You’re bleeding,” I told Jameson.
He showed his teeth in a wicked smile. “I’m also dangerously close to getting mud on… everything.”
There was mud on his face, in his hair. His clothes were drenched in it, his shirt clinging to his abdomen, letting me see every line of the muscles underneath.
“Before you ask,” Jameson murmured. “I’m fine, and so is Gray.”
I wondered if Grayson Hawthorne had even a fleck of mud on him.
“Oren said things got Hawthorne ugly.” I gave Jameson a look.
He shrugged. “Skye has a way of messing with our heads.” Jameson did not elaborate on the mud, the blood, or what exactly he and Grayson had gotten up to. “At the end of the day, we all learned what we needed to know. Skye’s not involved in the kidnapping.”
I’d learned a lot more than that since. The words tumbling out, I told Jameson everything: the picture of Toby, the message the kidnapper had hidden in it, Eve’s comment about dark and dangerous secrets, what Oren had told me about the attempts to hire my security team away.
The more I talked, the closer Jameson moved toward me, the closer I needed to be to him.
“No matter what I do,” I said, our bodies brushing, “I don’t feel like I’m getting anywhere.”
“Maybe that’s the point, Heiress.”
I recognized the tone in his voice, knew it as well as I knew each of his scars. “What are you thinking, Hawthorne?”
“This second message changes things.” Jameson’s arms curved around me. I could feel mud soaking into my shirt, feel the heat of his body from underneath his. “We were wrong.”
“About what?” I asked.
“The person we’re dealing with—they’re not playing a Hawthorne game. In the old man’s games, the clues are always sequential. One clue leads you to the next, if only you can solve it.”
“But this time,” I said, picking up his train of thought, “the first message didn’t lead us anywhere. The second message just came.”
Jameson reached one hand up to touch my face, smearing my jawline with mud. “Ergo, the clues in this game aren’t sequential. Working one isn’t going to magically lead you to the next, Heiress, no matter what you do. Either Toby’s captor just wants you scared, in which case, these are vague warnings with no greater design.”
I stared at him. “Or?” He’d said either.
“Or,” Jameson murmured, “it’s all part of the same riddle: one answer, multiple clues.”
His hip bones pressed lightly into my stomach. “A riddle,” I repeated, my voice rough. “Who took Toby—and why?”
Avenge. Revenge. Vengeance. Avenger. I always win in the end.
“An incomplete riddle,” Jameson elaborated. “Delivered piece by piece. Or a story—and we’re at the mercy of the storyteller.”
The person doling out hints, clues that went nowhere in isolation. “We don’t have what we need to solve this,” I said, hating what I was saying and how defeated I sounded saying it. “Do we?”
“Not yet.”
I wanted to scream, but I looked up at him instead. I saw a jagged cut on the underside of his jaw and reached for his chin. “This looks bad.”
“On the contrary, Heiress, bleeding is a devastatingly good look for me.”
Xander wasn’t the only Hawthorne who specialized in distractions.
Needing this and not liking the look of that cut on his jaw, I allowed myself to be distracted. “Let’s make this a game,” I told Jameson. “I bet that you can’t shower and wash off all that mud before I find what we need from the first aid kit.”
“I have a better idea.” Jameson lowered his lips to mine. My neck arched. More mud on my face, my clothes. “I bet,” he countered, “that you can’t wash all this mud off before I…”
“Before you what?” I murmured.
Jameson Winchester Hawthorne smiled. “Guess.”
CHAPTER 23
Your move.”
I’m back in the park, playing chess opposite Harry. Toby. The second I think the name, his face changes. The beard is gone, his face bruised and swollen.
“Who did this to you?” I ask, my voice echoing and echoing until I can barely hear myself think. “Toby, you have to tell me.”
If only I can get him to tell me, I’ll know.
“Your move.” Toby thunks the black knight into a new position on the board.
I look down, but suddenly, I can’t see any of the pieces. There’s only shadows and fog where each of them should be.
“Your move, Avery Kylie Grambs.”
I whip my head up because it’s not Toby’s voice that says the words this time.
Tobias Hawthorne stares back at me from across the table. “The thing about strategy,” he says, “is that you always have to be thinking seven moves ahead.” He leans across the table.
The next thing I know, he has me by the neck.
“Some people kill two birds with one stone,” he says, strangling me. “I kill twelve.”
I woke up frozen, locked in my own body, my heart in my throat, unable to breathe. Just a dream. I managed to suck in oxygen and roll sideways off my bed, landing in a crouch. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. I didn’t know what time it was, but it was still dark outside. I looked up at the bed.
Jameson wasn’t there. That happened sometimes when his brain wouldn’t stop. The only question tonight was stop what?
Trying to shake off the last remnants of the dream, I strapped on my knife then went to look for him, making my way to Tobias Hawthorne’s study.
The study was empty. No Jameson. I found myself staring at the wall of trophies the Hawthorne grandsons had won—and not just trophies. Books they’d published, patents they’d been granted. Proof that Tobias Hawthorne had made his grandsons extraordinary.
He’d made them in his own image.
The dead billionaire had always thought seven moves ahead, always killed twelve birds with one stone. How many times had the boys told me that? Still, I couldn’t help feeling like my subconscious had just served up a warning—and not about Tobias Hawthorne.
Someone else was out there, strategizing, thinking seven steps ahead. A storyteller telling a story—and making moves all the while.
I always win in the end.
Frustration building inside me, I pushed open the balcony doors. I let the night air hit my face, breathed it in. Down below, Grayson was in the pool, swimming in the dead of night, the pool lit just enough that I could make out his form. The moment I saw him, memory took me.
A crystal glass sits on the table in front of him. His hands lay on either side of the glass, the muscles in them tensed, like he might push off at any moment. I didn’t let myself sink into the memory, but another slice of it hit me anyway as I watched Grayson swimming down below.
“You saved that little girl,” I say.
“Immaterial.” Haunted silver eyes meet mine. “She was easy to save.”