The Pawn (Endgame #1)(50)

And Justin’s figuring it out too as the life squeezes out of him. His eyes are glazed over. Gabriel doesn’t even have to suffocate him. He only has to let go. Disoriented, dizzy, Justin would fall to his death.

“I’ll be good,” I promise, my voice low and serious. I’m grasping at Gabriel’s white shirt—he hasn’t changed, I realize, since the theater. He’s still wearing his tuxedo shirt. It doesn’t matter how hard I pull, I’ll never move him. He’s made of stone.

What can I do?

What can I give him?

The string. My very sanity. “I’ll play with you. I’ll play chess.”

Justin makes horrible wheezing sounds, his limbs flailing. For a horrible moment I think he’s going to fall, but Gabriel’s hold on the front of his shirt keeps him on the ladder.

Gabriel must have loosened his grip, because Justin’s eyes come into focus, though his face is still red and puffy. “You bastard,” he gasps.

God, he has no survival instinct. “Get out of here,” I whisper.

He glances from me to Gabriel and comes to the right conclusion. On unsteady legs he makes it down the ladder. I watch as he runs across the lawn, through the woods where he must have entered. For a moment I worry about wolves, until I realize that I have my own wild animal to think about.

Gabriel turns to me. “Did you call him?”

“What? No! Check the records if you don’t believe me.”

“Oh, I have,” he says grimly. “Mr. Stewart. And Harper St. Claire, your friend from school. You could have sent a message through her.”

I’m shaking with anger, realizing that he’s been looking at my phone logs. For all I know there’s a camera in the room, too. Nothing is sacred to him.

What about the truth? Is that sacred to him? Would he have manufactured evidence for the state’s attorney to indict my father? Would he have used bribes to ensure my father’s conviction?

My father might be innocent after all.

Gabriel slams the window down and locks it. “We play tomorrow.”





Chapter Twenty-Seven





I wake up to a note that says only one thing: 3 p.m.

Which means I have the rest of the day to think about my strategy for the game. I’d rather read a book or watch a movie. I’d rather watch the grass grow, but like with the professor at the museum, I’m too starved for stimulation. My brain has decided to win regardless of what I want.

Well, I wouldn’t say that I want to lose. That’s not really what this is about, though. This is about giving him a piece of me, opening myself up beyond my body. There are a hundred myths about the way chess play exposes the true identity of a person—a long-lost son reunited with his father by an unusual chess combination alone. Messages written in black and white wood, in an infinite number of moves.

I’ll play with Gabriel. I’ll play to win, but I won’t give up every secret I have.

When I arrive in the library, he already sits in one of the armchairs. The board has been set, with black facing him. He stands when I enter the room, an old-school politeness fitting for a game over a thousand years old.

“Good afternoon,” he says.

I eye him warily as I circle the opposite chair, wondering if he’s still pissed about Justin. Probably, but he doesn’t appear angry today. He has the same bland and solicitous expression that hides everything he’s thinking. The perfect poker face.

I wring my hands together. “About Justin.”

His face doesn’t move a centimeter, but I feel his rage bubble near the surface. “What about him?”

“I need your promise that you won’t do anything to him.”

He uses that dangerously soft voice he gets when he’s lethal. “What would I do to someone like him?”

I force myself to gather my courage, because I couldn’t live with myself if Justin ended up hurt. If he ended up like my father. The men in my life were in ruins enough. “Send men to attack him.”

He’s silent a moment, and all I hear is the faint crackle of the fire. “Is that what you think I did to your father?”

My courage falters, but I force my shoulders back. “Did you?”

“I don’t send people to do my dirty work. If I want to beat someone to a pulp, I’ll do it myself.”

Which doesn’t tell me whether he hurt my father. Except my father said they were strangers to him. That there were multiple men, wearing masks. Was that the truth? Or had it been Gabriel Miller?

He looks grave. “And I have no desire to hit an old man.”

The relief that fills me is deeper than knowing I’m not in the same room as my father’s attacker. It has to do with Gabriel himself. My feelings for him. “You gave the state’s attorney evidence about my father.”

“It was the most public way to ruin him.”

It ruined him. It weakened him enough that somebody else felt comfortable sending men after my father in a dark alley. Maybe it doesn’t matter that Gabriel didn’t throw the punch himself. He kicked off the chain of events that led to my father in bed, hooked up to a million different machines.

“And to buy his daughter,” I say, voice shaking only a little. “In a public auction. Your idea, I remember.”