The bottom of the black queen had a seam. If I hadn’t been looking for it, I wouldn’t have seen it. “I need a magnifying glass,” I told Jameson.
“How about a jeweler’s loupe?” he countered. “There has to be one around here somewhere.”
Eventually, he found one: a small lens with no handle, just a cylindrical rim. Using the loupe to look at the bottom of the black queen told me that what I’d seen as a seam was actually a gap, like someone had cut a paper-thin line into the bottom of the piece. And peeking through that gap, I saw something.
“Were there any other jeweler’s tools with the loupe?” I asked Jameson.
Even the smallest file he brought me couldn’t fully fit into the gap, but I managed to wedge the tip through—and it caught on something.
“Tweezers?” Jameson offered, his shoulder brushing mine.
File. Tweezers. Loupe.
File. Tweezers. Loupe.
Sweat was pouring down my temples by the time I finally managed to lock the tweezers onto the edge of something. A strip of black paper.
“I don’t want to tear it,” I told Jameson.
His green eyes met mine. “You won’t.”
Slowly, painstakingly, I pulled the strip out. It was no bigger than a fortune tucked inside a fortune cookie. Golden ink marked the page—with handwriting I recognized all too well.
The only message Tobias Hawthorne had ever left me before was that he was sorry. Now, to that, I could add two more words.
I turned to Jameson and read them out loud: “Don’t breathe.”
CHAPTER 29
A person stopped breathing when they were awestruck or terrified. When they were hiding and any sound could give them away. When the world around them was on fire, the air thick with smoke.
Jameson and I scoured every single smoke detector in Hawthorne House.
“You’re smiling,” I told him, disgruntled when the last one turned up nothing.
“I like a challenge.” Jameson gave me a look that reminded me that I’d been a challenge for him. “And maybe I’m feeling nostalgic for Saturday mornings. Say what you will about my childhood, but it was never boring.”
I thought back to the balcony. “You didn’t mind being set against your brothers?” I asked. Against Grayson? “Being forced to compete?”
“Saturday mornings were different,” Jameson said. “The puzzles, the thrill, the old man’s attention. We lived for those games. Maybe not Nash, but Xander and Grayson and me. Hell, Gray even let loose sometimes because the games didn’t reward perfection. He and I used to team up against Nash, at least until the end. Everything else our grandfather did—everything he gave us, everything expected of us—was about molding the next generation of Hawthornes to be something extraordinary. But Saturday mornings, those games—they were about showing us that we already were.”
Extraordinary, I thought. And a part of something. That was the siren call of Tobias Hawthorne’s games.
“Do you think that’s why your grandfather left me this game?” I asked.
The billionaire had set my game to start if and only if I met Eve. Had he known that I would start questioning his almighty judgment in choosing me the moment she showed up? Had he wanted to show me what I was capable of?
That I was extraordinary?
“I think,” Jameson murmured, relishing the words, “that my grandfather left three games when he died, Heiress. And the first two both told us something about why he chose you.”
Don’t breathe. We didn’t solve the clue that night. The next day was Monday. Oren cleared me to go to school so long as he stuck to my side. I could have called out sick and stayed home, but I didn’t. My game had proven an effective distraction, but Toby was still in danger, and nothing could keep my mind off that for long.
I went to school because I wanted the paparazzi—that my opponent had so kindly set on me like dogs—to take a picture of me with my head held high.
I wanted the person who had taken Toby to realize that I wasn’t down.
I wanted him to make his next damn move.
I spent my free mods in the Archive—prep school for library. I was almost done with the calculus homework I’d ignored over the long weekend when Rebecca came in. Oren allowed her past.
“You told Thea.” Rebecca stalked toward me.
“Is that such a bad thing?” I asked—from a safe distance.
“She is relentless,” Rebecca muttered.
Proving the point, Thea appeared in the doorway behind her. “I was under the impression that you liked relentless.” Only Thea could make that sound flirty in these circumstances.
Rebecca grudgingly met her girlfriend’s eyes. “I kind of do.”
“Then you’re going to love this part,” Thea told her. “Because it’s the part where you stop fighting this, stop fighting me, stop running away from this conversation, and let go.”
“I’m fine, Thea.”
“You’re not,” Thea told her achingly. “And you don’t have to be, Bex. It’s not your job to be fine anymore.”
Rebecca’s breath hitched.
I knew when my presence wasn’t necessary. “I’m going to go,” I said, and neither one of them even seemed to hear me. In the hallway, I was informed by an office aid that the headmaster’s office was looking for me.
The headmaster’s office? I thought. Not the headmaster?
On the way there, I made conversation with Oren. “Think someone tipped the school off about my knife?” I wondered how seriously private schools took their weapons policies when it came to students who were on the verge of inheriting billions. But when Oren and I got to the office, the secretary greeted me with a sunny smile.
“Avery.” She held out a package—not an envelope, but a box. My name was scripted on the top in familiar, elegant writing. “This was delivered for you.”
CHAPTER 30
Oren commandeered the package. It was hours before I got it back—and by the time I did, I was safely ensconced inside the walls of Hawthorne House, and Eve, Libby, and all the Hawthorne brothers had joined me in the circular library.
“No note this time,” Oren reported. “Just this.”
I stared at what looked to be a jewelry box: square, a little bigger than my hand, possibly antique. The wood was a dark cherry color. A thin line of gold rimmed the edges. I went to open the lid, then realized the box was locked.
“Combination lock.” Oren nodded toward the front edge of the box, where there were six dials, grouped in pairs. “Added recently, I would guess. I was tempted to force it open, but given the circumstances, preserving the integrity of the jewelry box seemed like a priority.”
After two envelopes, the fact that Toby’s abductor had sent a package this time felt like an escalation. I didn’t want to think about what I might find inside that jewelry box. The first envelope had contained the disk, the second, a picture of a beaten Toby. As far as proof went, as far as a reminder of the stakes, a reminder of who held the power here…
How long until the kidnapper starts sending pieces?
“The combination might be just a combination.” Jameson stared at the box like he could see through it—into it. “But there’s also the possibility that the numbers themselves are a clue.”