Page 98 of The Grandest Game
“The way we earn our hint,” Brady said.
“A puzzle box.” Gigi forced herself to stop thinking about anything but the game because she realized that if she could concentrate, she might actually be able to do this—win their hint, get them out of here, ensure they all made it to the next stage of the game.
She’d come clean. She’d tell Avery or maybe Xander everything. But for now, Code Name Mimosas could wait. What was one more SECRET—to her?
“If you’ll recall,” Gigi told her teammates and the stranger who was probably listening to all three of them, “puzzle boxes are a specialty of mine.”
Chapter 71
ROHAN
Sundering the fan—thoroughlyand repeatedly, first in the dark, then in light—yielded nothing.
“We’re going to need that fan for something,” Savannah said, “and now it’s in tatters.”
Rohan gave a little shrug. “Improvisation is a skill. When the moment comes, we’ll improvise. Until then…” Rohan eyed the tatters. “I’ve always had a certain fascination for broken things.”
“Because you like to fix them?” Savannah’s tone was scathing.
“Because I like to scavenge them for parts.” Rohan looked up at her. “I don’t believe in fixing things or people unless I need them whole.”
“I would not advise trying to fix me,” Savannah told him.
“I am under no misapprehension that you need fixing.” Channeling his inner pickpocket, Rohan relieved her of the glitter vial.
“What are you doing?” Savannah snapped, once she’d realized what he’d done.
Rohan uncorked the vial. “Dumping out the glitter.” He upended the contents onto his palm.
“Careful,” Savannah said in that mud-on-your-shoes, blood-on-your-knuckles kind of tone. “Glitter sticks to everything.”
Sticks, Rohan thought.Glittersticksto everything.“Savvy,” he said. “The lint roller.”
Savannah’s pupils expanded, inky black against the pale, silvery blue of her irises.
“Unroll the sheets,” Rohan told her.
There was always a moment in every game when Rohan saw exactly how that game was going to play out—how it was going to end.
He and Savannah Grayson were going to get out of here. They would make it to the dock well in advance of dawn. They would decimate the competition in the next phase of the game.
He would use her. She would use him.
And one of us is going to win it all.
Savannah tore sheet after sheet off the lint roller, so fast and fierce that Rohan could practically taste the adrenaline pumping through her veins.
Savannah was made for moments like this one. As was he.
“There’s not enough glitter to cover all of the sheets,” Rohan observed.
Savannah ran her hands over them, her fingers long and dexterous. “This one,” she said, something almost brutal in her tone. “The adhesive is uneven. Parts are sticky. Parts aren’t.”
Rohan didn’t question that—or her. He crouched and spread the glitter across the sheet. When he was finished, Savannah flipped the sheet over, dumping the excess glitter.
Rohan tried to make sense of what was left behind, but if there was a message, it was muddied.
“Glitter sticks to everything.” Savannah’s eyes narrowed. “The fan.”
