CHAPTER 12 GIGI
GIGI
G igi’s interrogation could have been going better. Her target had the silent, broody thing down. She was having about as much success as she would have cheerfully interrogating a tangerine.
A tangerine with an eyebrow scar, jagged tattoos, and pecs of steel. That last bit was an extrapolation, but Gigi had great faith in her ability to extrapolate about chest muscles. All muscles, really. Fortunately, she also had faith in the power of persistence.
Eventually, Code Name Mimosas would break. They all did, sooner or later.
“Let’s play a game,” Gigi said, like her captor hadn’t been very effectively ignoring her for hours. “It’s called True or False.”
Based on the total lack of light coming from the cracks in the stone wall, Gigi knew that it was dark outside—and had been for a while now.
The only reason she could even still see Mimosas was that when the last of the light from the outside had faded, he’d lit a candle, which was now sitting on the floor in a heavy silver candleholder that looked like it had been plucked straight out of the eighteenth century.
“I don’t play games.”
He responded! Now that Gigi’s target had cracked open the metaphorical window, all she had to do was limbo in, Reverse Heist style.
“Okay,” Gigi chirped. “Then let’s play a game. It’s called Negative or Affirmative.”
“That’s the same game.”
Gigi smiled winningly. “In fairness, I reversed the order. But fine, if you want to be that way, then let’s play a game. It’s called Yeppers or Nope.”
This time, her kidnapper leaned back against the door and said absolutely nothing.
Challenge accepted. “I can do this all day, tangerine. Let’s play a game. It’s called Computer. You’re the computer. The game is in binary. Zero is no. One is yes.”
“Stop.” Well, that tone was ominous! But possibly a good kind of ominous?
Really, Mimosas was probably going to come to regret—if he hadn’t already—assuring Gigi that he wasn’t going to hurt her, because Gigi believed him wholeheartedly.
She figured she had a couple of hours, max, before one Hawthorne or another came riding to her rescue, and she considered it her solemn duty to put that time to good use.
“Let’s play a game. It’s called Stop or Go. You gave me the idea for this one! I’ll say something. If it’s true, you say go , and if it’s not, you say—”
“Stop.”
“Very good!” Gigi grinned. “What’s your name?”
“That’s not a yes or no question.”
Gigi shrugged. “I’m a cheater. I’ve never met a Monopoly bank I didn’t rob. True or false: Your name is… Sebastian? Aaron? Damon?” She paused. “What I’m hearing is that you want me calling you Mimosas, capital M , and/or tangerine, lowercase t , indefinitely.”
“Slate.”
Now, she was getting somewhere! “Your name is Slate?”
“True. And false. And that’s as much of your game as I’m playing.”
Gigi replied like he had just posed a question: “False.”
Slate—like the rock, like rock-hard abs—was not amused. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you that it’s a bad idea to argue with the guy with the knife?”
Gigi’s gaze went to Slate’s hand. Based on what she could see in the candlelight, he was indeed holding a knife—but she was ninety-four percent sure it was sheathed, and if Slate thought he could scare her, he was wrong. Gigi Grayson was made of sterner and far less sensible stuff than that.
“Is that the knife that spent most of last night strapped to my thigh?” Gigi asked. “Because if so, that knife and I are friends. And frankly, Slate, people tell me lots of things are bad ideas. It’s kind of hard to keep track.”
Now that Gigi had gotten an answer out of him, proper interrogation technique said to nudge the conversation toward what she actually wanted to know, in this case: (1) what he and Eve were up to, (2) what role the Grandest Game played in their nefarious plans, and (3) what Slate had meant when he’d very clearly implied that Eve was not the only threat out there.
“True or false,” Gigi said, “Eve has a player in the game.” That was a guess, but it was a logical one.
Gigi had been told that there was a group of wealthy individuals who had made the annual Grandest Game into a game of their own.
Maybe Eve was one of them. Maybe she was in this to prove that she was more formidable than anyone gave her credit for being.
As much as Gigi hated to admit it, she could understand that. “True or false: Eve has a deep-seated psychological need to win the admiration, respect, and/or affection of others.”
No response from Slate.
“True or false,” Gigi continued brightly—and mercilessly , “Eve’s player in the Grandest Game has not been eliminated yet.
If they had been, you wouldn’t have cared that I found the bug.
” Gigi gave into the urge to randomly finger-gun.
“Setting aside my siblings, that leaves Brady, Lyra, and Rohan—and your brood just got significantly broodier when I said Brady’s name. ”
Honestly, Gigi wasn’t sure what to make of that.
“Furthermore…” Sherlock Gigi was on the case. “My well-honed instincts are telling me that Rohan’s shoulders are far too broad for him to be anyone’s lackey—like I’m talking almost supernaturally broad in proportion to his waist.”
“Anyone ever tell you that you’re a bad judge of character?”
“All the time!” Gigi smiled through the sting of Slate’s assessment. Even just saying Brady’s name had reminded her of how badly she’d misread that situation. Gigi had trusted Brady Daniels—and she shouldn’t have.
“Is it Lyra?” Gigi asked. “Because I really hope for Grayson’s sake that Eve’s player in the game isn’t Lyra.”
More silence.
Time for another subject change to keep him off guard. “The marks on the sheath of your knife—what do they mean?” Gigi knew from having counted them during the game that there were thirteen total.
“Maybe they’re people I’ve kidnapped. Or horrible things I’ve done.”
That second option had the ring of truth—not that Gigi could claim to be particularly good at realizing when someone was lying to her. “Let’s play a game. It’s called Yes, No, or Maybe.”
Slate took an audible step toward her. “Okay, sunshine. Let’s play.” His hair wasn’t in his face anymore, but with so little light, Gigi still couldn’t make out the scar through his eyebrow.
Time to make this question count. “Is there someone else on Hawthorne Island?”
“Define someone else .”
“Not the players. Not the game makers. Not you. Not Eve.”
“Maybe.” Slate was staring directly at her now.
“Last night,” Gigi said, “when the power went out—was that you and/or Eve?”
Slate looked down at the knife in his hand. “No.”
Finally, she’d gotten some real intel out of him, an actual piece of the puzzle. When he’d suggested that there was another threat out there, he had meant on Hawthorne Island, interfering with the game. Another sponsor?
Gigi’s sixth sense for broody boys told her that that she’d gotten about all she was going to get out of Slate—for now.
Her gaze drifted of its own volition back down to the knife in his hand— definitely sheathed —and she had to ask: “How many horrible things have you done?”
“Counting this?” Slate slipped his knife from the sheath. “Counting you?” He used the edge of the blade to add a notch to the leather. “Fourteen.”