Of all the possible solutions that had spent the last hour doing the can-can through Gigi’s brain, the one that broke away to form a conga line was: the day after the spring equinox.
After the center. Gigi gave that element of the poem a mental checkmark. Before fall. Another check. Spring is associated with sunshine
—and shade. That had to be what coolness in shadow referred to, right?
Or possibly a winter eclipse… Gigi could feel a mental cha-cha coming
on.
“Cart in front of the horse.” To her left, Knox had progressed from
staring at the riddle on the wall to glaring at it like it had killed his puppy or given him a wedgie or both.
“Pride before the fall,” Knox continued through clenched teeth. Gigi could make out beads of sweat on his temples, his neck. “Stop and smell the roses.”
“Common sayings?” Gigi took a subtle ballerina leap toward him. It was notoriously difficult to rehabilitate someone in distress, and it was clear to her: Knox really, really, really hated small spaces.
“Clichés,” Knox corrected tersely. “Take it line by line.” He was starting to look kind of… gray.
Gigi glanced toward Brady, but he was busy searching the inside of the phone booth.
Looks like I’m on my own for Project Take Care of Knox Without Him
Knowing It.
“Righto.” Gigi was careful not to crowd him, but she didn’t shrink back, either. “You’ve checked off the fall, the horse, and the flowers. Next up: after the center and not bad at all.”
“If something is not bad,” Knox said, a slight rasp in his voice, “it’s adequate. Fair. Okay.”
“Good,” Gigi suggested.
“You would say that,” Knox grunted.
Gigi cheerfully one-upped herself. “Perfect!”
“Practice makes perfect.” That was definitely more than a slight rasp in Knox’s voice.
Gigi wasn’t as good at radiating calm as she was at vibrating with energy, but she gave it a shot. “That just leaves two lines of the riddle. After the center. Coolness in shadow.”
After a tortuously long moment, Knox breathed. “A center is the middle, the core.”
“Rotten to the core?” Gigi suggested. For good measure, she breathed, too, nice and slowly.
“Works for me.” Knox looked at her, really looked at her for maybe the first time since they’d met. “One left.”
“I disagree.” Brady emerged from the phone booth. “You’re stretching. If you have to contort an answer to make it fit, it was never the right answer to begin with.”
“You don’t know that,” Knox said lowly.
“I see patterns,” Brady replied. “This isn’t one.”
“I swear to all that is holy,” Knox gritted out, “if you tell me to have faith—”
“Breathe,” Brady said. He came to stand directly in front of Knox. “I am telling you to breathe, Knox.”
Something twinged in Gigi’s chest. Some people just couldn’t stop caring—even when they wanted to, even when they had reason to.
“I don’t need you to tell me a damn thing, Daniels.” Knox’s pupils were larger than they should have been, but when he finally looked at Brady, they began to contract. “I’m getting out of here.” There was still a noticeable rasp in Knox’s voice. “We are.”
There was that we again.
Knox stalked toward the phone booth and picked up the phone. “Clichés,” he bit out. “That’s my answer, and it works.” A second ticked by, then two. “Sayings,” Knox amended. “Adages.” Another pause, and then Knox exploded. “Son of a bitch!”
He slammed the phone down on the receiver—and then he picked it back up and slammed it down again and again, beating the phone into metal.
Brady set down the sword and turned toward Gigi. “We’re taking the hint.”
Their team had only one hint to last them the entire night, but Gigi wasn’t about to argue.
“We’re not taking the damn hint.” Knox slammed out of the booth. “We’re saving it in case we need it down the line.”
“No,” Brady said, his tone muted, his presence anything but. For the first time, Gigi was keenly aware of just how much larger nerdy Brady was than the more intensely physical Knox. “Push the button, Gigi,” Brady said quietly.
She scanned the room for the panel and found it—directly behind her on the floor.
Knox took two ominous steps forward. “Don’t.”
Gigi looked at Knox. She looked at Brady. And then she looked back at the panel with the buttons. She inched toward it.
Something seemed to snap in Knox. He lunged forward, but Brady was
fast. Gigi never even saw Brady move, but suddenly, his body was a shield
—or a brick wall. Between Knox and me.
Knox took a swing. Brady absorbed the hit without blinking, then pushed Knox back. Gigi’s heart leapt into her throat. She wasn’t scared of Knox—she didn’t have the good sense to be—but based on his wild eyes, she also wasn’t entirely sure that Knox was driving the bus.
He surged again, and Gigi knew suddenly: Whatever advantage Brady’s size gave him, it wouldn’t last.
“Push the button, Gigi. This chamber is too small. We need to get him out of here.”
Before Gigi could do anything, Knox went suddenly, eerily still, assessing his opponent.
“I don’t need you to handle me, Daniels. All you have to do is stay the
hell out of my way.”
“You can’t do closets, Knox.” Brady was implacable. “You can’t do basements. You can do small rooms, but not if they don’t have windows or some form of natural light.”
“I can do whatever the hell I have to in order to win.” Gigi couldn’t help hearing that as a warning.
“You think you’re the only one who wants to win this?” Brady shot back.
They grappled. Brady held his own. Knox pulled back, seeming to have regained some measure of control, but there was still something leonine about the tension in his face.
“I know why you want to win this, Daniels.” Knox’s leg snaked out, and Brady hit the floor. Knox stood over him. “Even with twenty-six million dollars at your disposal, you’re still not going to be able to find Calla. She chose to leave. She doesn’t want to be found.”
Brady climbed slowly to his feet. “Push the red button, Gigi.”
Knox swiveled his predator’s gaze toward her. “Don’t you do it, little girl. You could be giving away the whole game.”
I am not, Gigi thought, her voice steely in her own mind, a little girl.
She took a step toward the panel.
“This isn’t about Calla.” Brady drew Knox’s attention back toward him. Knox pushed Brady back. “It’s always Calla with you.”
“This time,” Brady said, shoving Knox into the side of the metal chamber hard enough for Gigi to hear the impact. “It’s cancer.”
Time stopped then, and so did Knox. The fight drained out of him. Gigi couldn’t move, either.
“My mama,” Brady said, his voice hoarse. “Stage three. Ask me if there are treatments available, Knox. Then ask me if we have insurance.”
Suddenly, every reason Gigi had for playing this game felt utterly insufficient.
“No.” Knox stared at Brady for four or five seconds. “No.” Knox turned and drove his fist into the chamber wall. Hard. Gigi’s heart leapt into her throat as Knox did the same thing again. And again. The sound of flesh hitting metal was horrific. The impact had to be tearing Knox’s knuckles apart, but, if anything, the pain seemed to spur him onward.
Brady grabbed Knox, twisting his arms behind his back, pinning his
body flat against the wall, as he looked over his shoulder and calmly met Gigi’s gaze. “The button, Juliet.”
Gigi hadn’t even known that Brady knew her real name, but she didn’t have time to dwell on that.
“If you push that button, we will lose, Gigi.” Knox didn’t call her little girl this time.
“I can’t hold him much longer!”
Gigi was torn. Her mind racing, she thought about Brady’s mom and the cost of losing this game. She thought about the rules, the stakes, the riddle on the wall, the fact that Knox was not okay.
Gigi pushed the button.
