Page 81 of Glorious Rivals
“Skepticism is a double-edged sword,” the woman in red replied, her long cloak billowing around her ankles as she moved to cut Eve free as well.“Anything worth doing requires belief—in oneself at the very least.”
“I believe in myself,” Gigi said.I believe that I was taught to tackle by the great Xander Hawthorne himself and—
“Don’t,” SlateandEve spoke in unison this time.The moment Eve was free, she stood and placed herself in front of Gigi.
“For the record, Ms.Blake,” the woman in red told Eve, “you are the one who made all of this necessary.I prefer to work through more subtle means, but you?Bull in a china shop.You lead with emotion, and you lack control.I need for the Grandest Game to go on.Overt interference with the players puts that at risk.You left me little choice about removing you from the board.”
The Grandest Game.Hearing that out of their shrouded captor’s mouth somehow unlocked a realization in Gigi’s mind, as detail after detail started adding up.“You’re Brady’s sponsor.”
Brady was the one who’d asked Gigi not to tell the game makers about the bug she’d found in phase one.He’d told her that he needed the game to go on.
He’d been playing like Calla’s life depended on it.
And once, back in the game, he’d called GigiJuliet.
The woman in red issued no denials.“I am many things.For now, I am the person who came here to verify that the three of you were suffering no ill effects from being knocked out, and having verified that, I am the person who will be leaving you here in this room, where you will remain safely contained until the end of the game.Believe me when I say that this is in your best interest as well as mine.”
“Bullshit.”
Tell us how you really feel, Slate, Gigi thought.Out loud, she couldn’t help herself.“So what you’re saying is that all you’re doing is keeping us safely out of the way until you’ve gotten what you want out of the Grandest Game?”Gigi shot a look at Slate.“My, my, my, how the tables have turned.”
“You’re still kidnapped,” Slate informed her.“They haven’t completely turned.”
“You’re taped to a chair,” Gigi pointed out.“And I’m not.Everything else is just semantics.”She turned back to their mysterious captor.“But speaking of, why amIkidnapped?Are we just talking wrong place, wrong time here?Unfortunate association with unsavory characters?”
Slate was the one who answered.“You were headed for the island.”
“That,” the woman in red agreed.“And I had a need for bait.”
Bait.That word, said so calmly, sent a chill down Gigi’s back.What kind of bait?
Their captor walked back toward the wall she’d entered through.“Lest you get any grand ideas, this door must be triggered by a remote.No amount of brute force will cause it to open.For his sake, I’d leave the boy bound.You don’t want him loose when my target takes the bait.She does not react well at all to those she finds threatening.”
She?Before Gigi could so much as speak that question aloud, the woman in red was gone.
Chapter 58
LYRA
When Lyra thought about the forest on Hawthorne Island, she thought of soaring evergreen trees, some living, some charred from that long-ago fire, but she couldn’t picture them, and the other trees in the forest, the ones with leaves instead of dark green needles—Lyra didn’t remember much about those at all.Maybe that was why the massive trees on the north edge of the forest, each with dozens of limbs sticking out from thick trunks like bicycle spokes, light shining through their branches, had an almost physical effect on her, as she and Grayson crossed into the woods.
“We could be looking for a particular tree,” Grayson noted.“Something hanging from a branch or carved into bark.”
“Or…” Lyra looked toward the canopy.“Something that can only be seen from a bird’s-eye view?”Echoes.She turned to the nearest tree, fully ready to climb it and glad they’d changed back into their armor.
“Wait.”Grayson looked down at an object he’d just retrievedfrom his jacket pocket.The compass.As Lyra watched, he opened it.“Nonfunctional,” Grayson confirmed.“For now.”
His thumb skimmed every inch of the bronze surface of the compass in a systematic search.And then, he pressed—hard—on its face.There was a click, and the needle began to spin, pointing not back at the house, but farther into the woods.
“That’s not north,” Lyra commented.
“No,” Grayson replied, his gaze flicking back up to hers.“It’s not.”
The arrow on the compass pointed the way—deep into the living forest, skirting the edge of the line that marked where the fire had been stopped.
There.The handholds on the tree were a dead giveaway.They looked like they belonged on a rock-climbing wall.Lyra reached for one and placed her foot on another.Looping around to the other side of the soaring Douglas fir, Grayson did the same.
It was at least twenty feet up to the lowest branch.
