Chrissy was coming to me. Today was the day.
My fingers rested on the carved banister as I descended the stairs one slow step at a time, feeling the familiar vibration of the lodge under my palm. The cold from the polar vortex storm front was creeping in already. I doubted that it would snow because Stonewood hadn’t seen real snow since 1997. No, what was coming would be worse. We’d had a couple of freak ice storms within the past ten years, and this had that kind of feel to it.
It was a wet, creeping cold that promised a beautiful, icy white, treacherous landscape in the near future with iced-over roads that most of us Southerners weren’t equipped to navigate, because we rarely had to do so. This kind of cold settled in bone and scar tissue alike, offering a specific, inescapable misery, but it would be worth it when Chrissy arrived, got iced in, and had no way to leave until the Game was complete.
Perfect.
Henry had done his part. Every female ‘contestant’ except Chrissy had arrived at exactly 5:00 PM, and they had all been escorted to their assigned rooms with the proper mix of mystery and feigned importance, and told to get ready and gather in the foyer at 6:00 PM sharp to meet the potential Bens. Just enough ego-stroking to make the actors I’d hired to all play at being Ben Stonewood preen and the women sharpen their claws in anticipation of catching one of them.
Nine actors all playing the same potential Ben Stonewood role, only going by their numbers, one through nine, no names allowed.
Eight ambitious women designated numbers ten through seventeen — most of whom reminded me of my stepmother, if I was being honest — who thought they actually stood a chance at snagging a handsome, surgically reconstructed billionaire husband, but were all but guaranteed to fail if they chose any one of the nine actors I’d hired.
Only one woman in the mix really stood a chance, if she truly was the kind of woman I thought she was. Chrissy, guest number eighteen, was the only real variable in the Game I’d built like a trap. If she was truly everything I suspected her to be, this little Game would only play out one way: with Chrissy marrying me.
Which was exactly why she was the center of every plan, every decision, every breath I’d taken in the past ten days… hell, the past four years if I was really being honest with myself.
Henry’s footsteps echoed behind me, measured and confident.
“Everything’s in place,” he said quietly. “Caltrops are down. Drone is stationed. House staff have all been briefed that, for the duration of the game, you are Jacob, the groundskeeper, just another member of the staff like them. They know not to reveal your true identity to anyone.”
“Good,” I murmured. “Did anyone see you prepping the road for Chrissy’s arrival?”
“No,” Henry scoffed and rolled his eyes at me. “I could do this shit in my sleep, kid. Give me some credit.”
I didn’t doubt it. He’d placed the caltrops less than a mile into my private access road, at the point where the county’s jurisdiction ended and mine began. Black metal, painted to match the asphalt so perfectly that even I could barely distinguish the edges on camera.
I needed to see how my girl performed when things went wrong, how she functioned under pressure, and how she treated supposed staff when no one else was around to observe her. The little trap I’d had Henry lay would give me all of that in one neat interaction.
“What’s her ETA?” I asked.
Henry checked his watch.
“If she left the apartment when the data from the tracker in her phone indicated, she should hit the lodge access road at around 6:02 PM, give or take a minute, so she’s running a little behind,and your tire blowout experiment will make her even later than that.”
A muscle jumped in my jaw. I needed to see her again more than I needed to breathe.
I turned and walked into the West Wing… my wing, not just in the architectural sense, but in the feral, territorial sense. This was my hunting ground. My command center. My chapel of obsession. Only Henry and I were usually allowed in this wing, no one else. But for the duration of the game, I’d also granted the actors who were pretending to be me access to the West Wing, so we could stage what was needed for the Game and they could prepare for their assigned tasks each day.
Four monitors glowed low in the dim room. Two showed camera feeds trained on the gates, one was positioned at the junction of the county road and my access road, and one was farther down the access road, halfway between the county road intersection and the lodge.
The fifth monitor? That one only flickered to life when motion was detected. And right now? It pulsed to life, showing me a blip on the FLIR, a flare of heat. I squinted at the heat signature and smiled. It was a car engine, glowing warm against the cold evening air.
She was close, now.
I stepped to the wall, fingers brushing the edge of the antique wooden paneling that concealed the tech that Henry and I had installed without altering the lodge’s historic face. Billionaire money let you do that… hide the twenty-first century behind the twentieth.
There she was.
A ghost of headlights cut through the dusk as her little sedan turned off the county road. The drone Henry had programmed to track movement shifted position automatically, shadowing her at a legal altitude but an obsessive proximity.
I watched her through the night-vision feed as she leaned forward over the wheel, brow furrowing at the dark, winding access road ahead.
She looked nervous and cold, but determined. In all honesty, she was the most perfect, beautiful creature I’d ever laid eyes on in my entire life, and adrenaline shot down my spine and flooded my bloodstream at the thought of coming face to face with her again after all these years.
“How long until she hits the caltrops?” I asked without taking my eyes off the screen.
“Thirty seconds,” Henry replied.
