Glorious Rivals (The Grandest Game, #2) (51)

“Except this night isn’t endless,” Savannah countered. “We only have, what, four or five hours until dawn?”

With each passing minute, the two of them drew closer to the end of the game, to the moment when one person winning would require the utter obliteration of the other.

“We’re losing.” Savannah’s tone made it clear that she could not and would not tolerate that.

“Brady is at least one puzzle ahead of us,” Rohan agreed. “Perhaps two. For all we know, the hints we’ve uncovered are for his puzzle, not ours.”

Savannah looked at her glass. “How did he pull ahead of us to begin with?”

That question might have been rhetorical, but Rohan recognized the benefit of considering every possible answer to even the most rhetorical of questions. “Based on his performance in last year’s Grandest Game,” he noted, “Brady Daniels particularly excels at puzzles involving symbology, mythology, and music.”

Savannah glanced down at the writing on her arm. Rohan raised his hand to just almost touch her skin. Taking in the code, he moved his fingers slowly down her arm, never touching her or the ink, but letting her feel the ghost of his touch.

“May I?” Rohan asked.

“If you must,” Savannah said.

Oh, I must, Savvy. Rohan started low on Savannah’s arm this time and worked his way up, letter by letter. His touch light, Rohan weaved his way in and out of the writing, taking in each piece of the puzzle—each music note, beginning with the waltz and ending with “Clair de lune.”

Halfway through, Savannah’s breath hitched. Like that, do you, love?

Three-quarters of the way through, Rohan let himself imagine Savannah Grayson slipping off that dress and slipping fully into the hot tub.

As he saw his task through to the end, he leaned toward her, tilted his head down, and spoke directly into her ear. “D, A, G, A,” he murmured. One section of “Clair de lune.” “E, E, F.” Another.

“Adage.” Savannah’s voice wasn’t nearly as high or clear as her normal speaking tone. “Or aged. Or fade.”

Rohan let his touch linger on the final note. “There’s too many notes across the three songs for this puzzle to be as simple as spelling a word.”

Savannah reached up to run her own hand over letter after letter, her gaze on Rohan. “Our next move seems clear then, does it not?”

She smelled faintly of jasmine and vanilla. “Why don’t you clarify that move for me, love?” He added the endearment just to see her eyes flash.

“It’s clear,” Savannah said tartly, “that Brady Daniels has already solved this puzzle. Equally clear is the fact that he is without any allies in this game. And we have leverage on him.”

Rohan thought about the invisible messages on the backs of those photographs of Calla Thorp. “Proof of communication with his sponsor. We could take him out of the game.”

“Or,” Savannah murmured, “we could use him.”

He brought his fingers to Savannah’s collarbone, lightly tracing it from one shoulder to the other. “What precisely are you suggesting, Savvy?”

Savannah gripped his jaw and angled his head back, exposing his neck. “I’m suggesting,” she said, bringing her mouth down to speak directly into his ear, “that I convince Brady Daniels that my loyalties are… fungible.”

Her lips brushed over an artery in his neck, and Rohan wondered if she could see his pulse, feel it.

“Your loyalties are fungible,” he pointed out. “But if you can get something useful out of Brady Daniels before we have him disqualified, if you can string him along and keep getting things out of him…” There wasn’t all that much of her hair left to grab, but Rohan made do, angling her head back. “So be it.”





Chapter 43





GIGI


It had taken some doing, but eventually, Gigi’s gruff rescuer had broken and given her his name. Now Gigi’s new buddy Jackson was asleep in a chair at his beat-up kitchen-table-for-one, his shotgun beside him, his chair turned to face the metal door to his tiny house—which, Gigi had to admit, a less optimistic person might have referred to as a shack.

A less optimistic person might also have been concerned with the fact that said shack was in clear view of the lighthouse, but Gigi excelled at looking on the bright side.

Such as: Jackson had given her the bed—or technically, the mattress. Such chivalry! Such beard!

And to be honest, Cranky Men Who Hate Everyone were kind of Gigi’s specialty. Besides, it was the middle of the night. Even if she did manage to make it into town somehow, everything would be closed. And even if she managed to somehow get ahold of a phone, Gigi only had three telephone numbers memorized: Grayson’s, her mother’s, and Savannah’s. Two of the three of them were in the game without their phones, and the third was in Arizona, which meant that Gigi’s only real option in town would have been to go to the police, and that wouldn’t get her to Hawthorne Island.

It wouldn’t get her to Savannah.

So waiting until morning it was. Unfortunately, all Gigi could do was lie there and think about how much Savannah was probably hurting and the lengths her sister would almost certainly go to in order to pretend she wasn’t.