It hurt me to see them as alike. “Don’t say that, Jameson.”
“It was all just strategy to him,” Jameson said. “He saw connections that other people missed. Everyone else played chess in two dimensions, but Tobias Hawthorne saw the third, and when he recognized a winning move, he took it.”
There’s nothing more Hawthorne than winning.
“Just because you could do it,” I told Jameson fiercely, “doesn’t mean you would have.”
“Before you, Heiress? I absolutely would have.” His voice was intense. “I can’t even hate him now. He’s a part of me. He’s in me.” Jameson’s fingers lightly touched my hair, then curled into it. “But mostly, I can’t hate him, Avery Kylie Grambs, because he brought me you.”
He needed me to kiss him, and I needed it, too. When Jameson finally pulled away—just one centimeter, then two—my lips ached for his. He brought his mouth to my ear. “Now, back to the game.”
CHAPTER 45
We worked until almost dawn, slept briefly, woke intertwined. We talked to Nan and Zara, played with the numbers, identified the church, which wasn’t even in France, let alone in Margaux. We went back to the unused objects in the bag: a steamer, a flashlight, the USB.
By midmorning, we were stuck in a loop.
As if he’d divined the need for something to snap us out of it, Xander texted Jameson’s phone. Jameson held it out for me to see. 911.
“An emergency?” I asked.
“More like a summons,” Jameson told me. “Come on.” We made it as far as the hallway before we ran into Nash, who was leaving Libby’s room in the clothes he’d worn the day before, holding a small, wiggling ball of chaos and brown fur.
“I really hope you didn’t try to give that incredibly adorable puppy to my sister,” I told him.
“He didn’t.” Libby padded into the hallway wearing an I EAT MORNING PEOPLE shirt and black pajama pants. “He knows better. That is a Hawthorne dog.” Libby reached out to stroke the puppy’s ear. “Nash found her in an alley. Some drunk assholes were poking at her with a stick.” Knowing Nash as I did, I doubted that had turned out well for the drunk assholes. “He saved her,” Libby continued, letting her hand drop. “That’s what he does.”
“I don’t know, darlin’，” Nash said, giving the pup a scratch, his eyes on my sister. “I was in pretty rough shape. Maybe she saved me.”
I thought about little Nash watching Skye with his baby brothers, watching her give them away. And then I thought about Libby taking me in.
“You get Xander’s nine-one-one?” Jameson asked his brother.
“Sure did,” Nash drawled.
“Nine-one-one?” Libby frowned. “Is Xander okay?”
“He needs us,” Nash told my sister, allowing the puppy to lick his chin. “We each only get one a year. A text like that comes in, it doesn’t matter where you are or what you’re doing. You drop everything and go.”
“Xander just hasn’t told us where to go yet,” Jameson added.
Right on cue, Jameson’s phone buzzed; Nash’s, too. A series of texts came through in quick succession. Jameson angled his phone toward me so that I could see.
Xander had sent four photographs, each containing a little drawing. The first was a heart with the word CARE written in the middle of it. I scrolled to the second picture and frowned. “Is that a monkey riding a bicycle?”
Libby moved toward Nash and took his phone from his pocket. There was something intimate about the action—the way he let her, the way she knew he would. “The monkey appears to be saying EEEEEE!” Libby commented
Nash looked at the picture. “Could be a lemur,” he opined.
I shook my head and looked at the third picture: Xander had drawn a tree. The fourth picture was an elephant jumping on a pogo stick, also saying EEEEEE!
I looked at Jameson. “Do you have any idea what this means?”
“As previously established, nine-one-one means Xander is calling us in,” Jameson said. “By Hawthorne rules, this summons cannot be ignored. As for the pictures… work it out for yourself, Heiress.”
I looked at the pictures again. The care heart. The animals yelling Eeee.
“Tree’s an oak, if that helps,” Nash told me. The puppy barked.
Care. Eee. Oak. Eee. I thought—and then I put it all together. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I told Jameson.
“What?” Libby asked.
Jameson smirked. “Hawthornes never kid about karaoke.”
CHAPTER 46
Five minutes later, we were in the Hawthorne theater. Not to be confused with the Hawthorne movie theater, this one had a stage, a red velvet curtain, stadium and box seating—the whole shebang.
Xander stood on the stage, holding a microphone. A screen had been set up behind him, and there must have been a projector somewhere because “911!” danced on the screen.
“I need this,” Xander said into the microphone. “You need this. We all need this. Nash, I’ve cued up the Taylor Swift for you. Jameson, get ready to break out those dance moves because this stage is calling your name, and we all know that your hips are utterly incapable of falsehood. And as for Grayson…” Xander paused. “Where is Gray?”
“Grayson Hawthorne skipping out on karaoke?” Libby said. “I’m shocked, I tell you. Shocked.”
“Gray has a voice so deep and smooth that you will shed literal tears as he sings something so old school that you will come to believe he spent the 1950s wearing the most dapper of suits and hanging out with his bestie, Frank Sinatra,” Xander swore. He swung his gaze to his brothers. “But Gray’s not here.”
Jameson glanced at me. “You don’t ignore a nine-one-one text,” he told me. “No matter what.”
“Where is Grayson?” Nash asked. And that was when I heard it—a sound halfway between a crash and the shattering of wood.
Jameson jogged out to the hallway. There was another crash. “Music room,” he told us.
Xander jumped off the stage. “My duet will have to wait!”
“Who were you going to duet with?” Libby asked.
“Myself!” Xander yelled as he ran for the door, but Nash caught him.
“Hold on there, Xan. Let Jamie go.” Nash looked toward me. “You go, too, kid.”
I wasn’t sure what Nash thought was going on here—or why he seemed so sure that Jameson and I were the ones Grayson needed.
“In the meantime,” Nash told Xander, “give me the mic.”
As Jameson and I made our way down the corridor, the sound of achingly beautiful violin music began drifting into the hall. The music room door was open, and when I stepped through it, I saw Grayson poised in front of open bay windows, wearing a suit without the jacket, his shirt unbuttoned, a violin pressed to his chin. His posture was perfect, each movement smooth.
The floor in front of him was covered with shards of wood.
I couldn’t remember how many ultra-expensive violins Tobias Hawthorne had purchased in pursuit of cultivating his grandson’s musical ability, but it looked like Grayson had destroyed at least one.