I wondered how much else she’d heard and whether she’d meant to eavesdrop. Maybe Jameson was right. Maybe we couldn’t trust her.
“It might be nothing,” I said, brushing off the question.
“What might be nothing?” Eve pressed. When I didn’t answer, she dropped another question like a bomb. “Who’s Emily?”
I swallowed. “A girl.” That wasn’t a lie, but it was so far from the truth that I couldn’t leave it there. “She died. The two of you—you’re related.”
Eve chose a bandage and pushed her wet hair back from her face. I almost offered to help her, but something held me back. “Toby told me he was adopted,” she said, fixing the bandage in place. “But he wouldn’t tell me anything about his biological family—or the Hawthornes.”
She waited, like she expected me to tell her something. When I didn’t, she looked down. “I know that you don’t trust me,” she said. “I wouldn’t trust me, either. You have everything, and I have nothing, and I know how that looks.”
So did I. From experience, so did I.
“I never wanted to come here,” Eve continued. “I never wanted to ask you for anything—or them.” Her voice strained. “But I want Toby back. I want my father back, Avery.” Her emerald eyes locked on mine, radiating an intensity that was nearly Hawthorne. “And I will do anything— anything —to get what I want, even if that means begging for your help. So please, Avery, if you know something that could help us find Toby, just tell me.”
CHAPTER 9
I didn’t tell Eve about the disk. I justified it to myself because, for all I knew, there was nothing to tell. Not every mystery was an elaborate puzzle.
The answer wasn’t always elegant and carefully designed. And even if Toby’s abduction did have something to do with the disk, where did that leave us?
Feeling like I owed Eve something, I asked Mrs. Laughlin to prepare her a room. Tears overflowed the moment the older woman laid eyes on her great-granddaughter. There was no hiding who Eve was.
No hiding that she belonged here.
Hours later, I was alone in Tobias Hawthorne’s study. I told myself that I was doing the right thing, giving Jameson and Grayson space. Seeing Eve had dredged up trauma. They needed to process, and I needed to think.
I triggered the hidden compartment in the old man’s desk and reached for the folder that Jameson and I kept inside. Flipping it open, I stared at a drawing I’d made: a small coinlike disk the size of a quarter, engraved with concentric circles. The last time I’d seen this bit of metal, Toby had just snatched it from my hands. I’d asked him what it was. He hadn’t answered.
All I really knew was what I’d read in a message Toby had once written to my mother: that if she ever needed anything, she should go to Jackson. You know what I left there, Toby had written. You know what it’s worth.
I stared at the drawing. You know what it’s worth. Coming from the son of a billionaire, that was almost unfathomable. In the months since Toby had left, Jameson and I had scoured books on art and ancient civilizations, on rare coins, lost treasures, and great archeological finds. We’d even researched organizations like the Freemasons and the Knights Templar.
Spreading that research out on the desk, I looked for something, anything we’d missed, but there was no record of the disk anywhere, and Jameson’s globe-trotting search of Hawthorne vacation properties hadn’t turned up anything meaningful, either.
“Who knows about the disk?” I let myself think out loud. “Who knows what it’s worth and that Toby had it?”
Who even knew for certain that Toby was alive, let alone where to find him?
All I had were questions. It felt wrong that Jameson wasn’t here asking them with me.