Glorious Rivals(97)

This time, I will not freeze. Worst-case scenarios flashed through his mind, and Grayson let them come.

“We need to find Jameson,” he told Lyra. “Or John Oren, Avery’s head of security.” Behind them, the helicopter had finished landing. Rohan and Savannah were climbing out of it.

And there’s no one here to meet us. Grayson held Lyra’s gaze for a fraction of a second, and then he took off, tearing through the yacht, knowing damn well that Lyra could and would match his pace. Jameson and Avery’s suite was empty. Grayson wasn’t certain where on the yacht security was being headquartered, so he went for the next best thing.

Alisa’s office.

Grayson didn’t bother knocking before throwing open the door. Inside, Alisa and Jameson stood huddled over Alisa’s phone.

“And that’s all?” Jameson was saying, his voice unrecognizable, his eyes locked on the phone like it was the only thing that mattered in the world. “That is, word for word, everything the Woman in Red said?”

The Woman in Red. Grayson filed that phrase away as the voice on the other end of the call replied: “Yes.”

Grayson knew that voice. “Gigi.”

Alisa glanced up at him. “Knox has her. She’s safe and on her way here.”

Gigi was safe, but Grayson knew just by looking at Jameson: Avery isn’t.

Grayson went to his brother but addressed his next words to Alisa’s phone: “Gigi. It’s me. What do you know?”

Grayson’s sister was fully capable of talking ten thousand miles an hour. A veritable avalanche of information poured out of Gigi. A woman in red, Calla Thorp. Another woman, Zella.

Eve telling the former that Lyra knew something about calla lilies, Alice Hawthorne, and omega.

A warning from the latter that if Gigi was asked a certain question, no matter how coercively it was phrased, she could say no.

And then there was the phrase that Gigi said most frequently—over and over and over again. The time for watching is done.

Before Grayson could reply to the onslaught of information, Jameson reached forward and ended the call.

Without even looking at Grayson, Jameson brought his eyes to Alisa’s. “Do something,” Jameson told her, practically vibrating with intensity, like at any moment his earthly body might fail to physically contain the storm brewing inside. “Now. You heard Gigi. Calla Thorp. Calls herself the Watcher. Wears a red cloak.”

“Brady’s Calla?” Lyra, who’d been silent up until now, looked to Grayson. “A cloak, Grayson.”

Grayson heard exactly what she was saying. “Your dream. Alice. You said she wore a black cloak.”

“Alice,” Jameson repeated, his voice dangerously low. “I told you to stop saying that name, but you wouldn’t.” Jameson’s head swiveled slowly, the motion more animal than human, his gaze coming to rest on Lyra. “You did this,” Jameson told her.

Grayson put himself in front of Lyra. “What happened?” he asked. To Avery. Grayson didn’t need to say that part out loud. Avery was the center of Jameson’s universe, his everything in every way that mattered.

Jameson looked past Grayson and addressed his reply directly to Lyra. “You did.” Jameson’s eyes were wild and charged, his entire body like a live wire. “You happened, Lyra. Eve happened—and now Avery is gone.”

“Details,” Grayson said, his voice every bit as low as his brother’s and shot through with the kind of intensity meant to rattle bones. “Now. Est unus ex nobis, Jamie.” She is one of us.

From very nearly the beginning, Avery had been one of them.

Jameson’s head bent downward until his chin almost touched his collarbone, so much tension visible in his neck that the cords of muscle looked like they might snap.

I’m right here, Jamie. Just tell me.

“We were being watched,” Jameson said, his voice uncharacteristically dull as he parroted what Gigi had told them. “And now, the time for watching is over. You just had to push, Gray. You just had to keep right on saying that name.”

None of them said it now. Alice.

“And you.” Jameson raised his head again, locking feral eyes on Lyra’s. “You opened your big mouth to Eve, and now—” Jameson cut off. Without warning, he put his entire body behind a punch delivered straight to Grayson’s jaw.

Grayson went down, and the next thing he knew, Lyra had put herself directly between them, shielding his body with her own.

“Jameson.” Alisa’s voice cut through the air. “I need you to pull it together.”

“This is me,” Jameson told Alisa, staring down at Grayson on the floor, “pulling it together.”

“I understand,” Alisa told him. “Believe me, Jameson, I do. But keep acting like a liability, and I will have a discussion with Oren, and you will find yourself waking up locked in a storage unit somewhere with no way out while the grown-ups do whatever is necessary to get Avery back.”

“Get her back.” Grayson forced himself to say the words out loud. “From them.”

“Odette said there are always three.” Lyra’s voice shook slightly—very slightly—as she addressed those words to Jameson and Alisa. “Alice Hawthorne was there the night my father died. She was wearing a cloak. Black. All black.” Grayson could practically hear Lyra’s mind churning. “And Calla’s was red…”