Their Vicious Games(61)

“It’s… it’s just, he really wants you to win,” Esme says, answering my silent question. “He’s not even trying to hide it anymore. And neither are you.”

“What’s the point of hiding?” I ask.

“You’re right. There is none. Pierce wants you to win. So does Leighton. Probably Graham, too, but who knows what he wants underneath his constant need for vodka. All it does is make everyone want to take you down even more than I do, though. Just because you have the tools doesn’t mean you have the stomach. I do. I have to.”

“He knows you’ve fucked me over. He won’t pick you,” I warn. “If Penthesilea can’t win, you certainly can’t.”

Esme snorts. “Pierce, in the grand scheme of things, can be convinced about what he wants, because he’s just like the rest of them—bored,” Esme drawls. She shrugs and shakes her head. “But I can’t afford to be bored. Don’t pretend you’re special, Adina Walker. You’re not the only one here for the wrong reasons.”

When we turn to look forward again, we stay there, shoulder to shoulder, eyes trained on our next obstacle—the maze. We do not look away.





CHAPTER 21





I PREFER TO TRAIN AT DAWN.

The other girls are still sleeping at that time, even Saint, who burrows deeper into slumber when I rise in the early hours of the morning. I dress slowly, ignoring my Raid fatigues in favor of leggings and a T-shirt. Like I’m at Edgewater’s gym again, pretending to work out with Toni, but really taking photos of her lounging across various gym equipment for her Instagram.

Wandering the halls of the Remington Estate, I feel lonelier than ever, despite the ghosts haunting every corridor.

All the weapons are locked up in the hunting parlor, each with a little name tag, meant to be checked out like they’re library books. It’s to prevent what had happened during the Ride, when Jacqueline got access to a gun she wasn’t supposed to have. It feels like a moot point right before we are all meant to murder one another.

When I arrive, there is only one guard. The housekeeper.

“Can I get the pistol? It’s under my name,” I ask.

The housekeeper—a brown lady with gorgeous dark eyes and lashes that I envy—looks up. She’s younger than most of the other staff members I’ve seen around, dressed in bland khakis, armed with a massive set of keys around her wrist and a bottle of ammonia. My eyes catch on the key ring.

She probably has the key to every door in this house. Including the front.

“Ah,” the housekeeper says, before she purses her lips and shakes her head, as if to say, Not my business. I get it, lady. “Your name, miss?”

She sounds impatient. I’d be impatient if I were her too. There’s a lot of house, and I haven’t seen any other housekeeper around except for her. I don’t count the chef, who only comes to prep and cook our food before she sees herself out.

“Adina Walker,” I say. This woman is more like me than I’m like anyone else in this competition. But she doesn’t look at me that way. She looks at me like I am part of the other, and given what I’ve just requested, how can I think she’s wrong? It’s like I can’t breathe, each inhale coming sharp and jagged enough that it hurts.

“All right. Gimme a minute,” she says.

The woman putters toward the lockboxes set in the cradle beneath the enormous coffee table. She unlocks the box with my name on it, printed in perfect Arial, and then she pulls the case out, passing it over.

“Thank you, ma’am,” I say sincerely. The woman blinks her surprise, and I leave the hunting room and head out one of the side doors, onto the grounds. I avoid the path down to the stables, moving toward the range, set up right by the maze. Leighton has arranged this space for everyone with long-range weapons, from throwing knives to the magazine of bullets that I carry with me. It’s simpler than the kind that you’d see in one of those procedural shows, just a few targets pinned to bales of hay, with a table to lay out our wares.

The maze is vast, stretching far on either side of me. The foliage is so bright, it looks fake, and I can practically smell the chlorophyll. Slowly, I set the gun case onto the table and step around, squinting harder, trying to make sense of it, trying to formulate a plan. And then, before I can take another step forward, someone walks across the yawning entrance, patrolling from the inside, a figure in black, a gun at his hip. In the weak morning light, his hair looks copper.

I turn on my heel swiftly. Of course they wouldn’t leave it unattended.

I unpack the gun safely. The first thing that I was taught yesterday was gun safety. The irony of being taught how to carefully handle, put together, and take apart a gun did not escape me.

“Fancy seeing you out here, this early in the morning.”

I can’t quite fight the smile that threatens to tear itself across my mouth at the sound of his voice. Drumming my knuckles against the table, I take a deep breath.

“Well, I’m trying not to die, Graham. As you instructed.”

He slides into my range of vision, leaning back against the table. “Sweetheart, we’ll all die one day.”

Sweetheart. My stomach twists. I busy myself with the gun, sliding the jigsaw puzzle together, each individual bullet pressed into its proper place.