Eve leaned forward. “What happened to him? Your Liam?”
Mallory stiffened like a marionette whose strings were suddenly pulled tight. “He left.” Her voice was calm—too calm. “Liam left.”
Eve took both of Mallory’s hands in hers. “Why did he leave?”
“He just did.”
The doorbell rang, and Oren strode to the door. I followed him to the foyer. As his hand closed over the knob, he gave an order, doubtless to one of his men outside.
“Close in.” Oren glanced over his shoulder at me. “Stay put, Avery.”
“Why is Avery staying put?” Xander asked, coming into the foyer beside me. Rebecca took one step to follow him, then hesitated, frozen in her own personal purgatory, caught between us and the words being murmured between Eve and her mother.
My brain got to the answer to Xander’s question before Oren could articulate it. “This is the first time I’ve left the estate since the last package was delivered,” I noted. “You’re expecting another delivery.”
In reply, my head of security answered the door with his gun drawn.
“Hello to you, too,” Thea said dryly.
“Don’t mind Oren.” Xander greeted her. “He mistook you for a threat of the less passive-aggressive variety.”
The sound of Thea’s voice shattered the ice that had frozen Rebecca’s feet to the ground. “Thea. I wanted to call, but my mom took my phone.”
“And someone turned mine off,” Thea said. She looked from Rebecca to me. “While I was in the shower, someone came into my house, into my bedroom, turned off my phone, and left this beside it, with handwritten instructions to bring it here.”
Thea held out an envelope. It was a deep golden color, shining and reflective.
“Someone broke into your house?” I asked, my voice hushed.
“Into your bedroom?” Rebecca was beside Thea in a heartbeat.
Oren took possession of the envelope. He’d set a trap for the courier here, but the message had been delivered elsewhere—to Thea.
Did you see her photos? That video? I asked Toby’s captor silently. Is this what she gets, for helping me?
“I had a guard on your house,” Oren told Thea. “He didn’t report anything unusual.”
I stared at the envelope in Oren’s hand, at my full name written across the front. Avery Kylie Grambs. Something in me snapped, and I snatched the envelope, turning it over to see a wax seal holding it closed.
The design of the seal took my breath away. Rings of concentric circles.
“It’s like the disk,” I said, the words catching in my throat.
“Don’t open it,” Oren told me. “I need to make sure—”
The rest of his words were lost to the roar in my mind. My fingers tore into the envelope, like my body had been set to autopilot at full throttle. Once I’d broken the seal, the envelope unfolded, revealing a message written on the interior in shining silver script.
363-1982.
That was it. Just those seven digits. A phone number? There was no area code, but—
“Avery!” Rebecca yelped, and I realized the paper I was holding had caught fire.
Flames devoured the message. I dropped it, and seconds later, the envelope and the numbers were nothing but ashes. “How…” I started to say.
Xander came to stand beside me. “I could rig an envelope to do that.” He paused. “Honestly? I have rigged an envelope to do that.”
“I told you to wait, Avery.” Oren gave me what I could only describe as a Dad Look. I was clearly on very thin ice with him.
“What did the message say?” Rebecca asked me.
Xander produced a pen and a sheet of paper shaped like a scone, seemingly out of nowhere. “Write down everything you remember,” he told me.
I closed my eyes, picturing the number—and then wrote: 363-1982.
I turned the paper around so that Xander could see it. “Nineteen eighty-two.” Xander latched on to the numbers after the dash. “Could be a year. The three-hundred-and-sixty-third day of which was December twenty-ninth.”
December 29, 1982.
“Looks like a phone number to me,” Thea scoffed.
“That was my first thought, too,” I murmured. “But no area code.”
“Was there anything that could indicate location?” Xander asked. “If we could derive an area code, that would give us a number to call.”
A number to call. A date to check. And who knew how many other possibilities there were? It could be a cipher, coordinates, a bank account…
“I recommend we return to Hawthorne House immediately,” Oren cut in. His expression was downright stony. “That is, if you’re still interested in letting me do my job, Avery.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. I trusted Oren with my life, and I owed him better than making his job harder than it had to be. “I saw the seal on the envelope, and something in me snapped.”
Rings of concentric circles. When Toby was taken, I’d thought that the disk might have something to do with why, but when his captor had sent it back, I’d assumed that I was wrong.
But what if I wasn’t?
What if the disk had always been part of the riddle?
“The number could be a misdirection,” Xander said, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet. “The seal might be the message.”
“Out!”
I turned back toward the living room. Mallory Laughlin was stalking toward us.
“I want all of you out of my house!”
Our presence here had never been welcome, and now there’d been fire.
“Ma’am.” Oren held up a hand. “I’m recommending that we all return to Hawthorne House.”
“What?” Thea asked, her honey-brown eyes narrowing.
Oren flicked his gaze toward her. “You should plan for an extended stay. Call it a slumber party.”
“You think Thea’s in danger.” Rebecca looked around the room. “You think we all are.”
“Breaking and entering is an escalation.” Oren’s tone was measured. “We’re dealing with an individual who has proved that he is willing to go through intermediaries to get to Avery. He used Thea to send a message this time—and not just in the literal sense.”
I can get to anyone. You can’t protect them. That was the message.
“This is ridiculous,” Rebecca’s mom spat. “I won’t be accompanying you anywhere, Mr. Oren, and neither will my daughters.”
“Daughter,” Rebecca said quietly. I felt my heart twist in my chest.
Oren was not dissuaded. “I’m afraid that even if you weren’t already at risk, this visit would put you on our villain’s radar. As much as you don’t want to hear it, Ms. Laughlin—”
“It’s doctor, actually,” Rebecca’s mother snapped. “And I don’t care about the risk. The world can’t take any more from me than it already has.”
I moved closer to Rebecca, whose arms were wrapped around her middle, like all she could do was stand there and just keep taking the blows.
“That isn’t true,” Thea said quietly.
“Thea.” Rebecca’s voice was strangled. “Don’t.”
Mallory Laughlin spared a fond look for Thea. “Such a nice girl.” She turned to Rebecca. “I don’t know why you have to be so nasty to your sister’s friends.”
“I am not,” Thea said, steel in her voice, “a nice girl.”