“Well, she knows now.” Zoe shrugged.

Ezra cast around for a bench, for a seat, for something to steady himself. He thought he was going to be sick. Mimi would never forgive this. He didn’t blame her. He wouldn’t forgive it either. Fidelity was the bare minimum.

Zoe seemed to take pity on him. “Bruno, how about if he comes back with me for a minute? As my guest.” She reached into her messenger bag and pulled out an ID. Then to Ezra: “You’re lucky this is my work-study gig. I get special privileges.”

Bruno shrugged like the artifice he’d constructed around his tough-guy security image didn’t matter one bit.

“Come on,” Zoe said, as if she weren’t dangerous, as if she hadn’t maimed Ezra just a few hours earlier with her pepper spray and her excellent hand-eye coordination that had managed to get him right in both eyes. (And possibly his lungs.) “You look like you could use some luck. I guess, since it is New Year’s Eve, I’ll try to make that happen.”

Ezra nearly fell to his knees in disbelief. Then he remembered that he didn’t believe in luck. Luck was what beginners relied on at the card table; luck was leaving something up to chance. What Ezra believed in had nothing to do with luck, but he didn’t have a better option, or another hand to play. He shuffled his feet through the turnstile and left the next steps up to chance.

TWENTY-ONE

Frankie

Well, it wasn’t glamorous, but Frankie had hidden behind a tree while Zoe approached Ezra, and then watched as he scrambled into the library, with Zoe right behind. Then Frankie pointed herself in the other direction as far away as she could get on foot with a head injury and several inches of snow. She could only imagine how Ezra would hit the marbled rotunda roof if Zoe shared her discovery of a three-pack of condoms, and Frankie wanted to be nowhere near that emotional detonation when the time came. Ezra was, of course, a one-woman man, and Frankie knew he’d never forgive himself for straying, even if she were the party involved. Especially if she were the party involved.

She picked up her pace now, something coming loose in her, and she didn’t think she could blame the concussion. She knew herself well enough to know that if she had agreed to the scavenger hunt, and if she had agreed to partner with Ezra, that she would have gone in whole hog. Even if she begrudged it. Even if she hated him. Frankie had never been one to enact the mercy rule, to wave a fellow competitor over the figurative finish line ahead of her because she’d already won all the other trophies. No, she may have hated that she was a prodigal drone, she may have despised that she felt like a windup toy putting on a performance for the adults who were significantly more invested in her success than she was, but she still wanted to win. She’d always been wired that way.