Page 30 of The Grandest Game

Neither the gown nor the chain seemed to slow her down. They should have. Theydamn wellshould have, especially on the cliff.You’re fast, love. I’ll give you that.

But Rohan was faster. He made it to the house first, to the Great Room first, to thehourglassfirst. Their time was almost up. There was little enough sand left in the top half of the hourglass that Rohan could clearly see the object that resided inside, the one that had been masked by all that black sand before.

A metal disk two-thirds the size of his palm.

Rohan didn’t bother picking up the hourglass or trying to smash it. Savannah was incoming, so he held the hourglass with one hand and smashed his other fist straight through the glass, locking his fingers around the disk.

I win.

“You’re bleeding.” Savannah said those words the way another person might sayyou have mud on your shoes.

Oh, he really did like her. Rohan pulled a shard of glass from his knuckles. “Price of victory.”

Savannah took a step toward him, her eyes on the disk.Woe be,her expression seemed to say,to the person who stands in the way of Savannah Grayson.

Rohan made the disk disappear in a flash, and then he gave himself a moment to read her.The rise and fall of her chest. The slightest clench of her throat. Fury in her silvery gray eyes.

Something clicked into place for Rohan then, something that had as much to do with the punishing pace she’d managed as it did the myriad of ways her body was giving her away now.

“You want this,” Rohan murmured.

“Do you make a habit of telling women what they want?”

“The game,” Rohan clarified. “You want to win. Badly.”

Savannah straightened, standing taller than her nearly six feet. “I do not do anything badly, and I am not in the habit ofwantingthings. I set goals. I achieve them.”End of story.

Rohan took a handkerchief out of the pocket of his tuxedo, wiped the blood off his knuckles, and captured her gaze with his own. “Fair warning, love: I want it more.”

Chapter 24

ROHAN

One by one, the remaining players returned to the Great Room. Rohan was guessing they’d been summoned. Even without the hourglass to mark the passing of the final minutes, it was clear:It’s time.

Grayson Hawthorne stepped into the room unaccompanied.No Avery Grambs. No Jameson, Nash, or Xander.

A sound, high and clear, broke through the air.A chime.Then another—from the foyer. Rohan moved liquidly in that direction. The second he stepped out of the Great Room, there was a cacophony of notes, coming from all around him. Chimes—and bells.

Rohan tracked each individual sound back to the location from which it had originated.The dining room. The study. That one—it came from back in the Great Room.Rohan wasn’t the only player in the foyer now, not by a long shot.

He tuned out the chimes and listened only for the bells.Never send to know for whom the bell tolls…He turned sharply toward the dining room.There.

A tall blond blur tried to cut him off, but Rohan didn’t let her. He squeezed through the door to the dining room half a second before Savannah crossed the threshold.

An instant later, the door slammed shut behind them.

Savannah tried the knob. It didn’t turn. Through the thick, wooden door, Rohan heard a flurry of movement in the foyer, and then another slam. And another.Three total—for three doors.

Dining room. Study. Great Room.

“Locked in.” Rohan leaned back against the wall next to the door. “That’s one way to start a game.”

A screen descended from the ceiling. An image filled the screen:Avery Grambs. Three Hawthornes.Rohan wondered if the four of them had made use of strategically placed cameras and remote triggers for the doors, or if they’d used motion sensors to track the locations of the players and the number of people in each room.

Had this game been one of Rohan’s design, he would have opted for cameras.

“Good evening, players.” Xander Hawthorne appeared to be channeling his inner James Bond, accent and all. “And behold:the Grandest Escape Room. Your mission: Get out of the house before sunrise.”