Glorious Rivals(70)

Lyra could feel his mind churning again, and she knew—knew—that there wasn’t a thing she could say to stop it.

“There’s nothing up here,” Grayson declared finally. “And we’re about to have company.”

Rohan and Savannah weren’t more than twenty yards away now, compasses in hand, but as Lyra and Grayson began the climb back down the tree, Lyra caught sight of movement in the shadow of the closest, massive tree, and she realized: We already have company.

As Lyra’s feet hit the ground, Brady Daniels met her gaze from the shadows. And then—slowly, deliberately—he angled his gaze down to the ground, to the base of the tree.

Lyra ran her foot over grass and dirt, and she realized that something had been buried there, in the forest floor. Can’t see the forest for the trees. Lyra didn’t start digging immediately, not with Rohan and Savannah incoming, but she couldn’t help thinking that Grayson had been right about what he’d said before, when he’d talked about paying the piper.

Nothing stayed buried forever.

Chapter 59

GRAYSON

Grayson had not meant to tell Lyra about his father, but he was fully cognizant of why he’d done so. He’d wanted to tell her something real, something true, to give her a secret, even if it wasn’t the one he’d been lying and not-lying to keep from her since the bonfire.

The secret he was keeping still.

Lyra couldn’t have made it clearer or more explicit: She didn’t want that kind of protection. Not from him. Not from anyone. But she wasn’t the only person Grayson was trying to protect. Alice had threatened Jameson in Prague. Based on Jameson’s behavior, it was a sure bet that the woman had threatened Avery, too.

Lyra Kane wanted, maybe even needed, truth from those she loved. And Grayson couldn’t give it to her.

Knowing he’d pay for it later, Grayson shoved that thought aside, because Savannah and Rohan were here.

Savannah took one look at the handholds on the tree and began to climb. Grayson expected Rohan to follow, but instead, Rohan took up position at the bottom of the tree, tilted his head slightly to one side, and set his sights on Lyra.

“Figured out why yet?” Rohan asked her. Grayson levied a thousand-yard stare at Rohan, but apparently, the Brit had never encountered a warning he didn’t wholly ignore. “Why your brother is so sure that Ms. Kane is a liability,” Rohan clarified for Grayson’s benefit, and then, without waiting for a response, Rohan angled his gaze toward the canopy. “I suppose some people just don’t know when to stop.”

Grayson allowed himself to be baited into looking up. Savannah hadn’t stopped her climb where the handhelds ended, the way that Grayson and Lyra had. Now, she was climbing the tree with no holds, no branches—and no sign of stopping.

As loath as Grayson was to leave Lyra with Rohan, Grayson knew quite well that Rohan had assessed Savannah with remarkable accuracy. Grayson’s sister simply was not going to stop.

Not at the lowest branch.

Not at any of them.

Not until she found a ledger.

“This tree is more than a hundred feet tall,” Grayson said grimly.

Lyra caught his gaze. Go. This was Lyra telling Grayson that, when it came to handling Rohan, she could damn well take care of herself.

Grayson took Lyra at her silent word and began to climb—fast and hard, the way only someone who’d had the hesitation trained out of them could. Despite his pace, it took time for him to pull even with Savannah.

Forty feet off the ground.

“I don’t need your help,” Savannah told him through gritted teeth. “I never did.”

The teeth gave her away. Savannah was in pain—physical pain. Her ACL. “There’s nothing up here,” Grayson told her. “No matter how far you climb, you won’t find a ledger.”

“You don’t know that.”

“My brothers and Avery wouldn’t make anyone climb this high.”

“I suppose I’m just expected to trust you on that?” Savannah knew exactly how to deploy every pointed arch of her brows. “Trust them.”

She might as well have been wearing literal armor to go along with the clothes they’d been given for the game. Grayson was not holding out hope that anything he said would pierce it, but he had to try. “I know you’re working with Eve. She’s manipulating you, Savannah.”

“Do I strike you as gullible?” Savannah gave no sign of weakness, but her knee—that knee concerned Grayson.

“I won’t let you hurt Avery. Nor will I allow you to hurt yourself. There’s nothing up here, Savannah.”

“You don’t know that,” his sister said again, her voice struck through with an intensity he recognized all too well.

“I know that you are in pain—and not just your ACL.” Grayson didn’t want to do this fifty feet above the ground, but either she’d listen to him or she’d head back down. Either, he would count as a win. “Our father had a bomb planted on Avery’s jet. Two men died as a result, and when Avery was not among the casualties, he had her abducted. He held her hostage. He pointed a gun at her, intending to shoot her in front of Toby Hawthorne in revenge for our cousin Colin’s death.”

Toby’s words on the helicopter echoed in Grayson’s mind. You tell your sister it was me. But that wasn’t the truth, either, and Grayson couldn’t bring himself to lie to Savannah again.