CHAPTER 52 GIGI

Chapter 52

GIGI

G igi stepped from the metal chamber onto a narrow wooden staircase that stretched up into darkness. The second she shifted her weight onto the first step, it lit up, casting a faint glow that did nothing to illuminate what awaited them at the top of the stairs. Gigi half expected Knox to push past her, but he didn't, so Gigi led the way, step after step, light after light, until she made it to the top of the stairs and a plain wooden door adorned only by four words scratched roughly into the wood.

HERE THERE BE DRAGONS.

Gigi trailed her fingers along the words, and her thoughts went to the potential dragon on the island—the person who'd used that wetsuit, the one who'd brought a knife and a listening device into the game.

The person who might be listening to us right now. Gigi sectioned that thought off in her mind and reached for the doorknob. It freely turned, and she pushed the door inward and stepped into… a library.

Brady and Knox stepped through the door to join her, as Gigi turned to take in the entire circular room. Brady walked to stand in front of one shelf in particular. "The spiral staircase let out here before."

Behind them, the Here There Be Dragons door swung shut. Like clockwork, a curved bookshelf descended from the ceiling, blocking off the door. The three of them were now completely encircled by fifteen-foot-tall shelves. Gigi craned her neck toward the ceiling. In the dead of night, the stained glass overhead shouldn't have cast any hint of color onto the floor, but a veritable rainbow of lights danced along the wood floorboards.

There must be a light source behind the glass. Gigi stepped through the colored lights, examining the pattern. Beside her, Knox's assessing gaze roved over the shelves and the books.

"Escape room logic?" Brady proposed, setting down the sword and crossing back to examine the section of the shelving that had just descended. "In the absence of instructions, you find your own clues."

"Search the shelves," Knox summarized.

Gigi reached for a book.

"The shelves , Happy." Knox's eyebrows were emphatic on that point. "Not the books. Those are a time suck waiting to happen. Search for switches or buttons built into the shelves, anything that might be a hidden trigger."

" Happy ?" Gigi repeated. She reached over to pat Knox's shoulder. "I call that nickname progress."

"Shut up," Knox grunted. Without looking at her, he stalked toward the shelves on the far side of the room.

Brady's expression was incredulous.

"It's a gift," Gigi said.

Brady lowered his voice. "I told you—"

That Knox can be dangerous. That the dark place is always waiting for him. That he doesn't think about morality the way you and I do.

"I know what you told me," Gigi said helpfully. "I ignored it."

She ran her hands over the wood of the closest shelf, pushing her fingers into the lines of the molding, exploring the underside of each board, and then she started lifting books up to check underneath them.

After a moment, Brady began searching the next shelf over. The longer they worked, side by side, the more Gigi found herself lingering on the memory of the way he'd touched her stomach hours earlier. She thought about the fact that his brain liked A Lot .

She thought about his smile.

And then she thought about Knox's cutting accusation to Brady: It's always Calla with you. Brady had insisted that this time, it wasn't. And when Knox had seen the smile he'd given her, when he'd asked what the hell Brady was doing, Brady's reply had been being human .

Hyperaware of every inch of her own skin, Gigi allowed herself to disregard Knox's order to search only the shelves. She skimmed the spines of row after row of books, then snuck a look at Brady. He'd climbed up and was balanced on the edge of a shelf, five or six feet up, his arms stretched overhead, his body—arms, legs, core—making an X.

"You are incredibly well-balanced," Gigi blurted out.

"I get that a lot," Brady said solemnly. It took Gigi a second to figure out he was joking.

"Really," Brady murmured, "I've just spent a lot of time in the stacks at the university library."

"Climbing the shelves?" Gigi said, grinning. "Do they teach that in cultural anthropology PhD programs?"

"Possibly not." Amusement played around the edges of Brady's very scholarly lips.

Gigi couldn't help studying him, lips and all. Grad school isn't where you learned balance.

"Training," she said, keeping her voice too quiet for Knox to overhear. "All kinds. That was what you said earlier, when we were talking about Knox's A-plus in parkour—but it wasn't just Knox, was it?" Gigi thought about the way that Brady had held his own in that fight. "Training… with Severin?" That was a leap, but Gigi excelled at leaping first and looking later. For good measure, she leapt again. "And Calla."

In the worn photograph that Brady had kept in his pocket, the girl with the mismatched eyes had been holding a longbow.

Brady blinked and looked at Gigi like she'd slowly started turning into a moose, which was actually a pretty common response to Gigi leaping first and looking later.

"Brady?" Gigi wondered if she'd pushed too hard.

"You know that kid that Knox beat up on my behalf?" Brady hopped down from the shelf. "He had brothers. One day, all four of them jumped Knox and me in the woods."

"You were six ." Gigi was horrified. Her voice was still hushed, and so was his.

"Six and a half by that time," Brady replied. "Knox was ten. And Severin was sixty-two—former black ops, very into survival. He lived off the grid out in the bayou. I never knew why he was in the woods that day, but he was." Brady paused. "Severin saw what was happening, and he put a stop to it. And then he spent the next decade teaching Knox and me how to do the same. Put a stop to things—and people—that needed stopping. Survive ."

"And Calla?" Gigi said.

"Calla…" Brady lingered on the name. "She was Severin's great-niece. His family disowned him decades ago, but Calla tracked Severin down when she was twelve. After that, she was always sneaking out to the bayou to train with Knox and me." Brady's Adam's apple moved up, then down. "No one could shoot a longbow like Calla."

Gigi thought again about that photograph. She placed a light, hesitant hand on Brady's shoulder. "What happened to her?"

Brady reached up and squeezed her hand. Gigi squeezed back.

"She was abducted." Brady's voice was thick. "Someone took her. I was fifteen. Calla was seventeen. Knox had just turned nineteen. The two of them had been together almost a year at that point." Brady took a moment and just breathed. "Calla's family found out about their relationship, about Severin, what we were doing out in the bayou, all of it." Brady let go of Gigi's hand. "And we never saw her again."

"I'm so sorry," Gigi said.

Brady shook his head, tension clear in the lines of his jaw. "Another two weeks, and Calla would have turned eighteen. She could have left the family fold, told them all to go to hell, but the Thorps weren't about to let that happen. They played along with the police investigation, but Orion Thorp made it perfectly clear to me—they had her."

"Orion Thorp?" Dread hit Gigi like a razor-sharp icicle slicing through the pit of her stomach. "Knox's sponsor?"

Brady didn't answer that question. "Calla's name," he said, his throat tensing against the words, "is Calla Thorp. Orion is her father." Jerking his gaze away from Gigi's, Brady resumed his search of the shelves, going low.

But he didn't stop talking.

"Last year, Knox showed up at my apartment out of the blue. It had been years since we'd spent any real time together. Since… Calla. But Knox was set on playing the Grandest Game, and he wanted a partner. I guess some part of me wanted us back, so…"

Brady had just said us the way Knox had said we .

"Last year's game was a race," Brady continued, "clue to clue to clue. In the beginning, those clues were virtual, but eventually, they crossed over to the real world, and the race became a physical race—a global one. The game makers provided transportation, but only for the first few players or teams to reach a given clue. Knox and I were in the lead, but on the second-to-last clue, we fell behind and missed our chance at a ride. We would have been out of the competition." Brady paused. "That was when Knox was approached by Calla's father."

"Orion Thorp," Gigi said. Knox's sponsor.

"Knox knows what Calla's family is like. Even before she disappeared, Calla hated it there. Knox knows as well as I do: If Calla is still alive, they have her, and if she's not, they're the reason why." Brady's breath was audibly heavy. "And knowing that, Knox sold me out to Orion Thorp for a ride on a private jet." The muscles in Brady's jaw tensed. "He came in second in the game."

"Here." Knox's voice sliced through the air.

"Sounds like he found something." Brady's voice was still low. "You go. I'll be there in a minute."

"Are you—" Gigi started to say.

"I'm sure," Brady said.

As Gigi crossed the room, she thought about Knox's first answer when she'd asked what made him happy: money . He'd never tried to hide what he was.

"Here," Knox said again, his tone more impatient this time. He gestured to a wooden panel on the shelf he'd bared. Built into that panel was an ornate magnifying glass. The handle was jeweled with elaborate detailing in silver and gold. A row of tiny diamonds marked the point where the handle met the frame.

As Gigi watched, Knox pulled the magnifying glass from the wood, like the sword from the stone. There was a click, and the floorboards in the center of the room began to move. An entire section of the floor was halved, and from the depths below, something rose up—a new section of floor that clicked into place, replacing the old.

Sitting on top of that new flooring was a dollhouse.

And all Gigi could think was that Knox had never denied that Orion Thorp was still his sponsor.