CHAPTER 49 GIGI
GIGI
S mile, honey.”
Gigi blinked. Repeatedly. On some level, she knew she was dreaming. She had to be. “Dad?” Gigi’s father was dead, but he was also right there . He reached out a hand to touch her hair. “There’s my happy girl.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Gigi told her father, “but you’re… less than alive.”
Sheffield Grayson gave Gigi an indulgent look. “You don’t need to worry about that.”
“Right,” Gigi said, her heart twisting. “Because I’m not the one who worries. I’m not the serious twin, the one who thinks too much—or at all, right?” She swallowed. “I’m not the one who wins.”
Why was she even arguing with him about this?
“And you,” Gigi said softly, “are a murderer.” He was dead, and he’d died doing awful things—but he was also right there , and this time, when Gigi’s father looked at her, there was absolutely nothing indulgent in his expression.
There was a warning. “Smile, Juliet.”
“Juliet.” Another voice spoke behind Gigi, and she whirled. Just like that, her father was gone, and she was looking up into another familiar face. Square jaw, deep brown skin, eyes that missed nothing.
“Brady.” For a split second, when Gigi saw Brady Daniels, she forgot how things had ended between them. “Tell me something about chaos theory?” she asked him.
“Not chaos theory.” His voice was more familiar than it should have been—that deep, calm-in-a-storm voice. It wasn’t until he took a step forward that Gigi remembered everything.
And that was when she saw the knife.
“Not chaos theory,” Gigi repeated, her throat threatening to close in around the words.
“A closed system.” Brady plunged the knife into her chest. “Nothing in, nothing out.”
He lowered her body gently to the ground. “For Calla,” he whispered.
“I tried to warn you, Happy.” Suddenly, it wasn’t Brady crouched next to Gigi. It was Knox. “I told you the players in this game were going to eat you alive.”
Blood was pooling around the knife in Gigi’s chest. “I’m not bleeding out,” she insisted. “This is just… extreme exfoliation of the chest region.”
Knox locked his hand around the hilt of the knife— Slate’s knife , Gigi realized—and pulled it out of her chest. “Then get up,” he growled at Gigi. “And fight .”
Gigi woke with a gasp, lying on her back on what was quite possibly the least comfortable mattress in existence. She sat up, her eyes going straight to Jackson’s chair. Empty.
Jackson wasn’t there. Neither was his shotgun. Gigi listened, and it only took her two seconds to verify: He’s gone. She turned in bed, her eyes going to the flower she’d found in the night.
A calla lily.
Brady’s dream-voice echoed in her mind— “For Calla” —and Gigi physically shook her head. “That’s it, subconscious,” she declared. “You’re in time-out.”
Gigi slipped out of bed and crept toward the metal door to Jackson’s abode. Her bearded friend was probably just out preparing his boat for their ride to Hawthorne Island. He definitely hadn’t just left her here. Without a phone. Far too close to the lighthouse for comfort.
“Everything is fine,” Gigi told herself. She cracked the metal door and peered out. Morning twilight. The sun hadn’t quite risen yet, but already the sky was taking on an unearthly orange glow, stark against velvety purple—what remained of the night sky.
Gigi opened the metal door a little bit wider. From where she was standing, she could see the lighthouse. She wondered if Slate had returned in the night to find her missing. She wondered if he’d looked for her.
She wondered what he was doing now.
And then she thought about her dream, about the knife in her chest, and Gigi stopped wondering. She closed the metal door and flipped the bolt. Jackson was coming back. He was taking her to Hawthorne Island.
To Savannah.
All she had to do was wait.
Gigi did not excel at waiting. The next time she opened the door, the sun had just begun to peek over the Western horizon. She checked the lighthouse again. Still nothing.
“If I were a boat,” she said out loud, “where would I be?”
Gigi eyeballed her surroundings. Wild grass grew from rocky ground—and some of that grass looked a bit worse for the wear.
A path.
It would take her away from the lighthouse and in the opposite direction of town. They were right on the coast, which meant that the path in question could very easily wind its way back toward the water.
To a boat. Gigi hesitated, which was either a sign of personal growth or an indication that she was off her game. Honestly, it was impossible to tell. But Savannah was out there. Savannah was hurting , and Gigi had to get to her twin before Savannah did something she couldn’t take back.
“Boatward, ho!” Gigi declared. She took to the beaten path. Eventually, it did curve back toward the water—and a small dock, which contained exactly one boat that looked like it had been built in the seventies.
That tracks. “Jackson?” she called. She searched the boat—first above, then down below, and… nothing . No Jackson.
Gigi let out a long, slow breath. “How hard could it possibly be,” she said out loud, “for a person with an extremely eclectic skillset to hot-wire a boat?”
With a silent promise to send Jackson apology Twinkies after the fact, Gigi turned and bolted up the steps out of the cabin—and directly into a human chest. A male one. Black T-shirt, hard muscles.
With a passing prayer to the Patron Saint of Chaotic Girls, Gigi calculated the best angle at which to drive her knee into a certain someone’s tender bits, should the need arise.
She lifted her chin and stalled for time. “I escaped.”
Slate’s lips twitched slightly. “I noticed.”
“Out of my way, Eyebrow Scar. I’m going to my sister, and you can’t stop me. Observe the threatening look on my face as I say: I’d really hate to have to hurt you.”
Slate shrugged. “You can hurt me if you want.”
Gigi narrowed her eyes. She made a fist and drew back her arm—and then she kneed him in the crotch. With gusto. Misdirection for the win!
Gigi made it about four feet past him before Slate was suddenly in front of her again. Apparently, testicular damage had done nothing to his speed.
“Come on, sunshine.”
Gigi liked to think the growl in his voice was just a little bit higher pitched than usual. “It’s nothing personal,” she told him. “I have a sister to save, and you have some private parts to ice. We can both win here!”
Slate was not amused. “Do you even know how to drive a fishing boat? Or a boat this old, period?”
Gigi folded her arms over her chest. “I can learn. The ocean is a great place for learning.”
“You are a hazard to yourself.”
“Thank you.” Gigi tried to dart around him and ended up running smack into his chest again.
Slate caught her shoulders and righted her. “Wasn’t a compliment.”
“Let me go or I’ll scream,” Gigi replied. “And I have to warn you, Slate: My bellowing skills are second to none.”
“Mattias.” Beneath the blond hair hanging down over his face, the expression in his eyes shifted slightly. “My first name. It’s Mattias .”
Gigi didn’t want to remember that when he’d given her the name Slate , he’d said it was both true and false. She also didn’t want to ask: “Slate is your last name?”
“Slater, actually.”
Mattias Slater. There was something about this moment—the sunrise, an ocean mist thick enough to gather on their skin, his hands on her shoulders, the fact that he’d just given her his name—that threatened Gigi’s resolve.
“Mattias,” she said quietly. And then she opened her mouth and screamed. Wildly. Loudly. Directly in his fuzzy face.
Wait. Fuzzy? Mattias Slater’s blurry hands fell from Gigi’s shoulders. Time slowed. Gigi’s head pounded, and the next thing she knew, she couldn’t feel her face. She went down with a thud.
Slate fell to his knees beside her.
Prone on the wood floor of the boat, Gigi belatedly realized: the mist . Her vision began to go black around the edges, and the last thing Gigi saw before the world gave way to total darkness— seriously? again? —was a pair of leather boots stepping onto Jackson’s boat.
They were red.