Page 119 of The Most Dangerous Games

“Jimmy—”

“I know,” he says. “I hate it too. But I don’t think it will be that much longer.”

Alek looks up through the branches, at a sky that doesn’t care. “Then what do I do?” she asks.

Jimmy answers without hesitation.

“You keep them alive,” he says. “You keep each other alive. And you keep being the people the world needs.”

He pauses, and when he speaks again, it’s quieter.

“And Alek?”

“Yeah?”

“If anything feels wrong—like ‘too wrong’—like something you can’t survive—you get out. You don’t hesitate. Promise me.”

Alek swallows. She thinks of Conner. Of Rupert. Of the way the rules keep changing.

“I promise,” she says.

“Good,” he says. “Because I’m about to make a move.”

“What move?” Alek whispers.

Jimmy’s voice turns serious in a way she hasn’t heard before.

“The kind that either ends this,” he says, “or gets me killed.”

81.

Alek knows she can’t stay out here much longer—they’re expected at the main house for dinner soon. If she doesn’t arrive with the others, one of the guards will surely come looking for her.

“I promised someone very important to me—and to all of us—that I wouldn’t tell anyone, even you guys, at least not yet,” Jimmy says.

“Who?”

“Someone who’s trying to keep you alive,” Jimmy says. “That’s all you need to know.”

He pauses and lowers his voice.

“I’ve got to wrap this up. There are people following me . . .” He lowers his voice even more. “Wait. I need to move farther out of sight.”

Alek straightens. “Jimmy—”

“Hold on,” he says. “I need to move.”

She hears muffled footsteps. Traffic. The hum of a city. His breathing.

When he resumes speaking to Alek after what feels to her like an agonizing few minutes, she can barely hear him over the traffic sounds in the background.

“Alek, there are more layers to this than I originally thought,” he says. “And we’re all facing even more of a threat than I imagined. We’re not just dealing with powerful people here. We really are dealing with ruthless ones, and a board with a completely different agenda.”

“Different how?” Alek asks.

There is such a long silence Alek once again thinks the call might have dropped. Then: “Nothing about saving the world,” Jimmy says. “That part was bait.”

Alek’s throat tightens. “Then what is it?”