“Earlier today,” I told them in a speech that I had rehearsed, “the remains of a man that we believe to be William Blake were found on the grounds of the Hawthorne estate.”
I stuck to my script. Landon had timed the leak about the body perfectly—the story she’d planted was already up, but it was the footage of what I was saying now that would define it. I sold the story: Will Blake had physically assaulted an underage female, and Tobias Hawthorne had intervened to protect her. Law enforcement was investigating, but based on what we’d been able to piece together ourselves, we expected the autopsy to reveal that Blake had died from blunt-force trauma to the head.
Tobias Hawthorne had dealt those blows.
That last bit might not have been true, but it was sensational. It was a story. And I was here now to pay my respects to the deceased’s family, on behalf of myself and the remaining Hawthornes.
I didn’t take questions. Instead, I turned and walked toward the boundary of Vincent Blake’s property. I knew from my research that Legacy Ranch was more than a quarter of a million acres—nearly four hundred square miles.
I stopped under an enormous brick arch, part of an equally enormous wall. The archway was big enough for a bus to fit underneath. As I approached, a black truck barreled toward me from inside the compound, down a long dirt road.
Beyond this wall, there were more than eighty thousand acres of active farmland, more than a thousand productive oil wells, the world’s largest privately owned collection of quarter horses, and a truly substantial number of cattle.
And somewhere, beyond this wall, on these acres, there was a house.
“You’re about to trespass on private property.” The men who exited the black truck were dressed like ranch hands, but they moved like soldiers.
Hoping I hadn’t miscalculated—because if I had, the entire world was witnessing that miscalculation—I replied to the man who had spoken. “Even if I have one of these?”
I opened my fingers just far enough for them to see the seal.
Less than a minute later, I was in the cab of the truck, barreling toward the unknown.
It was a full ten minutes before the house came into view. The driver, who was definitely armed, hadn’t said a word to me.
I looked down at the seal resting in my palm. “You haven’t asked where I got it.”
He didn’t take his eyes off the road. “When someone has one of those, you don’t ask.”
If Hawthorne House looked like a castle, Vincent Blake’s home called to mind a fortress. It was made of dark stone, its square lines interrupted only by two giant round columns rising into turrets. A wrought-iron balcony lined the front perimeter on the second floor. I half expected a drawbridge, but instead there was a wraparound porch.
Eve stood on that porch, her amber hair blowing in the wind.
Blake’s security followed me as I walked toward her. When I stepped up onto the porch, Eve turned, a strategic move designed to force me into following.
“This all would have been so much easier,” she said, “if you’d just given me what I asked for.”
CHAPTER 78
Eve didn’t lead me into the house. She led me around back. A man stood there. He had suntanned skin and silver hair shorn to the scalp. I knew he had to be in his eighties, but he looked closer to sixty-five—and like he could run a marathon.
He was holding a shotgun.
As I watched, he took aim at the sky. The sound of the shot was earsplitting and echoed through the countryside as a bird plummeted to the ground. Vincent Blake said something—I couldn’t hear what—and the largest bloodhound I’d ever seen took off after the kill.
Blake lowered his weapon. Slowly, he turned to face me. “Around here,” he called, in that smooth, borderline-aristocratic voice I recognized all too well from the phone, “we cook what we shoot.”
He held out the gun, and someone rushed to take it from him. Then Blake strode toward us. He settled down on a cement wall near a massive firepit, and Eve led me right up to it—and him.
“Where are Grayson and Toby?” That was the only greeting this man was going to get out of me.
“Enjoying my hospitality.” Blake eyed the large box I carried in my hands. Wordlessly, I opened it. I’d stopped in the vault to retrieve the royal chess set. Once I’d been granted admission to Blake’s lands, I’d had Oren surreptitiously hand it to me.
Now I set it in front of Blake, an offering of sorts.
He picked up one of the pieces, examining the multitude of shining black diamonds, the artistry of the design, then snorted and tossed the piece back down. “Tobias always was the showy type.” Blake held out his right hand, and someone placed a bowie knife in it.
My heart leapt into my throat, but all the king of this kingdom did was withdraw a small piece of wood from his pocket.
“A set you carve yourself,” he told me, “plays just the same.”
That’s not a carving knife. I didn’t let him intimidate me into saying that out loud. Instead, I leaned forward to place the seal I’d flashed to gain entrance beside him on the wall. “I believe this is yours,” I told him. Then I nodded to the chess set I’d brought. “And we’ll call that a gift.”
“I didn’t ask you to bring me a gift, Avery Kylie Grambs.”
I met his iron-hard gaze. “You didn’t ask for anything. You told me to bring you your son, and you’ll get him.” By now, Blake doubtlessly would have heard the reports that Landon had leaked. There was a good chance that he’d watched my press conference. “Once the investigation is complete,” I continued, “the authorities will release his remains to you. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry for your loss.”
“I don’t lose, Avery Kylie Grambs.” Blake’s knife flashed in the sun as he scraped it along the wood. “My son, on the other hand, appears to have lost quite a bit.”
“Your son,” I said, “impregnated an underage girl, then got physical with her when she had the audacity to be devastated at the realization that he’d just been using her to get close enough to make a move against Tobias Hawthorne.”
“Hmmmm.” Blake made a humming sound that felt far more threatening than it should have. “Will was fifteen when Tobias and I parted ways. The boy was irate that we’d been double-crossed. I had to disabuse him of the notion that we had been anything. What happened was between young Tobias and me.”
“Tobias bested you.” That was my first thrust in this little verbal sword match of ours.
Blake didn’t even feel it. “And look how well that turned out for him.”
I wasn’t sure if that was a reference to the fact that the only person who had ever bested Vincent Blake had turned out to be one of the most formidable minds in a generation—or a self-satisfied prediction that all of Tobias Hawthorne’s achievements would be nothing in the end.
The billionaire was dead, his fortune ripe for the taking.