CHAPTER 4 GIGI
GIGI
Gigi’s plan was going swimmingly, if she did say so herself.
“What are you doing here?” Knox Landry greeted Gigi with a very loving glare.
“Alisa’s tracking the phone she gave you.” Gigi hopped up on the barstool next to Knox’s. “And I’m on the hunt for the perfect mimosa.”
Knox snorted. “Does this look like the kind of place that sells mimosas?”
Gigi glanced around the bar. It looked… sticky. The bartender was heavily tattooed. But this fine establishment was open at ten in the morning, so… “Yes?”
Knox’s glare morphed into more of a glower. A very fond glower.
Gigi reached over and patted his hand. “If it’s any consolation, Alisa gave me a new phone, too.
” As players in the Grandest Game, Gigi, Knox, and the others had all been forced to leave their cell phones behind when they’d come to Hawthorne Island.
“Right after I convinced her to track yours and tell me where you were.”
“And why the hell would Lawyer Lady do that?” Knox demanded.
“Because she specializes in damage control, and I am the human embodiment of chaotic good? Also, Grayson is eventually going to realize that I didn’t go back home.
Alisa doesn’t have the bandwidth or legal standing to make me do anything, so she settled for tracking me instead.
Besides…” Gigi beamed at Knox. “I promised to keep her updated on our progress.”
“Our progress?”
“On the Brady front.” Gigi gave Knox what any perceptive person would have identified as a very concerning smile.
“You’ve obviously already figured out where he is.
You wouldn’t be drinking at ten in the morning if you hadn’t.
So…” Gigi leaned toward Knox and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “How’d Brady get off the island?”
“Swam.” Knox knocked back the rest of his beer.
“Swam? That far? In open ocean?” Gigi made a mental note not to underestimate Brady’s endurance again, and then she made a second mental note to avoid thinking the word endurance with relevance to Brady Daniels, full stop.
“Swam,” she repeated. “And then he went… where?” Gigi was this close to unleashing scooty hands to an extent they had never been unleashed before.
“Go home, kid.”
“Not a kid,” Gigi reminded him. “And resistance is futile. Just ask your one true lawyerly love.”
Knox choked. “My what?”
Take him off guard and then, boom! “Where’s Brady?”
“I could just tell Ortega that myself and get paid.” Knox stood.
“And yet… you haven’t.” Gigi gestured in the vicinity of Knox’s unhappy eyebrows. “Is this about Calla?”
“It’s always about Calla,” Knox reminded Gigi. “For Brady.”
Calla Thorp. The Watcher. The Woman in Red—also known as Knox’s ex.
“Alisa complements you better,” Gigi opined. “Her power suits, your finance bro vests. Your mercenary streak, her mercenary streak. Big hearts coated in ambitious and sometimes amoral candy shells. I ship it.”
“Kid, I swear—” Knox’s phone rang. He looked at the screen, then answered. “What the hell, Ortega?” he demanded into the phone. A few seconds later, he spoke again. “Yeah. She’s here.” Another pause. “For how long?” Knox’s eyes narrowed. “How much?”
Whatever number Alisa named, it must have met with Knox’s approval, because the next thing Gigi knew, he’d accepted the offer and hung up. “Congratulations, Happy. You’ve got yourself a bodyguard for the next seventy-two hours.”
“I’ve always wanted a bodyguard.” Gigi smiled sweetly. “And on a related note, are you going to tell me where Brady is or am I giving in to the impulse to draw unsavory attention to myself by shimmying up on top of this bar and dancing until you break?”
Knox’s thick brows pulled together in a rather ominous fashion, and that was the only warning Gigi got before he picked her up off the barstool and carried her out of the bar.
Outside, Savannah greeted them both with the arch of a pale brow.
“All part of the plan,” Gigi assured her sister. She wriggled a bit, and Knox put her down. “My favorite wolverine here was just getting ready to tell us where Brady is.”
If at first you don’t succeed, wear them down with random comparisons to grumpy animals!
“No,” Knox said flatly. “I wasn’t.”
“It would be a shame…” Rohan’s oh-so-British voice emanated from the shadows. “If someone less scrupulous than the four of us got to Mr. Daniels first.”
Gigi took it upon herself to step delicately between Rohan and Knox. “Captain Shoulders-to-Waist-Ratio over there isn’t wrong,” Gigi told Knox. “We need to find Brady before Zella or Calla or anyone else does.”
Knox shuttered his eyes, but Gigi knew he cared—about Brady, about the possibly malevolent Calla.
It had been hours since Knox had realized Calla Thorp was alive, that she was back.
He’d been trying super hard to pretend that didn’t matter, but Gigi knew better.
Knox had loved Calla once, and Calla had left him scarred.
Literally.
“So,” Gigi persisted, as chipper as chipper could be. I can do this all day, buckaroo. “Where are we headed next?”