Thieves' Gambit - Hardcover

Lewis, Kayvion

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593625366 ISBN 13: 9780593625361

Verlag: Nancy Paulsen Books, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

The Inheritance Games meets Ocean’s Eleven in this cinematic heist thriller where a cutthroat competition brings together the world’s best thieves and one thief is playing for the highest stakes of all: her mother's life.

At only seventeen years old, Ross Quest is already a master thief, especially adept at escape plans. Until her plan to run away from her legendary family of thieves takes an unexpected turn, leaving her mother’s life hanging in the balance.

In a desperate bid, she enters the Thieves’ Gambit, a series of dangerous, international heists where killing the competition isn’t exactly off limits, but the grand prize is a wish for anything in the world—a wish that could save her mom. When she learns two of her competitors include her childhood nemesis and a handsome, smooth-talking guy who might also want to steal her heart, winning the Gambit becomes trickier than she imagined.

Ross tries her best to stick to the family creed: trust no one whose last name isn’t Quest. But with the stakes this high, Ross will have to decide who to con and who to trust before time runs out. After all, only one of them can win.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Kayvion Lewis is a young adult author of all things escapist and high-octane. A former youth services librarian, she’s been working with young readers and kidlit since she was sixteen. When she’s not writing, she’s breaking out of escape rooms, jumping out of airplanes, and occasionally running away to mountain retreats to study kung fu. Though she’s originally from Louisiana, and often visits her family in The Bahamas, these days you can find her in New York—at least until she takes off on her next adventure.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Curiously, when plugged into the computer in 2310, the flash drive asked if I wanted to copy the hard drive. I tapped yes, but since this laptop didn’t have a c-port, I didn’t get to snoop on what I was copying. I spent the loading time digging through the file from the 2410 laptop some more on my phone.

I scrolled through links like Clients, Contacts, Numbers, and Master List. I found myself opening the phone number one, and up popped a spreadsheet with a whopping five thousand entries. Only a hundred lines down, I was finding names with addenda like (vice president) and (CEO) behind them. Using the search box, I typed in Quest. My name and cell number, along with Mom’s and Auntie’s, were there. Thankfully, there wasn’t anything like (thief) behind ours. They were incriminatingly italicized, though, so maybe it was implied.

I tapped my chin for a few seconds before typing in another number. All of Count’s texts about penalty games had made me forcibly memorize it. Lo and behold, there was a result. Aurélie Dubois.

So she did have a real name, a very French real name. Interesting.

I exported it all into my fam’s black box. Surely Count was going to pop up and tell me to stop?

She didn’t. I deleted the original file from my home screen undetected.

With the actual flash drive done loading, I returned the laptop to its safe and got ready to make the jump down to 2210. No lights came on when I dropped the marble again, so after tossing my heels, I bit down on my clutch for a third time and made the last swing onto the balcony.

Landing in a crouch, I flipped my braids back. My updo was a mess by now. Ten minutes left on the countdown. This was going to be tight.

I scooped up my shoes, about to slip them back on and hightail it out, but the curtain by the balcony door rustled, as if there were a breeze.

Only the curtains were behind the glass, and the door was shut. Someone was inside, waiting with the lights off. I had a feeling I knew who it was.

I rushed to throw my heels down to the next floor and slip over the railing as the door flew open. Taiyō was like lightning. I unsnapped the weight on my meteor bracelet, but with a twenty-story drop right behind me, I had no space to maneuver. I landed one blow to his jaw before he grabbed my arm, twisted it behind my back, and slammed me to the ground.

I kicked against his hold, but he twisted my arm tighter and dug his knee into my back.

With my face pressed against the cold concrete, I did my best to glare up at him. “Payback for scratching your specs? You wouldn’t, like, let me Venmo you the difference and forget about all this, would you?”

He might have smiled, but it was gone before I could be sure. “Don’t worry about it. I think this makes us even.”

“Taiyō’s actually pretty petty, who’d have guessed.” Noelia’s silver heels halted a few inches from my face. I strained to look up at her. She fished the flash drive out of my clutch.

“How did you know I’d be in here?” I asked. “Tailing me this whole time?”

“No need. I know you better than you think. Eight years later, and you’re still swinging in through windows.”

My breath caught. She remembered that? Nine-year-old me had been overly eager to show off to Noelia about how I could scale the walls into any room at the school. Well, any room up to the second floor, at the time. She’d told me it was the coolest thing she’d ever seen.

How much else did she remember about me?

Whatever. It didn’t matter now anyway.

Switching to Japanese, Noelia said something and tossed Taiyō a pair of cuffs from her own purselet.

I chuckled, but maybe that was my own frustration bubbling out of me. “You know I can get out of those in twenty seconds, right?”

“We’ll see about that.”

Taiyō jerked me up. I tried to use the opportunity to step on his foot, hook his leg, or something. But he was prepared, twisting my arm into a painful lock the second I was on my feet.

I swallowed an agonized groan, not wanting to give them the satisfaction of a full scream. Taiyō calmly started walking me the handful of steps toward the ledge.

My heart was thundering in my chest. “Hold up—” I tried to plant my feet. With my hands twisted behind my back, I grasped as tight as I could at the fabric of Taiyō’s shirt. If he thought he was throwing me over the edge without getting pulled off himself, he was in for a hell of a last-minute surprise.

He shoved me against the railing. I nearly tripped from that force alone. This time, I couldn’t hold back my scream.

“Wait, wait, wait!” Oh god, they were really going to do it. They were going to kill me.

I was over the railing. My heels scrambled to balance on the sliver of balcony between the railing bars. But it wasn’t enough. I was facing a free fall.

“Calm down.” At the last second before my collision course began, a pair of pale arms wrapped under mine, pulling me back. The ground, a merciless drop, was all I could see as my heart pounded in my throat.

Until I felt the cuffs. They clicked around my wrists, locking my hands behind me to one of the railing bars.

I was stuck, facing the plummet, and despite my skill as a contortionist, there was no way I was getting the bobby pins nestled in my braids anywhere near my hands without risking losing my balance. Falling with my wrists pinned behind me would mean dislocating both shoulders and likely snapping both of my wrists too.

Maybe the force would crush all the bones in my hand. They’d slip right through the cuffs and . . .

Oh god.

Fingers brushed my wrist. I thought Noelia was going for my weapon, but instead she unclipped Devroe’s diamond bracelet.

I tried to jerk my wrist away, but the motion only threatened my balance. I had to keep still, doing my best to hold on to the railing behind me with my cuffed hands.

“What, you’ve gotta take my jewelry too?” I twisted my neck to get a look behind me.

Noelia clipped the bracelet onto her own wrist, admiring its shimmer under the night lights. “I’m much more interested in what’s inside.” She patted my shoulder. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep our museum bidder company for you, all right?”

How did she know about that in the first place? How did she know about the dose in my bracelet?

Straining to look past her, I realized Taiyō wasn’t wearing proper black tie. In fact, that vest. Was he dressed as a waiter?

It hit me like lightning. “Are you . . . stealing our plan?”

Noelia smiled.

Oh my god, they were.

“Devroe’s not just going to let you slide in on his target. He’s going to notice when I don’t come back.”

“Are you sure?” She shifted the tennis bracelet. Did she really think they could get Devroe with his own trick?

Could they?

Noelia’s clutch buzzed.

“Game’s over,” Taiyō said. “We should go back down.”

Noelia nodded. “I don’t know how you’ll explain this when the guests get back, but try not to slip until then.”

I heard her heels moving away and couldn’t help but call out one last time. “Why did you turn me in back at the ski school? Was it because your dad lost to my mom and you hate me because of it? Always been out to...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Nancy Paulsen Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2023
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593625366
• ISBN 13: 9780593625361
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 384
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland