I thought past my fury and worry and the dark, looping thoughts. I was three hours behind, and it wasn’t like Oren would have let Jameson and Grayson run off alone.
“If you want to borrow some duct tape when the knuckleheads get back,” Nash drawled, “I could be persuaded.”
“Thanks, Nash.” A little calmer, I stepped into the hall and saw Oren. “Jameson, Grayson, and Eve,” I said immediately, an edge in my voice. “What’s their status?”
“Safe and accounted for,” Oren reported. “Eve made it to the Blake compound but wasn’t allowed admittance. The boys got there shortly thereafter and talked her down. They’re all on their way back now.”
Relief hit, clearing the way for my annoyance to surge. “You let Jameson lock me up!”
“You were safe.” Oren’s lips twitched. “Secured.”
“Behold!” boomed a voice from the other side of Oren. “The heroes ride into battle! Avery will be liberated!”
I looked past Oren to see Xander, Thea, and Rebecca incoming. Xander was holding an enormous metal shield that looked like it had been lifted straight off the arm of a medieval knight.
“I swear to all that is good and holy,” Thea said under her breath, “if you say one more word about LARPing right now, Xander—”
I stepped around Oren. “I appreciate the ‘rescue,’ Xan, but you couldn’t answer your phone?” I looked to Rebecca. “You, either?”
“Sorry,” Rebecca said. “My phone was on silent. We were blowing off some steam.” Her green eyes slid to Thea’s. “Playing pool.”
I glanced at Thea. Her sweater was ripped at the shoulder, her hair markedly less than perfect. The two of them might have been in the billiards room or arcade, but there was no way in hell they’d been playing pool. But at least Rebecca didn’t look like a shell of herself anymore.
“What’s your excuse?” I asked Xander.
He held his shield to the side. “Step into my office.”
I rolled my eyes but joined him.
Xander used the shield to block us off from Oren, then led me around the corner. “I went down the rabbit hole of doing a deep dive on Vincent Blake’s holdings, current and past,” Xander admitted. “Blake was the sole funder of the VB Innovation Lab.” Xander paused, steeling himself. “I recognized the name. VB is where Isaiah Alexander worked right after he was fired.”
Xander’s father worked for Vincent Blake. That thought was like a domino in my mind, knocking down another and another. There are three characters in the parable of the prodigal son, are there not?
The king, the knight, and the bishop. The son who’d stayed faithful.
“Does Isaiah Alexander still work for Blake?” I asked Xander, my mind whirring.
“No,” Xander said emphatically. “Not for fifteen years. And I know what you’re thinking, Avery, but there’s no way Isaiah had any involvement in Toby’s abduction. He’s a mechanic who owns his own garage, and the other mechanic who works for him is out on maternity leave, so he’s been pulling double shifts for weeks.” Xander swallowed. “But still… he might know something that could give us the upper hand. Or know someone who knows something. Or know someone who knows someone who knows—”
Thea placed a hand helpfully over Xander’s mouth.
The file. The domino chain in my mind hit its conclusion, and I sucked in a breath. Isaiah Alexander’s file was empty, and Xander didn’t take the page.
What were the chances that the missing page had mentioned Vincent Blake?
Eve took it. That might have been a leap. It might not have been fair. I couldn’t even tell anymore.
My entire body buzzing, I stepped around Xander’s shield and looked to Oren, who—not surprisingly—had followed us around the corner. “Jameson, Grayson, and Eve are on their way back here?” I asked, clipping the words. “They’re secured, under the watchful eyes of your men, and will be for the next three hours?”
Oren’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “What are you going to do if I say yes?”
That gives us three hours. I looked to Xander. “I think we need to talk to Isaiah. But if you’re not ready—”
“I was born ready!” Xander brandished his shield. He smiled a very Xander Hawthorne smile, then let his bravado falter. “But before we go, group hug?”
CHAPTER 59
An hour later, we were parked outside a small-town mechanic shop with a large security team in tow, having given the paparazzi the slip on the highway. There was only one man working inside the shop. He was under a car when we walked in.
“You’ll have to wait.” Isaiah Alexander’s voice was neither low nor high.
I hoped, for Xander’s sake, that he really wasn’t involved in any of this.
“Need a hand?” Xander offered. When some people got nervous, they clammed up. Xander babbled. “I’m pretty good with mechanical things, unless or maybe especially if they’re flammable.”
That got a chuckle. “Spoken like someone with too much time on their hands.” Isaiah Alexander rolled out from underneath the car and stood. He was tall like Xander but broader through the shoulders. His skin was a darker brown, but their eyes were the same.
“You looking for a job?” he asked Xander, like wayward teenagers showed up here all the time with a trio of teenage girls and several bodyguards in tow.
“I’m Xander.” Xander swallowed. “Hawthorne.”
“I know who you are,” Isaiah said, his tone no-nonsense but somehow gentle. “Looking for a job?”
“Maybe.” Xander shifted his weight from foot to foot and then resumed nervous babbling. “I should probably warn you that I’ve dismantled four and a half Porsches past the point of no return in the last two years. But in my defense, they had it coming, and I needed the parts.”
Isaiah took that in stride. “Like to build things, do you?”
The question—and the slight upward curve of his lips—almost undid me, so I couldn’t imagine how hard it hit Xander.
“You’re not surprised to see me.” Xander sounded stunned—this from a person who could literally stun himself and proceed without missing a beat. “I thought you would be,” he blurted out. “Surprised. Or that you wouldn’t know who I was. I prepared a mental flowchart that geared my reaction toward your exact level of surprise and knowledge.”
Isaiah Alexander looked at his son, his expression steady. “Was it three-dimensional?”
“My mental flowchart?” Xander threw his hands up in the air. “Of course it was three-dimensional! Who makes two-dimensional flowcharts?”
“Nerds?” Thea suggested, and then she stage-whispered, “Ask me who makes three-dimensional flowcharts, Xander.”
“Thea.” Rebecca nudged her.
“I’m helping,” Thea insisted, and sure enough, Xander seemed to steady a little.
“You knew about me?” he asked Isaiah, quiet but more intense than I’d ever seen him.
Isaiah met Xander’s eyes. “Since before you were born.”
Then why weren’t you there? I thought with a ferocity that stole my breath. My own father had been mostly absent, but this was Xander, king of distractions and chaos, BHFF, who’d known about this man for months but had only come here for me.
I couldn’t bear the idea of him getting hurt.