Page 18 of The Grandest Game

“Savannah Grayson,” Rohan said, “meet Lyra Kane.”

Grayson. They have to be related.Lyra didn’t let herself dwell on that.

“What, precisely, upset you?” Savannah aimed that question squarely at Lyra. “Did you find something?” Savannah took a single step forward. “A hint?”

She evenwalkedlike him. Lyra had no intention whatsoever of answering Savannah’s question. And yet… “Notes. With my father’sname on them.”His names.“He’s dead.” Lyra’s voice sounded flat even to her own ears. “What the hell kind of hint is that?”

“I suppose it depends.” Savannah clearly didn’t consider Lyra’s question to be rhetorical. “Who was your father, and how did he die?”

Right for the jugular, Lyra thought.

“Not a hint,” Rohan said airily.

“I don’t want to talk about my father,” Lyra told Savannah.

“I sympathize.” Savannah didn’t sound all that sympathetic.

“Not a hint,” Rohan coughed.

“Ignore him,” Savannah advised. “It’s good for the soul.”

“Easier said than done, love,” Rohan replied. “And…” He smirked. “Not a hint.”

“A dead man’s name didn’t just write itself.” Lyra focused all her frustration on Rohan. “The notesburst into flame. You really expect me to believe this isn’t the game makers’ idea of being clever? That it’s not some twisted part of the game?”

“I never said it wasn’t a part of the game,” Rohan replied. “Now did I?”

Savannah swiveled her gaze toward him. “You said it wasn’t a hint.”

“I also said that themakersof this game aren’t cruel. I don’t believe I made any such assessment of the other players—though I would wager, Lyra, that whoever smuggled in the supplies to set up this little display was hoping you would come across it a bit closer to sunset.”

Sunset.Lyra saw the meaning there.The curfew.“Distraction,” Lyra said.Sabotage.Rohan was suggesting that she’d been targeted by another player.

A player who somehow knew her father’s name.His names, plural.

“And just like that,” Rohan said, his fathomless brown eyes angling back toward Savannah’s once more, “the gloves come off.”

Chapter 14

GIGI

With maybe twenty-five minutes left until sundown, Gigi looped around the eastern shore of Hawthorne Island, where there were no cliffs, no trees, just island and ocean and thick, thorn-ridden brush separating the two. She jogged—by a generous definition of the wordjog—along the interior side of the brush, her brain sorting through everything that had happened in the past few hours:Manga. Ra. Odette with her opera glasses. Brady and another player… and a dead girl.

That was assuming, of course, that Odette hadn’t been lying. Savannah’s warning still rung in Gigi’s mind:It would be a mistake to trust anyone in this game.

Gigi slowed—then backtracked, her eyes on the ground. There was something beneath the brush.A glint of metal.Gigi knelt for a better look. “A buckle?”

Reaching for it, she pulled on what looked to be some kind ofstrap, but whatever she’d found, it was really lodged back there under the brush. Gigi pulled harder. When that didn’t work, she pushed her hands elbow-deep into the brambles, thorns catching at the map on her skin. Gigi ignored the pain, her mind going to Odette’s opera glasses once more.

This could be it. My chance at an Object with a capital O.Finally, Gigi’s strength and persistence (but mostly persistence) prevailed, as a large black bag came loose from the brush. She unzipped it. Inside, the first thing she saw was more metal.

“An oxygen tank?” And beneath it, something dark.And damp.“A wetsuit,” Gigi breathed. She could picture one of the Hawthorne brothers donning it to hide a key part of the game to come somewhere beneath the ocean’s surface, then stashing the diving supplies for one lucky player to find.

Me, Gigi thought fiercely. She pushed the wetsuit to the side, digging beneath it to reveal two more objects.

A necklace, Gigi marveled.And a knife.

She picked the necklace up first. A delicate gold chain held a stone the exact deep blue-green as the ocean. The pendant was the size of a quarter, thin and curved. Gold wiring wrapped the jewel, attaching it to the chain and visually bisecting it down the middle.