Eve shrank in on herself, like she’d been struck, her eyes wet, her expression like stone. On the other end of the line, there was silence.
Had he hung up?
Panicked, my grip on the phone tightened. “I’m here!”
“Avery Kylie Grambs, there are three characters in the parable of the prodigal son, are there not?”
Breath left my lungs. “The son who left,” I said, sounding calmer than I felt. “The son who stayed. And the father.”
“Why don’t you ruminate on that?” There was another long pause, and then: “I’ll be in touch.”
CHAPTER 35
Ruminating looked like this: Libby went to make coffee, because when things got bad, she took care of other people. Grayson stood, straightened his suit jacket, and turned his back on the rest of us. Jameson began pacing like a panther on the prowl. Nash took off his cowboy hat and stared at it, an ominous expression on his face. Xander darted out of the room, and Eve lowered her head into her hands.
“I shouldn’t have said anything,” she said hoarsely. “But after he cut Toby off—”
“I understand,” I told her. “And it wouldn’t have mattered if you’d stayed silent. We would have ended up in the exact same place.”
“Not exactly.” Jameson came to a stop directly in front of me. “Think about what he said after Eve interrupted—and the way he referred to you.”
“As the heiress,” I replied, and then I remembered the rest of it. “The one Tobias Hawthorne chose.” I swallowed. “The prodigal son is a story about inheritance and forgiveness.”
“Everyone who thinks that Toby was kidnapped as part of a giant forgiveness plot,” Nash said, his drawl doing nothing to soften the words, “raise your hand.”
All our hands remained down. “We already know this is about revenge,”
I said harshly. “We know it’s about winning. This is just another piece of the same damn riddle that we aren’t meant to solve.”
Now I was the one who couldn’t stand still. Rage didn’t simmer. It burned.
“He wants us driving ourselves crazy, going over and over it,” I said, striding toward the massive tree trunk desk and bracing my hands against it, hard. “He wants us ruminating. And what’s even the point?” I was so close to punching the wood. “He’s not done yet, and he’s not going to give us what we need to solve this until he wants it solved.”
I’ll be in touch. Our adversary was like a cat that had a mouse by the tail. He was batting at me, then letting me go, creating the illusion that maybe, if I was very clever, I could slip his grasp, when he wasn’t the least afraid I would.
“We have to try,” Eve said with quiet desperation.
“Eve’s right.” Grayson turned back toward us—toward her. “Just because our opponent thinks this is beyond our capabilities to figure out doesn’t mean that it is.”
Jameson placed his hands next to mine on the desk. “The other two clues were vague. This one, less so. Even partial riddles can sometimes be solved.”
As futile as it felt, as angry as I was, they were right. We had to try. For Toby, we had to.
“I’m back!” Xander burst into the room. “And I have props!” He thrust his hand out. In his palm, there were three chess pieces: a king, a knight, and a bishop.
Jameson reached for the chess pieces, but Xander smacked his hand away. “The father.” Xander brandished the king and set it down on the desk.
“The prodigal son.” He plunked down the knight. “And the son who stayed.”