My head pounded. My body was screaming at me to flee, but I couldn’t. I had no idea why Mellie would have helped this man kidnap me—or what exactly he planned to do to me now.
“Toby won’t come for me,” I said. Emotion welled up in my throat, and I bit it back. “He isn’t my father.” That hurt—more than it should have. “I’m nothing to him.”
“I have reason to believe he’s in town. He stuck his head out of whatever hole he’s hiding in long enough for me to verify that much. You are his daughter. He will come for you.”
It was like he wasn’t hearing me. “I’m not his daughter.” I’d wanted to be. I’d believed that I was.
But I wasn’t.
Sheffield Grayson’s achingly familiar eyes settled on mine. “I have a DNA test that says otherwise.”
I stared at him. What he’d just said made no sense. Alisa had done a DNA test. Ricky Grambs was my father. That meant, obviously, that Toby wasn’t. “I don’t understand.” I really didn’t.
I couldn’t.
“Mellie here was quite obliging about providing a sample of your DNA. I’d acquired a sample of Toby’s from the Hawthorne Island investigation years ago.” Sheffield Grayson straightened. “The match was definitive. You have his blood.” Sheffield gave me a chilling smile. “And you really should pay your help more.”
For the first time, I looked at Mellie, really looked at her. She wouldn’t meet my eyes. Was she the one who’d knocked me out in the passageway?
Why? Like Eli, had she sold me out for money?
“You can go now, dear,” Sheffield Grayson told her. Mellie shuffled toward the door.
She’s leaving me here. Panic began slithering up my spine.
“You think he’s just going to let you go?” I called after her. “You think he’s the kind of man who leaves loose ends?” I didn’t know Sheffield Grayson. I didn’t even know Mellie, really, but everything in me was saying that I couldn’t let her leave me here with him alone. “What do you think Nash would say if he knew what you’re doing?”
She hesitated, then kept walking. I was getting frantic—and she was getting farther away. The sound of her footsteps grew fainter.
“And now,” Sheffield Grayson told me, in the same calm, commanding voice, “we wait.”
CHAPTER 83
Toby wasn’t coming. Sooner or later, my captor would realize that. And when he did… well, he couldn’t just let me go.
“What makes you think Toby’s close by?” I tried not to sound scared. I tried not to be scared. Pissed was better—much. “How is he even supposed to know that you took me? Or where to come?”
He’s not my father. He’s not coming.
“I left clues,” Sheffield said, inspecting one of his cuff links. “A little game for your father to play. I understand Hawthornes are prone to such things.”
“What kind of clues?”
No answer.
“How did you send clues to him if you don’t where he is?”
No response.
This was useless. Toby had told me to stop looking for him. He’d been in hiding for decades. I wasn’t his daughter.
He wasn’t coming.
That was the only thought my brain was capable of producing. It rang in my mind over and over again, until I heard footsteps. They were too heavy to be Mellie’s.
“Ah.” Sheffield Grayson inclined his head. He walked toward me, assessing me, then reached a hand out to my face and put two fingers under my chin. He angled it backward. “It’s important that you know, Avery: This isn’t personal.”
I jerked back, but it was useless. I was still bound. I wasn’t going anywhere. And the footsteps were getting closer.
Someone was coming for me. It probably just wasn’t the person he expected.
“What if you’re wrong?” I said, rushing the words. “What if the person who found your clues wasn’t Toby? What are you going to do if that’s Jameson? Xander? Grayson?”
The sound of his son’s name—his own name—gave Sheffield Grayson only the briefest moment of pause. He closed his eyes again for a moment, then opened them, resolute and steeled against whatever unwanted thoughts my questions had raised.
“These were my nephew’s things.” Sheffield gestured to the items in the storage unit. His voice tightened. “I never could bear to part with them.”
The footsteps were almost here. Sheffield Grayson turned toward the entrance to the front of the storage unit. He withdrew a gun from his suit jacket. Finally, the footsteps stopped as a man stepped into view. He’d shaved since the last time I’d seen him, but he was still wearing layers of worn and dirty clothes.