had she hedged her bets, calling out into the night? I know you’re out there. He’d been a figment of her imagination on so many nights—and maybe that was all.

Maybe if she turned around, she’d discover that he was already gone.

And then came a reply. “More than once.”

Gigi nodded, and then she swallowed. It wasn’t all in my head. She took the deepest breath of her life. “Good-bye, Mattias.”

She started walking toward the bar again. The first two steps were the hardest. After five, Gigi forced herself to pick up the pace, as much as she could—for Savannah. Even if Zella had been right and the Grandest Game was ending, even if it was already over and Gigi was too late, she had to get to her sister. And now, thanks to Eve and her big mouth, Gigi needed to get to Grayson and Lyra, too. At the very least, she needed to tell someone about Calla—the Watcher, the Lily, the Woman in Red.

Because whatever came after the time for watching? Even Gigi wasn’t optimistic enough to think that it was good.

Chapter 83

LYRA

Something is wrong. Grayson’s words hung in the air. Lyra should have been thinking about the fact that she’d lost, about Mile’s End, but all she could actually think about, as she stared at the game makers’ empty chairs on that screen, was calla lilies floating on water.

So many of them.

“Why would something be wrong?” Savannah said, her voice high and clear and sharp and jagged all at once. “Even when I come in first, I lose.” Grayson’s sister looked to the person who’d been her partner in this game, the one who’d given up his dice so she could win. “The house always wins, right, Rohan?” Savannah said.

The house. Lyra couldn’t shake the question bubbling up inside of her like an ominous sense of premonition.

What if the game makers aren’t the house?

Beside Lyra, Grayson was typing something on his watch, but before he could finish, all four of their watches buzzed with what Lyra could only assume were four identical messages.

REPORT TO HELIPAD FOR EXTRACTION.

“Something is very wrong,” Grayson reiterated directly into Lyra’s right ear as a military-style chopper touched down on the helipad. His assessment was immediately confirmed when one of the helicopter doors opened, and two passengers climbed out.

Men. Neither of them Hawthornes. It was obvious, just by looking at them, what these men were. Security.

“There were supposed to be five of you,” one of them yelled over the sound of the chopper’s blades.

“Brady Daniels,” Grayson called back. He strode toward the men. “He must still be out on the island somewhere. Now, which one of you gentlemen is going to tell me what precisely happened?”

Something did, Lyra thought. Something happened. The Grandest Game was not a game that had been designed to go out with a whimper. This wasn’t just about Savannah and Eve and their agenda, whatever it was.

Calla lilies on the water. The house always wins.

“You four,” one of the men barked, ignoring Grayson’s question and taking his life into his own hands, “in the chopper!”

“Allow me to rephrase,” Grayson said. “Which one of you would prefer I not devote considerable time and resources going forward to making you regret not answering my question?”

The man on the right broke first. “We were told to secure all of the players and get you back to the yacht. Oren’s orders. The heiress is AWOL.”

A change came over Grayson’s body, and Lyra felt a shiver crawl down her own spine.

“What do you mean,” Grayson said, grabbing the man by the front of his shirt, “the heiress is AWOL?”

Chapter 84

GRAYSON

Avery. Completely off the grid. No sign of foul play—but missing. That was all Grayson had been able to extract from Oren’s men. Now those men were searching the island for Brady Daniels, and Grayson and the rest of the players were en route to the yacht.

Grayson zeroed in on the helicopter pilot—also one of Oren’s—and attempted to extract more information, but the pilot didn’t know more.

Because, Grayson thought, Oren’s men don’t know about Alice.

Grayson wanted to believe that he was getting ahead of himself, that Avery’s sudden disappearance might have nothing to do with Alice, but then Grayson thought about Prague—ash on Jameson’s skin, cuts on his neck.

Threats were issued.

Grayson didn’t even wait for the helicopter to touch down on the yacht before he leapt out of it. Two seconds later, Lyra landed a foot behind him, the result of her own leap from the chopper. It took everything Grayson had not to shut down and shut her out, but he knew from experience that he wouldn’t do anyone any good like that—that he wouldn’t do Avery any good like that.