Page 148 of Ruthless Legacy

I grab it and hurry back outside. Once I get a signal, I can pull up the GPS to figure out where I’m going.

The parking lot is deserted, the other prospects left while I was getting my cardio in. I guess I’m hoofing it. Just as I make it to the end of the road, a car pulls past me. Then stops, slowly backing up.

The passenger window comes down and the driver from the night I climbed a fence leans over. “Need a ride?”

I debate telling him no, but I need to make up time. “Where to?” He asks when I climb in.

I tell him the high school so I can get my car.

“I don’t have time for that.”

“What do you have time for?”

“Depends on where you need to go.”

“Bianchi Hotel. Do you have time for that?”

“Yeah. I think I can make that work.”

Instead of stopping in front of the club, he drives two streets over and pulls around the back. “Good luck, kiddo.”

I hop out of the car and jog back to where I need to go. I turn to look behind me. The car is gone before I reach the corner.

The note says to find an invisible chess piece. I’m off to a late start, but other prospects are still here, which means they haven’t found their challenge item yet.

Some of them are looking under chairs and behind paintings. I wonder what the hotel thinks about all these people being here. There’s no place in the lobby to hide a chess piece. It would stand out. I move towards a meeting room. Two prospects are in there chatting up the club members.

I’m walking back toward the front of the club when a notice catches my eye. The rooftop pool is closed for maintenance and has been for two months.

Hmmm. If I had to make something invisible, I’d hide it in an off limits area.

I take the stairs instead of going back to the lobby and using the elevator. I don’t want to risk someone seeing me. The rooftop pool is on the eighteenth floor. My legs are gonna be toast after this.

When I reach the roof, I waste no time flipping over cushions, feeling for any displacement in the padding, and checking the empty towel racks. I’m heading to check the trash can when the underwater spotlight comes on and bounces off the water.

I once watched a Vegas magician make a person disappear into thin air. It was a combination of lights and mirrors creating a white out effect, but I never forgot that trick.

I guess I’m going for my second swim of the day. I walk the perimeter of the pool, straining my eyes to see. The light flicks on and off for several cycles before I finally catch sight of a shadow at the bottom of the pool. I take off my shoes and dive in, swimming toward where I saw the shadow before ducking under water.

Ten feet of water tests my lung capacity. I reach and grab the object, then kick as hard as I can to reach the surface. When I surface, treading water, I look at what I’ve grabbed.

It’s a clear chess piece. In the blue water, it was invisible. I haul myself out of the pool and race down the stairs, grimacing at the slapping sound my socks are making inside my shoes.

I’m out of breath when I reach the bottom floor. I take time to control my breathing before stepping through the stairway door. I ignore the looks I’m getting, forcing myself to walk slowly out of the hotel then, a few blocks south before calling a ride to take me to my car. As I’m waiting for my ride, I receive a Prospectus notification.

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Those who ignore the past fail to see wise council

The message self deletes, just like the last one. Who the hell is sending these cryptic texts? The first one was useful. It helped me with my mentor issue. But I don’t have time to try to make sense of this one right now.

I tip the driver twenty bucks and give her five stars as an apology for wetting up her seats. I stop a few feet from my car, spotting Finn sitting on the hood.

“What are you doing?” I ask at the same time he says, “Why are you wet?”

“I went for a swim.”

“With your clothes on?”

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