Chapter 5

Two Days Earlier…

On my second day in Prague, I woke with the dawn, Jameson still asleep beside me. One day for my game, he’d stipulated the night before. One day for yours.

Per the rules we’d agreed to—after a lengthy and not quite G-rated negotiation the night before—I had until midnight to make it to the end of his game. As tempting as lingering in bed was, I knew better than to think Jameson might have gone easy on me.

His game was going to be a challenge. I was going to need every minute I had.

Rolling over in bed, I propped myself up and reached across Jameson to the nightstand—and the objects. The knife. The key. As I pulled the latter toward the former and closed my fingers around both, Jameson stirred beneath me. For a moment, my gaze was drawn to his bare chest and the jagged scar that ran the length of his torso. I knew every inch of that scar.

Just like I knew that Jameson Winchester Hawthorne played to win.

“Good morning, Heiress.” Jameson’s eyes were still closed, but a smile pulled at his lips.

I had a split second to make my choice: Did I stay propped up in bed beside him or go for a position that would give me a bit more leverage?

I went for the latter. By the time Jameson’s eyes opened, I was straddling him, one hand on his chest, the other firmly holding the objects meant to start off his game.

There were advantages to keeping your opponent pinned down.

Jameson didn’t so much as try to prop himself up on his elbows. He just looked up at me with a very particular curve to his lips.

“You are not going to distract me, Hawthorne.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Jameson smirked. “I have scruples, you know.”

“I know that,” I said. “You don’t.” Jameson had a bone-deep belief that he wasn’t the good guy, the one who made the right choices, the hero. On his worst days, he looked at me and thought that I deserved better than him.

This wasn’t going to be one of those days.

On top of him, I shifted my weight. Setting the key on his rock-hard abdomen, I turned my attention to the knife. This wasn’t my first time seeing the blade—or holding it. I knew for a fact that there was a hidden compartment in the handle.

It didn’t take me long to find the trigger.

The moment the compartment opened, I turned the knife over in my hand. A small piece of paper fell out, like a fortune from inside a fortune cookie. I almost rolled off Jameson to read it but decided not to. Keeping his lower body pinned beneath mine, I leaned forward and unrolled the thin strip of paper on his stomach, next to the key.

Jameson’s haphazard scrawl stared back at me from the paper. A poem. A clue.

“Does finding this count as step one?” I asked Jameson. The night before, he’d said we would each be limited to five steps in our puzzles.

Jameson put his hands behind his head and smiled, like he didn’t have a care in the world. Like his body wasn’t tense in all the right ways beneath me. “What do you think?” he shot back.

I think that if I don’t get off you, I’m never going to make it out of this room.

I rolled off him, off the bed, and to my feet on yet another plush red carpet. “I think,” I told Jameson, “that this is step one.”

I skimmed the words of my first clue—a poem. Once I’d made it to the end, I reread the words slowly, line by line.

Borrow or rob?

Don’t nod.

Now, sir, a war is won.

Nine minutes ’til seven

On the second of January, 1561.

I walked over to the window and pulled the massive curtains, staring out at the Vltava River and the city beyond it.

I heard Jameson get out of bed, heard him padding toward me. “What are you searching for?” That wasn’t Jameson asking what I was looking at. He was asking what I made of this clue—his clue. He was testing me.

I looked back down at the words.

Borrow or rob?

Don’t nod.

Now, sir, a war is won.

Nine minutes ’til seven

On the second of January, 1561.

One word jumped off the page, and the gears in my mind began to turn. Maybe I was getting ready to run headfirst down the wrong path, but in a Hawthorne game, sometimes you had to go with your gut.

I stared out at the Vltava for a moment longer, my resolve crystalizing, and then I turned back to Jameson and his question: What was I searching for? What part of this clue did I intend to focus on first?

I met his gaze and threw down the gauntlet. “War.”