“Is this your father?” I said gently. “Isaiah Alexander?”
Xander turned to look at me. Then, as if coming to a very serious decision, he lifted his hand and pressed one finger to the end of my nose. “Boop.”
“You’re not going to distract me,” I told him, the exasperation I might have normally felt replaced by something more tender and painful. “Come on, Xan. I’m your BHHFF. Talk to me.”
“Double boop.” Xander pressed my nose again. “What’s the extra H for?”
“Honorary,” I told him. “You guys made me an honorary Hawthorne, and that makes me your Best Honorary Hawthorne Friend Forever. So talk.”
“Triple boo—” Xander started to say, but I ducked before he could touch my nose. I straightened, caught his hand gently in mine, and squeezed.
This was Xander, so there wasn’t a hint of accusation in my voice when I asked my next question. “Did you take the page that was in this file?”
Xander gave an emphatic shake of his head. “I didn’t even know Isaiah was on the List. I can probably tell you what his file says, though. I kind of spent the past several months making a file of my own.”
This time, I didn’t push down the urge to hug him. Hard. “Eve said he was a PhD who got fired from a Hawthorne lab,” I said, once I’d pulled back.
“That about covers it,” Xander replied, his cheery tone a copy of a copy of the real thing. “Except for timing. It’s possible that Isaiah was fired around the time I was conceived. Maybe because I was conceived? I mean, maybe not! But maybe?”
Poor Xander. I thought about what he’d said in Chutes and Ladders. “Is that why you haven’t contacted him?”
“I can’t just call him.” Xander gave me a plaintive look. “What if he hates me?”
“No one could possibly hate you, Xander,” I told him, my heart twisting.
“Avery, people have hated me my whole life.” There was something in his tone that made me think that very few people understood what it was like to be Xander Hawthorne.
“Not anyone who knows you,” I said fiercely.
Xander smiled, and something about it made me want to cry. “Do you think it’s okay,” he said, sounding younger than I’d ever heard him, “that I loved playing those Saturday morning games? Loved growing up here? Loved the great and terrible Tobias Hawthorne?”
I couldn’t answer that for him—for any of them. I couldn’t make these past few days hurt less. But there was one thing I could say. “You didn’t love the great and terrible Tobias Hawthorne. You loved the old man.”
“I was the only one who knew that he was dying.” Xander turned to pick up what looked like a tuning fork, but he didn’t make a single move to add it to whatever contraption he was building. “He kept it a secret from everyone else for weeks. He wanted me with him at the end, and do you know what he said to me—the very last thing?”
“What?” I asked quietly.
“By the time this is over, you’ll know what kind of man I was—and what kind of man you want to be.”
CHAPTER 41
I headed back to the solarium empty-handed, having hit yet another dead end. I’ll be in touch. That sinister promise echoed in my mind as I rounded the corner and saw Eve’s guard. I nodded to him, glanced briefly back at Oren, then pushed opened the solarium door.
Inside, Eve was sitting with a file laid out on the ground in front of her and a phone in her hand. Taking pictures.
“What are you doing?” I asked, startled.
Eve looked up. “What do you think I’m doing?” Her voice broke. “I need sleep. I know I need sleep, but I can’t stop. And I can’t take these files out of this room, so I thought…” She shook her head, her eyes tearing, amber hair falling into her face. “Never mind. It’s dumb.”
“It’s not dumb,” I told her. “And you do need sleep.”
We all did.
I checked Jameson’s wing before I returned to my own. He wasn’t in either. I remembered what it had been like when I’d discovered that my mom wasn’t who I’d thought she was. I’d felt like I was mourning her death all over again, and the only thing that had helped was Libby reminding me of the kind of person my mom had been, proving to me that I had known her in every way that mattered.
But what could I say to Jameson or Xander or any of them about Tobias Hawthorne? That he really was brilliant? Strategic? That he’d had some small shreds of conscience? That he’d cared for his family, even if he’d disinherited all of them for a stranger?
By the time this is over, you’ll know what kind of man I was—and what kind of man you want to be. I thought about the billionaire’s last words to Xander. By the time what was over? By the time Xander had found his father? By the time all the games that Tobias Hawthorne had planned before his death had been played?
That thought drew my gaze to the leather satchel on my dresser. For two days, I’d been consumed with Toby’s captor’s sick riddle and the hope, however thin, that we were getting closer to solving it. But the truth was that all the ruminating we’d done had gotten us nowhere. It had probably been designed to lead us nowhere—until the riddle was complete.
I’ll be in touch.
I hated this. I needed a win. I needed a distraction. By the time this is over, you’ll know what kind of man I was. Slowly, I walked over to my dresser, thought about Tobias Hawthorne and those files, and picked up the satchel.
Moving methodically, I laid out the objects I hadn’t yet used. The steamer. The flashlight. The beach towel. The glass circle. I said the last clue Jameson and I had uncovered out loud. “Don’t breathe.”
I cleared my mind. After a moment, my gaze locked on the towel, then on the blue-green circle. That color. A towel. Don’t breathe.
With sudden, visceral clarity, I knew what I had to do.
A person stopped breathing when they were terrified, surprised, awed, trying to be quiet, surrounded by smoke—or underwater.
CHAPTER 42
A motion-sensor light came on as I stepped onto the patio. In my mind, in the span of a single heartbeat, I saw the pool the way it looked in daytime, with light reflecting off the water, the tiles on the bottom making it look as breathtakingly blue-green as the Mediterranean.
The same shade as the piece of glass I carried in my right hand. I held the beach towel in my left. Clearly, this was going to require getting wet.
At night, the water was darker, shadowy. I heard Grayson swimming before I saw him and felt the exact moment he became aware of my presence.
Grayson Davenport Hawthorne’s hand slapped the edge of the pool. He pulled himself upright. “Avery.” His voice was quiet, but in the still of the night, it carried. “You shouldn’t be here.” With me went unsaid. “You should be asleep.”