So, two boxes with secrets. In the third, you’ll find something much more valuable. Tell me what you find in the third box, and you’ll win the mark.
It was called a mark. Not a chip. Not a token. A mark. And why was a mark necessary at all? It had already been established at that point that they all knew the stakes they were playing for.
Leave the manor and the grounds in the condition in which you found them. Dig up the yard, and you’d best fill the holes. Anything broken must be mended. Leave no stone unturned but smuggle nothing out.
The stone and the turning—that could have referred to the statue. But what if it didn’t?
Two hundred feet up.
Likewise, you may do no damage to your fellow players. They, like the house and the grounds, will be left in the condition in which you found them. Violence of any kind will be met with immediate expulsion from the Game.
That seemed straightforward. The only words that even remotely jumped out to Jameson were condition and damage.
Were they looking for something damaged?
Something for which the condition mattered a great deal? Art. Antiques.
Two hundred thirty feet up.
You have twenty-four hours, beginning at the top of the hour. After that, the prize will be considered forfeit.
“The top of the hour.” Jameson wondered how many clocks there were in the manor.
Two hundred seventy feet up.
If that’s your way of asking if I’ve made it easy for you all, I have not. Jameson was retreading old ground now, and he and Avery had almost finished the climb. No rest for the wicked, my dear. But it would hardly be sporting if I hadn’t given you everything you needed to win.
Jameson reached the top of the cliff and stepped onto solid ground. The Game starts when you hear the bells. Until then, I suggest you all let the wheels turn a bit and acquaint yourself with the competition.
“You’re thinking,” Avery commented, stepping back into her dress. “You’re in deep.”
Deep in his own mind, deep in the weeds of the Game.
Jameson zipped her dress for her, but this time, he didn’t linger on the task. “I’m going back through everything that Rohan said. There are certain phrases that stick out.”
“Smuggle nothing out?” Avery suggested wryly.
“That would be one,” Jameson agreed, a low buzz building beneath his skin. “But not the only one.”
“No rest for the wicked.” That was the one Avery went for first. “No stone unturned.” She paused. “It reminds me of the first clue in my very first Hawthorne game. The idioms in your letters, remember?”
Jameson gave her a look. Of course he remembered. He remembered everything about those early days. “Technically,” he said, “that wasn’t your first Hawthorne game. The keys,” he reminded her. They were a Hawthorne tradition. “No rest for the wicked. No stone unturned. Let the wheels turn a bit. Dig up the yard. Fill the holes. Anything broken must be mended. The mark.”
The possibilities and combinations twisted and turned in Jameson’s mind.
The gate to the stone garden was still open. The moment Jameson stepped through, the moment he looked out upon the thousands and thousands of stones that paved the ground, he saw it.
“Leave no…” he started to say.
“… stone unturned,” Avery finished. For a moment, they just stood there, staring out at this massive haystack, contemplating the possibility of one very small needle.
“There are probably a ton of stones in the manor, too,” Avery commented. “The walls of the room we started in were stone.”
Jameson’s hand came to rest on the cast-iron lock. It had been unlocked when they’d gotten here. He turned it around, and there, on the back, he found a message.
HINT: GO BACK TO THE START.
CHAPTER 63
GRAYSON
A single call to Zabrowski was all it took to obtain Kimberly Wright’s address, two towns away.
“Xan and I will wait outside,” Nash told Grayson once they arrived. “I wager we can find a way of entertaining ourselves.”
This was something for Grayson and his sisters to do alone. Now that the truth was out there, the last remains of the barriers he’d erected against thinking of them that way crumbled. The twins were his sisters, regardless of whether or not he was anything to them.
“It’s been a while since we’ve heard from Jamie,” Xander added amiably. “He’s due for some yodeling. Take all the time you need, Gray.”
Grayson exited the SUV, waited for Savannah and Gigi to do the same, and then the three of them made their way up to Kimberly Wright’s front door. A three-foot-tall chain-link fence surrounded the front yard, which was all dirt and weeds, no grass. The house was painted a cheerful yellow that contrasted with the dark metal bars across the windows.
There was a No Solicitors sign on the front door.
Gigi knocked. Two seconds later, Grayson heard a dog barking, and two seconds after that, the door opened, revealing a woman in a ratty floral bathrobe. She used one foot to hold back a dachshund that looked remarkably rotund for the breed.
“That is a very fat dachshund,” Gigi said, her eyes round.
“It’s mostly hair,” the woman in the bathrobe said. “Isn’t that right, Cinnamon?” The dog growled at Grayson and attempted to get its front paws up on the foot that was holding her back.
It failed.
“I’d tell you I don’t want whatever you’re selling,” Kimberly Wright continued, “but you’ve got his eyes.” She was looking at Savannah when she said that, but then she shifted her gaze to Grayson. “You too.”
Gigi offered up a friendly smile. “I’m Gigi. That’s Savannah.”
“I know who you are,” Kim replied gruffly. “Down, Cinnamon.”
Cinnamon, Grayson could not help but notice, was already down.
“And that’s Grayson,” Gigi continued. “Our brother.”
Grayson waited for Savannah to correct her twin, but she didn’t. Our brother.
“Well, don’t just stand there,” Kim said, bending down to pick up Cinnamon—no easy task. “Come in.”
The house was compact: a den to the right of the front door, a kitchen straight ahead, and a short hall to the left, which presumably led to the bedrooms. Kim ushered them into the den.
“I like your recliners,” Gigi said earnestly. There were four of them in a room that wasn’t big enough for much else. On the back of each recliner, there was a crocheted blanket. The blankets matched; the recliners didn’t.
“You’re a smiley one, aren’t you?” Kim asked Gigi.
“I try,” Gigi replied, but the words didn’t come out quite as cheerful as Grayson would have expected. It occurred to him for the first time that maybe Gigi wasn’t just naturally sunny.
Maybe that was a choice.
Their aunt stared at Gigi for a moment. “You look like him, you know. My boy.”
“I know,” Gigi said softly.
Grayson thought about Acacia telling him that the resemblance had endeared Gigi to their father when she was very young, and for reasons he could neither pinpoint nor understand, his heart ached.
This woman was his aunt. Their aunt, and she’d never met a single one of them.
“Are you here to tell me why your father won’t return my calls?” Kim asked bluntly.
Savannah was the first one to summon up a reply to that question. “Dad’s gone.”
Kim’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”
“He left on a business trip a year and a half ago and never came back.” Savannah’s voice didn’t waver.
“Did you call the police?” Kim dumped her dachshund on one of the recliners. Cinnamon hopped to the floor with a thud.
“Mom did, back then. But he’s not missing,” Gigi told her aunt. “He left.”
Grayson could hear how saying those words hurt her. Now you believe he left. That should have made Grayson happy. That had been his goal, after all. To keep her—to keep both of them—from questioning that explanation, from getting at the truth.
All I have to do is make sure it stays that way.