I stared at him. “Or?” He’d said either.
“Or,” Jameson murmured, “it’s all part of the same riddle: one answer, multiple clues.”
His hip bones pressed lightly into my stomach. “A riddle,” I repeated, my voice rough. “Who took Toby—and why?”
Avenge. Revenge. Vengeance. Avenger. I always win in the end.
“An incomplete riddle,” Jameson elaborated. “Delivered piece by piece.
Or a story—and we’re at the mercy of the storyteller.”
The person doling out hints, clues that went nowhere in isolation. “We don’t have what we need to solve this,” I said, hating what I was saying and how defeated I sounded saying it. “Do we?”
“Not yet.”
I wanted to scream, but I looked up at him instead. I saw a jagged cut on the underside of his jaw and reached for his chin. “This looks bad.”
“On the contrary, Heiress, bleeding is a devastatingly good look for me.”
Xander wasn’t the only Hawthorne who specialized in distractions.
Needing this and not liking the look of that cut on his jaw, I allowed myself to be distracted. “Let’s make this a game,” I told Jameson. “I bet that you can’t shower and wash off all that mud before I find what we need from the first aid kit.”
“I have a better idea.” Jameson lowered his lips to mine. My neck arched. More mud on my face, my clothes. “I bet,” he countered, “that you can’t wash all this mud off before I…”
“Before you what?” I murmured.
Jameson Winchester Hawthorne smiled. “Guess.”
CHAPTER 23
Your move.”
I’m back in the park, playing chess opposite Harry. Toby . The second I think the name, his face changes. The beard is gone, his face bruised and swollen.
“Who did this to you?” I ask, my voice echoing and echoing until I can barely hear myself think. “Toby, you have to tell me.”
If only I can get him to tell me, I’ll know.
“Your move.” Toby thunks the black knight into a new position on the board.
I look down, but suddenly, I can’t see any of the pieces. There’s only shadows and fog where each of them should be.
“Your move, Avery Kylie Grambs.”
I whip my head up because it’s not Toby’s voice that says the words this time.
Tobias Hawthorne stares back at me from across the table. “The thing about strategy,” he says, “is that you always have to be thinking seven moves ahead.” He leans across the table.
The next thing I know, he has me by the neck.
“Some people kill two birds with one stone,” he says, strangling me. “I kill twelve.”
I woke up frozen, locked in my own body, my heart in my throat, unable to breathe. Just a dream. I managed to suck in oxygen and roll sideways off my bed, landing in a crouch. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. I didn’t know what time it was, but it was still dark outside. I looked up at the bed.
Jameson wasn’t there. That happened sometimes when his brain wouldn’t stop. The only question tonight was stop what?
Trying to shake off the last remnants of the dream, I strapped on my knife then went to look for him, making my way to Tobias Hawthorne’s study.
The study was empty. No Jameson. I found myself staring at the wall of trophies the Hawthorne grandsons had won—and not just trophies. Books they’d published, patents they’d been granted. Proof that Tobias Hawthorne had made his grandsons extraordinary.