Page 60 of The Grandest Game
What did it mean if a horse was named Lily or Rose?
“They’re girls’ names.” Gigi’s grip on the jewel tightened, as her lips worked their way into a blinding grin. A horse named Lily or Rose wasfemale. “And a female horse…” Gigi could feel it: This wassomething. “A female horse is called amare.”
What if that was all those two lines meant?In front of a mare.Super-charged by the possibility, Gigi exuberantly hopped off the sink. A more coordinated or less on-the-verge-of-somethingperson would have stuck the landing.
Gigi didn’t.
She toppled over, and somehow, in the process of trying to catchherself, she managed to forget to let go of the pendant. She felt the delicate chain break. Her knee-jerk reaction was to open her hand.
The jewel slipped from her fingers, fell to the floor, and shattered.
No. Not shattered, Gigi told herself.Broke.There were only three pieces. She scrambled to collect them, and it was only after she’d picked up the second piece that she realized: The jewel hadn’tbroken, either. It hadseparated, cleanly, along the lines of the gold wiring.
Like the jeweled pendant had been cut in half before. Like the wiring had been holding it together.
Half?Gigi stared at the two pieces of the jewel in her hands—then looked to the third piece of debris on the floor, the piece to which the gold wiring was still attached.Not the color of the ocean. Not a jewel.Gigi made her way toward it on all fours. The third piece was tiny—and obviously electronic. A person with a less eclectic or more legal array of hobbies might not have recognized it for what it was, but Gigi did.
A listening device.
She’d beenbugged.
Chapter 46
GIGI
Images flashed rapid-fire through Gigi’s brain.The wetsuit. The oxygen tank. The necklace. The knife.She thought back to her altercation with Knox over the bag—and then to what Brady had said about sponsors.
They hire players, stack the deck where they can, bet on the outcome.
What if the bag Gigi had foundwasn’ta part of the game? Not a sanctioned one, anyway. Knox hadn’t brought it back to the house, where Avery and the Hawthornes might have seen it.
What if that bag and its contents were Knox’s so-called sponsor’s way ofstacking the deck? What if that was what he’d meant when he’d said it washis? What if Knox had known where the bag was stashed the whole time, and it was just his bad luck that she’d happened to stumble upon it?
You cheating cheater who cheats.Gigi stormed back to the chamber to find Brady and Knox avoiding eye contact with each other. For all she knew, they hadn’t said a word while she was gone.
Brady was holding the sword again.
“Family therapy,” Gigi told them. “Or, I guess, found-family therapy. Think about it.”
If either of them heard the deadly tone in her voice, they gave no sign of it.
“In unrelated news: You have a lot of explaining to do, Shady Brows.” Gigi held the listening device up between her middle finger and thumb. “I found this delightful little bug in my necklace—the necklace that was in the bag with the knife and all the rest of it.” She jabbed the Pointy Finger of Accusation at Knox. “The bag thatyoustole and didn’t bring back to this house, because you didn’t want anyone to see it.”
“Because I didn’t want anyone tostealit.” Knox’s correction was only somewhat barbed.
Gigi turned toward Brady. “Tell me more about sponsors. AboutKnox’s sponsor.”
Brady’s reply and his expression were measured. “The Thorp family owns a third of the state of Louisiana—more than that if you count the illegitimate branches of the family.” Brady shifted his steady gaze from Gigi to Knox. “Knox’s sponsor is a man named Orion Thorp.”
“This is asinine.” Knox’s tone wasn’t measured at all. “Neither my villainous sponsor nor I had anything to do with that bag.” He met Brady’s gaze. “Am I telling the truth, Daniels?”
There was a long silence. “He is,” Brady said finally. “Telling the truth.”
Gigi wanted to argue, but she couldn’t. She believed that Brady knew Knox well enough to know if Knox was lying, and she believed Brady when he said that Knox wasn’t.
She couldn’tnotbelieve Brady.
So she changed course. “I know you’re out there.” She spoke directly into the bug. “I know you’re listening.”
