The Final Gambit (The Inheritance Games #3)(46)

I drew in air, then dove again. P-QB4. The location of the last move in the Queen’s Gambit. This time, when I pushed against the tiles, one turned, hitting the next and the next, like some kind of clockwork marvel.

I watched the chain reaction go, piece by piece, afraid to even blink, terrified that whatever this was, it would only last a moment. A final tile turned, and the entire section—the square I’d seen through the glass— popped up. My lungs starting to burn, I wedged my fingers underneath.

They brushed something.

Almost. Almost.

My body was telling me to go to the surface— screaming at me to go to the surface—but I shoved my fingers under the tile again. This time, I managed to pull a flat package out, an instant before the compartment began to close.

I pushed off, kicked, then exploded past the surface of the water. I gasped and couldn’t stop gasping, sucking in the night air again and again. I swam for the side of the pool. This time, when my hand reached for the edge, another hand grabbed mine.

Jameson pulled me out of the water. “Don’t breathe,” he murmured.

I didn’t ask him where he’d been or even if he was okay. I just held up the package I’d retrieved from the bottom of the pool.

Jameson bent to pick up the beach towel and wrapped it around me.

“Well done, Heiress.” His lips brushed mine, and the world felt charged, brimming with anticipation and the thrill of the chase. This was the way he and I were supposed to be: no running, no hiding, no recriminations, no regrets.

Just us, questions and answers and what we could do when we were together.

I went to open the package and found it vacuum sealed. Jameson held out a knife. I recognized it. The knife—from the shattered glass game.

Taking it from him, I sliced the package open. Inside, there was a fireproof pouch. I unzipped it and found a faded photograph. Three figures —all women—stood in front of an enormous stone church.

“Do you recognize them?” I asked Jameson.

He shook his head, and I turned the photograph over. On the back, written in Tobias Hawthorne’s familiar scrawl, was a place and a date.

Margaux, France, December 19, 1973.

I’d been playing the billionaire’s games long enough for my brain to latch immediately onto the date. 12/19/1973. And then there was the location. “Margaux?” I said out loud. “Pronounced like Margo?”

That could mean we were looking for a person with that name—but in a Hawthorne game, it could also mean so many other things.





CHAPTER 44

Jameson got me into a hot shower, and my mind raced. Decoding a clue required separating meaning from distraction. There were four elements here: the photograph; the name Margaux; the location in France; and the date, which could have been an actual date or could have been a number in need of decoding.

In all likelihood, some combination of those four elements was meaningful, and the rest were just distractions, but which were which?

“Three women.” Jameson hung a towel, warm from the towel heater, over the shower’s glass door. “A church in the background. If we scan the photograph, we could try a reverse image search—”

“—which would only help,” I filled in, the water white-hot against my chilled skin, “if a copy of this exact photograph exists online.” Still, it was worth a try. “We should try to locate the church, figure out its name,” I murmured, steam growing thicker in the air around me. “And we can talk to Zara and Nan. See if they recognize any of these women.”

“Or the name Margaux,” Jameson added. Through the steam on the glass door, he was a blur of color: long, lean, familiar in ways that made me ache.

I turned off the rain shower spray. I wrapped my towel around my body and stepped out onto the bathroom rug. Jameson met my eyes, his face moonlit through the window, his hair a mess my fingers wanted to touch.

“There’s also the date to consider,” he murmured. “And the rest of the objects in the bag.”

“A steamer, a flashlight, a USB,” I rattled off. “We could try the steamer and the flashlight on the photograph—and the pouch it came in.”

“Three objects left.” Jameson’s mouth ticked upward at the ends. “And three already used. That puts us halfway through, and my grandfather would say that’s a good point to step back. Go back to the beginning.

Consider the framing and your charge.”

I felt my own lips parting and tilting up at the ends. “There were no instructions given. No question, no prompt.”

“No question, no prompt.” Jameson’s voice was low and silky. “But we know the trigger. You met Eve.” Jameson chewed on that for a moment, then turned. His green eyes looked like they were focused on something no one but him could see, as if a multitude of possibilities suddenly stretched out before him like constellations in the sky. “The start of the game was triggered when you met Eve, which means this game might tell us something about you or something about Eve, something about why my grandfather chose you instead of Eve, or…”

Jameson turned again, caught up in a web of his own thoughts. It was like everything else had ceased to exist, even me.

“Or,” he repeated, like that was the answer. “I didn’t see it at the beginning,” he said, his voice low and struck through with electric energy.