Page 85 of The Grandest Game

“Rope,” Brady tried.

“Rope,” Gigi repeated, opening her eyes to find his on her. “That leaves five letters.”L,C,I,B,M. “Climb,” she said.

Knox beat Brady to putting the phrase together.“Climb the rope.”

The instant the words were spoken out loud, a stained-glass panel on the ceiling swung down like a trapdoor, creating an opening overhead.

And down fell a rope.

Chapter 62

ROHAN

Rohan walked over to the panel on the wall and depressed the hint button, ensuring the game makers would hear him. “Our hint,” he demanded. As far as Rohan was concerned, they’d earned it.Three truths. The brush. The knife. Savannah’s hair. The glass rose.

“You know the card that says, ‘this is not your clue’?” Avery’s voice was back. “Take any of theothercards in the game deck for A Needle In A Haystack and hold it up to a torch.”

The speakers went silent.

Savannah grabbed a blank card from the “haystack.” Rohan grabbed another. They split, going to different torches, and Rohan wondered if Savannahneededto put space between them.

I don’t get to make you feel like that? Like what, precisely, love?There were perfectly strategic reasons to want an answer to that question.

With the heat from the torch, invisible ink became visible on Rohan’s card:Say cheese.

“A camera?” Savannah said, a sure indication that her card had borne the same message. “Or a mouse?”

Rohan tried a different tactic. “Cheese,” he said.

There was a beeping sound, as the audio passcode registered, then one of the triangular room’s walls began to rotate backward. It turned a full ninety degrees before clicking into place, part of a new wall in a much larger room.

More shelves.Rohan took in the room’s expansion.More games.Fifteen feet from the poker table, there was a second recessed area cut into the floor, host to a Ping-Pong table. Rohan strode toward it and hopped down to examine the table, but in the depths of his mind, a different puzzle beckoned.

What besides money does a person get from winning the Grandest Game?Rohan ran a hand over the Ping-Pong table, searching every square inch of its surface.Notoriety?

At this rate, Savannah was going to need her own room in the labyrinth.

Careful, Rohan.He could stillfeelthe moment the knife had cut through her hair, but there was no room in his plan—in any of his plans—for that kind of fascination. Nothing mattered more than winning.

He leapt out of the recessed area to examine the back wall, the only one in the room that wasn’t covered in shelves. It was covered in Ping-Pong balls instead. Hundreds of them.

Rohan waved a hand over the wall, skimming the surface of ball after ball. “Savannah,” he called. “Some of them rotate.”

“Is there anything written on the balls that turn?” Savannah asked, seemingly all business as she made her way toward him and joined his search.

“Not that I can see,” Rohan said.But then, we couldn’t see anything written on the cards, either.

“Invisible ink again?” Savannah as good as read his mind. “I found one that rotates.”

They continued on, rotating the loose balls until they clicked into place. Rohan half expected turning the last ball to triggersomething—but no such luck.

“That leaves searching the games on the new shelves.” Savannah gave every appearance of having shaken off the effects of Truth or Dare, every appearance ofcontrol. “I’ll take this wall. You take—” She cut herself off and froze mid-stride.“Rohan.”

The way she said his name killed him.

Remember who’s playing who here, he cautioned himself.

“What is it?” Rohan said. As he made his way to her, he saw what Savannah saw: The shelves on the wall to the left of the Ping-Pong balls contained nothing but chess sets.