Glorious Rivals (The Grandest Game, #2) (59)

“Boatward, ho!” Gigi declared. She took to the beaten path. Eventually, it did curve back toward the water—and a small dock, which contained exactly one boat that looked like it had been built in the seventies.

That tracks. “Jackson?” she called. She searched the boat—first above, then down below, and… nothing. No Jackson.

Gigi let out a long, slow breath. “How hard could it possibly be,” she said out loud, “for a person with an extremely eclectic skillset to hot-wire a boat?”

With a silent promise to send Jackson apology Twinkies after the fact, Gigi turned and bolted up the steps out of the cabin—and directly into a human chest. A male one. Black T-shirt, hard muscles.

With a passing prayer to the Patron Saint of Chaotic Girls, Gigi calculated the best angle at which to drive her knee into a certain someone’s tender bits, should the need arise.

She lifted her chin and stalled for time. “I escaped.”

Slate’s lips twitched slightly. “I noticed.”

“Out of my way, Eyebrow Scar. I’m going to my sister, and you can’t stop me. Observe the threatening look on my face as I say: I’d really hate to have to hurt you.”

Slate shrugged. “You can hurt me if you want.”

Gigi narrowed her eyes. She made a fist and drew back her arm—and then she kneed him in the crotch. With gusto. Misdirection for the win!

Gigi made it about four feet past him before Slate was suddenly in front of her again. Apparently, testicular damage had done nothing to his speed.

“Come on, sunshine.”

Gigi liked to think the growl in his voice was just a little bit higher pitched than usual. “It’s nothing personal,” she told him. “I have a sister to save, and you have some private parts to ice. We can both win here!”

Slate was not amused. “Do you even know how to drive a fishing boat? Or a boat this old, period?”

Gigi folded her arms over her chest. “I can learn. The ocean is a great place for learning.”

“You are a hazard to yourself.”

“Thank you.” Gigi tried to dart around him and ended up running smack into his chest again.

Slate caught her shoulders and righted her. “Wasn’t a compliment.”

“Let me go or I’ll scream,” Gigi replied. “And I have to warn you, Slate: My bellowing skills are second to none.”

“Mattias.” Beneath the blond hair hanging down over his face, the expression in his eyes shifted slightly. “My first name. It’s Mattias.”

Gigi didn’t want to remember that when he’d given her the name Slate, he’d said it was both true and false. She also didn’t want to ask: “Slate is your last name?”

“Slater, actually.”

Mattias Slater. There was something about this moment—the sunrise, an ocean mist thick enough to gather on their skin, his hands on her shoulders, the fact that he’d just given her his name—that threatened Gigi’s resolve.

“Mattias,” she said quietly. And then she opened her mouth and screamed. Wildly. Loudly. Directly in his fuzzy face.

Wait. Fuzzy? Mattias Slater’s blurry hands fell from Gigi’s shoulders. Time slowed. Gigi’s head pounded, and the next thing she knew, she couldn’t feel her face. She went down with a thud.

Slate fell to his knees beside her.

Prone on the wood floor of the boat, Gigi belatedly realized: the mist. Her vision began to go black around the edges, and the last thing Gigi saw before the world gave way to total darkness—seriously? again?—was a pair of leather boots stepping onto Jackson’s boat.

They were red.





Chapter 50





LYRA


Sunrise on the Pacific was a sight to behold. With Grayson beside her, Lyra stood at the front of the yacht, feeling like the sky had been split open. She looked down at the diamond-studded mask in her hands—at the words engraved in tiny letters on the back.

Time Signatures

Another puzzle, solved. Lyra wondered how many of the other players, besides her and Grayson, had looked at the back of their masks, and then she wondered what, if anything, else their competitors had found on the yacht. We were told there were hints to puzzles, plural. Lyra’s mind went first to Brady and whatever puzzle he was working, and then to Savannah and Rohan.

Rohan. The things he’d said ate at Lyra. She knew that he’d meant for them to, that Rohan had meant for the assertion that Jameson Hawthorne had placed a target on her back to cause problems—for her, for Grayson, for the way they’d been playing the Grandest Game. Together.

But that didn’t mean that it wasn’t true.

“What is it?” Grayson asked beside her.

Lyra ran a finger over the edge of her mask. It had been easier to hide her emotions from him when she was wearing it. But at this point, wasn’t she done hiding? She’d bet on him, on this thing between them, the moment she’d let go, the moment she’d confided in him about Eve.

You either trusted someone or you didn’t.

“Rohan told me that Jameson asked him to find a reason the game makers could use to kick me out of the game.” Lyra looked from the broken-open sky to Grayson. “Would Jameson do that? Did he?”

“In all likelihood?” Grayson’s eyes darkened slightly. “Yes.” The muscles in his jaw tightened, and the effect was visible all through his face, his cheekbones becoming that much sharper, his brow just a shade more pronounced. “But I assure you, that won’t be an issue moving forward.”