Cinnamon chose that moment to squat. Spurred to action, Kim leaped to grab her. “Outside, Cinnamon! Outside!” She rushed to the door. After putting the dog down on the lawn, she came back but didn’t come all the way into the den.
“Down the hall,” she said gruffly, “last door on your left. That was Colin’s room. Do what you want with the damn box. Not like Shep’s coming back anyway.”
CHAPTER 64
GRAYSON
They found the box hidden behind some loose panels in the back of the closet. Grayson examined it. Wooden, large enough to hold a laptop or a stack of paper files. The wood was hard and sandy in color, and there was no visible hinge or lid on the box, nothing to indicate how to open it.
Clearing a space on the bed, Grayson set the box down. His sisters came closer.
“Crowbar?” Gigi suggested. “Or a hammer of the sledge variety?”
Grayson shook his head. The top of the box—assuming that was the top—appeared to be made of individual strips of wood the width and length of a ruler, bound tightly together. Seams were visible, but impenetrable, so Grayson did what any Hawthorne would have done in his position. He turned the box ninety degrees and pushed at the ends of each and every one of those strips of wood.
On the seventh, he was rewarded: The piece slid out from the others. He pushed it gently until it fell off the box, then examined what lay underneath: another wood panel, solid but for a single hole, just large enough to fit a finger in.
Grayson probed both the panel and the hole before attempting to use the hole to lift the lid of the box.
No dice.
“What are you doing?” Savannah asked.
“It’s a puzzle box.” Grayson kept his reply brief as he turned his attention to the strip of wood he’d removed. Turning it over in his hand, he was rewarded. Carved into the back of the strip of wood, was a long, thin space—and that space held a tool. It was roughly the length of a toothbrush but very thin. One side had a point like the tip of a pen. The other was flat and heavier. Magnetic, most likely, Grayson thought.
“What do you mean a puzzle box?” Gigi asked earnestly.
“The puzzle is finding your way into the box,” Grayson replied. “Call it an added level of security, in case your aunt decided she wanted to know what was inside.”
He dipped the tool into the hole he’d uncovered, first the pen side, then the probable magnet. Nothing happened, so Grayson began running the magnet end over the rest of the box—the top, the sides, then he turned the box over and tried the bottom.
The magnet stuck, and when Grayson pulled, another small wooden panel came off the box, this one in the shape of a T. A quick examination revealed another hole—just large enough for the pen end of the tool. Grayson stuck the pen in. He heard a click, then tested the pen’s movement and realized that he could slide the hole—from the top left corner of the T to the bottom center.
When he did, there was another click.
Grayson turned the box back over.
“Seriously,” Gigi said. “What is happening here?”
“My grandfather was fond of puzzle boxes,” Grayson told her. “I just unlocked something. We need to figure out what.”
He attempted to remove the top of the box again, but that didn’t work.
“Why don’t we just get a saw?” Savannah asked.
“And risk destroying what’s inside?” Grayson replied mildly.
“I’m ninety-seven percent sure that I can very delicately saw that thing open,” Gigi said.
“And what if it’s tamper-proof?” Grayson asked. “For example, there could be two vials of liquid suspended inside in thin glass tubes designed to break if the box is ruptured. And if those liquids mix…” He trailed off ominously.
“Seriously,” Savannah replied. “You think our dad booby-trapped his puzzle box?”
“I think,” Grayson replied, “that he didn’t want anyone but himself accessing whatever’s inside.”
He returned his attention to the box. Something had been unlocked. Grayson tried coming at the top from the side again. None of the remaining strips were loose; none could be pushed out. But when he pressed on the edge of one of those strips, it depressed with a pop, the other end of the strip rising.
Grayson tried using the hole to lift the top again, no dice.
Gigi reached forward and touched another strip. It went down, the same way the one Grayson touched had. She grinned. “Let’s try all of them!”
Before Grayson could say a single word, Gigi had worked her way down the strips, like she was playing a scale on a piano. Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. This time, she was the one who tried snaking a finger down into the hole and lifting the panel.
No go.
“It’s a combination.” Savannah stared at the box but didn’t move to touch it. “We just have to figure out the right keys to hit.”
Grayson stared at the board. Seven keys, which can be pushed down on either side or left neutral. “There’s more than two thousand possible combinations,” he said.
Gigi grinned. “Then we better get started!”
It took forty minutes of systematic attempts before they got lucky and hit on the right combination. When they did, there was another audible click, and this time, when Grayson hooked his finger through the hole in the wood panel, he was able to remove the entire top of the box.
Underneath, they were faced with more wood. Darker, smoother, polished. Grayson ran his hand lightly over its surface. It was made from a single a piece of wood. There wasn’t a single seam, no parts that could be moved or removed.
There was, however, a small rectangular hole cut into its surface. No, Grayson realized. Not a hole.
“We need something to insert in that, right?” Gigi said. She leaned over him and aimed the light from her phone at the rectangle. “Something with teeny tiny pins?”
Savannah reached for the tool that Grayson had uncovered earlier, but it was much too big. The entire rectangle wasn’t much bigger than…
A USB port. Grayson stilled. He thought of the object he’d found, hidden in a frame in Sheffield Grayson’s office. The object that wasn’t a USB.
The object that was, quite obviously now, a key.
SIX YEARS, ELEVEN MONTHS AGO
Fourth of July at Hawthorne House meant a carnival—a private one complete with Ferris wheel, bumper cars, a massive roller coaster, and dozens of challenges and games. From his perch on top of the tree house, Jameson could see it all.
And no one could see him.
“You don’t have to carry me, Grayson.” Emily. Jameson would have recognized her voice anywhere. He couldn’t make out Grayson’s reply, but soon, the two of them were ensconced in the tree house, and Jameson could hear every word.
“Be careful, Em.”
“I’m not going to fall.” Her tone was teasing. There weren’t many people who made a habit of teasing Hawthornes. “Though it would serve my mother right for trying to make me stay in tonight. I mean, honestly, I think my heart could handle one little roller coaster.”
The roller coaster in question wasn’t little, and with Emily, there was never just one anything. She always wanted more.
Jameson and Emily were alike in that way.
I should have been the one to sneak her out, Jameson thought. I should have brought her up here.
But he hadn’t. Grayson had. Perfect, never-broke-the-rules Grayson was breaking them now. At twelve, Jameson had an inkling of why that might be the case. Emily was twelve, too, Grayson thirteen.
And he brought her to our tree house.
“I’m going to kiss you, Grayson Hawthorne.” Emily, her voice as clear as day.
“What?” Grayson, stupefied.
“Don’t tell me no. I am so tired of no. My entire life is no. Just this once, can’t the answer be yes?”
Jameson waited, unnaturally still, for his brother’s reply. It never came, and Emily spoke again. “When you’re scared,” she told Grayson, “you look straight ahead.”
“Hawthornes don’t get scared,” Grayson said stiffly.