“Glitter cannon,” Xander said.
I shot him a look. This really wasn’t the time for levity—or sparkles.
“This right here is a glitter cannon,” Xander reiterated. “Detonate one in the middle of a game, and it makes a huge mess. The kind that gets everywhere, sticks to everything.”
Grayson’s expression hardened. “And runs down the clock while you clean it up.”
“While you try to clean it up,” Libby said gently. She’d been quiet in all of this, but my sister had empathy in spades, and she didn’t have to know Grayson or Jameson or even Eve as well as I did to know how hard they’d been hit.
“Some things don’t clean easy,” Nash agreed in a slow, steady drawl, his eyes finding Libby’s like it was the most natural thing in the world. “You’ll think you’ve finally got it all. Everything’s fine. And then five years later…”
“There’s still glitter in Grayson’s bathroom,” Xander finished. I got the feeling that wasn’t a metaphor.
“Luke did this,” I said. “He set this up. He detonated the blast. He wants us distracted.” He wants to run down the clock. He wants us to lose.
Tick tock.
Eve turned her phone off and tossed it roughly onto the desk. “Screw the glitter,” she said. “I don’t want to figure out what happens to Toby if that timer hits zero.”
None of us did.
Xander played the conversation with Luke back again, and we got to work.
CHAPTER 33
6 HOURS, 17 MIN, 9 SEC…
It was getting to the point where I didn’t even need to look at the time. I just knew. We weren’t getting anywhere. I tried to clear my head, but fresh air didn’t help. Giving money anonymously to people who needed it didn’t help.
When I went back inside, I arrived in the circular library just in time to hear Xander’s phone go off. He was the only person I knew who used the first twelve digits of pi as a ringtone. After an uncharacteristically muted conversation, he brought the phone to me.
“Max,” he mouthed.
I took the phone. “Let me guess,” I said, holding it to my ear. “You’ve seen the news?”
“What makes you think that?” Max responded. “I was just calling to catch you up on my bodyguard situation. Piotr stubbornly refuses to choose a theme song, but otherwise, our bodyguard-and-bodyguard-ee relationship is working out quite well.”
Leave it to Max to make light of needing security. Because of me. I couldn’t help feeling responsible, any more than I could help feeling like Eve had been outed to the world only because she’d made the poor choice of coming to me for help.
My name was the one on the envelopes, the one on the box. I was the one in Luke’s sights, but anyone close to me could end up in the crosshairs.
“I’m sorry,” I told Max.
“I know,” my best friend replied. “But don’t worry. I’ll choose a theme song for him.” She paused. “Xander said something about… a cannon?”
The whole story burst out, like water demolishing a broken dam: the package delivery, the box, the phone, the call with “Luke”—and his ultimatum.
“You sound like a person who needs to think out loud,” Max opined. “Proceed.”
I did. I just kept talking and talking, hoping my brain would find something different to say this time. I got to the event in the calendar and said, “We thought Niv might be a reference to an SEC form, N-four. We’ve spent hours trying to track down Tobias Hawthorne’s filings. I guess Niv could be a name, or initials, but—”
“Niv,” Max repeated. “Spelled N-I-V?”
“Yes.”
“N-I-V,” she repeated. “As in New International Version?”
I tilted my head to the side. “New international version of what?”
“The B-I-B-L-E—and now, I am officially going to have Sunday school songs running on a loop all night.”
“The Bible,” I repeated, and suddenly, it clicked. “Luke.”
“My second-favorite Gospel,” Max noted. “I’ll always be a John girl at heart.”
I barely heard her. My brain was going too fast, images flashing through my mind, slices of memory piling up one after the other. “The numbers.”
The combination might be just a combination, Jameson had said. But there’s also the possibility that the numbers themselves are a clue.
“What numbers?” Max asked.
My heart beat viciously against my rib cage. “Fifteen, eleven, thirty-two.”
“Are you faxing kidding me?” Max was delighted. “Am I about to solve a Hawthorne riddle?”
“Max!”
“The book of Luke,” she said, “chapter fifteen, verses eleven through thirty-two. It’s a parable.”
“Which one?” I asked.
“The parable of the prodigal son.”
CHAPTER 34
None of us slept more than three hours that night. We read every version of Luke 15:11–32 that we could find, every interpretation of it, every reference to it.
Nine seconds left on the timer. Eight. I watched it count down. Eve was sitting beside me, her feet curled under her body. Libby was on my other side. The boys were standing. Xander had the recorder ready.
Three. Two. One—
The phone rang. I answered it and set it to speaker so everyone could hear. “Hello.”
“Well, Avery Kylie Grambs?”
The use of my full name did not go unnoticed. “Luke, chapter fifteen, verses eleven through thirty-two.” I kept my voice calm, even.
“What about Luke, chapter fifteen, verses eleven through thirty-two?”
I didn’t want to perform for him. “I solved your puzzle. Let me talk to Toby.”
“Very well.”
There was silence, and then I heard Toby’s voice. “Avery. Don’t—”
The rest of that sentence was cut off. My stomach sank. I felt fury snaking its way through my body. “What did you do to him?”
“Tell me about Luke, chapter fifteen, verses eleven through thirty-two.”
He has Toby. I have to play this his way. All I could do was hope my adversary would eventually tip his hand. “The prodigal son demanded his inheritance early,” I said, trying not to let any of the emotions I was feeling into my voice. “He abandoned his family and squandered the fortune he’d been given. But despite all of this, his father embraced him upon his return.”
“A wasteful youth,” the man said, “wandering the world—ungrateful. A benevolent father, ready to welcome him home. But if memory serves correctly, there were three characters in that story, and you’ve only mentioned two.”
“The brother.” Eve came to stand beside me and spoke before I could. “He stayed and worked alongside his father for years for no reward.”
There was silence on the other end of the phone line. And then, the slash of a verbal knife: “I will talk only to the heiress. The one Tobias Hawthorne chose.”
Eve shrank in on herself, like she’d been struck, her eyes wet, her expression like stone. On the other end of the line, there was silence.
Had he hung up?
Panicked, my grip on the phone tightened. “I’m here!”
“Avery Kylie Grambs, there are three characters in the parable of the prodigal son, are there not?”