The Brothers Hawthorne (The Inheritance Games, #4)(79)

“Besides the money? No.” Kim shook her head—and averted her eyes.

Gigi leaned forward in her chair. “What aren’t you telling us, Aunt Kim?”

Grayson instantly saw what it meant to the woman for Gigi to call her that.

“Shep would talk to me for a bit,” Kim said hoarsely, “then he’d leave the money on the kitchen counter and go shut himself in Colin’s room.”

“What did he do in there?” Savannah asked.

“I don’t know,” Kim replied. “Just… sit, I guess.” She paused. “One time, I tried to go in and talk to him. He yelled at me to get out. There was something on the floor. A box.”

“What kind of box?” Grayson pressed.

“Wooden. Nice. Real nice. He left it here, in Colin’s closet, told me that if I ever touched it, if I ever even looked at it, he’d stop coming, and I’d never see another dime from him.”

Grayson exchanged a look with Savannah. We need that box. “Could we see Colin’s room?” he asked—but it wasn’t really a question.

Kim’s eyes narrowed. “The room,” she repeated harshly. “Or the box?”

Gigi was the one who replied. “Our dad is gone,” she said simply. “He left, and he never came back. And now we’re finding out that he wasn’t who we thought he was.” She swallowed. “Who I thought he was,” she corrected.

Savannah met her twin’s eyes, just for a moment, before turning her attention to their aunt. “I found out about Dad cheating on Mom, about the fact that he had another kid out there, when I was fourteen,” Savannah said.

Grayson doubted she’d ever said those words out loud before.

“And my dad, he acted like it was nothing. But all I could think”—Savannah’s words slowed—“was that he had a son. Basketball was always our thing, but when I hit middle school, I noticed that he stopped saying that I played basketball and started saying that I played on the girls’ basketball team.” There wasn’t a hitch in Savannah’s voice, but Grayson felt the effort it took her to fight it. “He started asking me why I was such a tomboy.”

Kim frowned. “You don’t look like a tomboy to me.”

Savannah fingered the end of her long blonde hair. “Exactly.” She drew in another steady breath. “Our dad loved Colin. Maybe he loved us, too, but we weren’t Colin.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Kim asked.

“Because I want you to understand,” Savannah replied. “Our dad abandoned us, and we deserve to know why. Our mom’s in trouble. Whatever Dad was keeping in that box—what if it could help her?”

Cinnamon chose that moment to squat. Spurred to action, Kim leaped to grab her. “Outside, Cinnamon! Outside!” She rushed to the door. After putting the dog down on the lawn, she came back but didn’t come all the way into the den.

“Down the hall,” she said gruffly, “last door on your left. That was Colin’s room. Do what you want with the damn box. Not like Shep’s coming back anyway.”





CHAPTER 64





GRAYSON


They found the box hidden behind some loose panels in the back of the closet. Grayson examined it. Wooden, large enough to hold a laptop or a stack of paper files. The wood was hard and sandy in color, and there was no visible hinge or lid on the box, nothing to indicate how to open it.

Clearing a space on the bed, Grayson set the box down. His sisters came closer.

“Crowbar?” Gigi suggested. “Or a hammer of the sledge variety?”

Grayson shook his head. The top of the box—assuming that was the top—appeared to be made of individual strips of wood the width and length of a ruler, bound tightly together. Seams were visible, but impenetrable, so Grayson did what any Hawthorne would have done in his position. He turned the box ninety degrees and pushed at the ends of each and every one of those strips of wood.

On the seventh, he was rewarded: The piece slid out from the others. He pushed it gently until it fell off the box, then examined what lay underneath: another wood panel, solid but for a single hole, just large enough to fit a finger in.

Grayson probed both the panel and the hole before attempting to use the hole to lift the lid of the box.

No dice.

“What are you doing?” Savannah asked.

“It’s a puzzle box.” Grayson kept his reply brief as he turned his attention to the strip of wood he’d removed. Turning it over in his hand, he was rewarded. Carved into the back of the strip of wood, was a long, thin space—and that space held a tool. It was roughly the length of a toothbrush but very thin. One side had a point like the tip of a pen. The other was flat and heavier. Magnetic, most likely, Grayson thought.

“What do you mean a puzzle box?” Gigi asked earnestly.

“The puzzle is finding your way into the box,” Grayson replied. “Call it an added level of security, in case your aunt decided she wanted to know what was inside.”

He dipped the tool into the hole he’d uncovered, first the pen side, then the probable magnet. Nothing happened, so Grayson began running the magnet end over the rest of the box—the top, the sides, then he turned the box over and tried the bottom.

The magnet stuck, and when Grayson pulled, another small wooden panel came off the box, this one in the shape of a T. A quick examination revealed another hole—just large enough for the pen end of the tool. Grayson stuck the pen in. He heard a click, then tested the pen’s movement and realized that he could slide the hole—from the top left corner of the T to the bottom center.