The design of the seal took my breath away. Rings of concentric circles.
“It’s like the disk,” I said, the words catching in my throat.
“Don’t open it,” Oren told me. “I need to make sure—”
The rest of his words were lost to the roar in my mind. My fingers tore into the envelope, like my body had been set to autopilot at full throttle. Once I’d broken the seal, the envelope unfolded, revealing a message written on the interior in shining silver script.
363-1982.
That was it. Just those seven digits. A phone number? There was no area code, but—
“Avery!” Rebecca yelped, and I realized the paper I was holding had caught fire.
Flames devoured the message. I dropped it, and seconds later, the envelope and the numbers were nothing but ashes. “How…” I started to say.
Xander came to stand beside me. “I could rig an envelope to do that.” He paused. “Honestly? I have rigged an envelope to do that.”
“I told you to wait, Avery.” Oren gave me what I could only describe as a Dad Look. I was clearly on very thin ice with him.
“What did the message say?” Rebecca asked me.
Xander produced a pen and a sheet of paper shaped like a scone, seemingly out of nowhere. “Write down everything you remember,” he told me.
I closed my eyes, picturing the number—and then wrote: 363-1982.
I turned the paper around so that Xander could see it. “Nineteen eighty-two.” Xander latched on to the numbers after the dash. “Could be a year. The three-hundred-and-sixty-third day of which was December twenty-ninth.”
December 29, 1982.
“Looks like a phone number to me,” Thea scoffed.
“That was my first thought, too,” I murmured. “But no area code.”
“Was there anything that could indicate location?” Xander asked. “If we could derive an area code, that would give us a number to call.”
A number to call. A date to check. And who knew how many other possibilities there were? It could be a cipher, coordinates, a bank account…
“I recommend we return to Hawthorne House immediately,” Oren cut in. His expression was downright stony. “That is, if you’re still interested in letting me do my job, Avery.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. I trusted Oren with my life, and I owed him better than making his job harder than it had to be. “I saw the seal on the envelope, and something in me snapped.”
Rings of concentric circles. When Toby was taken, I’d thought that the disk might have something to do with why, but when his captor had sent it back, I’d assumed that I was wrong.
But what if I wasn’t?
What if the disk had always been part of the riddle?
“The number could be a misdirection,” Xander said, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet. “The seal might be the message.”
“Out!”
I turned back toward the living room. Mallory Laughlin was stalking toward us.
“I want all of you out of my house!”
Our presence here had never been welcome, and now there’d been fire.
“Ma’am.” Oren held up a hand. “I’m recommending that we all return to Hawthorne House.”
“What?” Thea asked, her honey-brown eyes narrowing.
Oren flicked his gaze toward her. “You should plan for an extended stay. Call it a slumber party.”
“You think Thea’s in danger.” Rebecca looked around the room. “You think we all are.”
“Breaking and entering is an escalation.” Oren’s tone was measured. “We’re dealing with an individual who has proved that he is willing to go through intermediaries to get to Avery. He used Thea to send a message this time—and not just in the literal sense.”
I can get to anyone. You can’t protect them. That was the message.
“This is ridiculous,” Rebecca’s mom spat. “I won’t be accompanying you anywhere, Mr. Oren, and neither will my daughters.”
“Daughter,” Rebecca said quietly. I felt my heart twist in my chest.
Oren was not dissuaded. “I’m afraid that even if you weren’t already at risk, this visit would put you on our villain’s radar. As much as you don’t want to hear it, Ms. Laughlin—”
“It’s doctor, actually,” Rebecca’s mother snapped. “And I don’t care about the risk. The world can’t take any more from me than it already has.”
I moved closer to Rebecca, whose arms were wrapped around her middle, like all she could do was stand there and just keep taking the blows.
“That isn’t true,” Thea said quietly.
“Thea.” Rebecca’s voice was strangled. “Don’t.”
Mallory Laughlin spared a fond look for Thea. “Such a nice girl.” She turned to Rebecca. “I don’t know why you have to be so nasty to your sister’s friends.”
“I am not,” Thea said, steel in her voice, “a nice girl.”
“You need to come with us,” Eve told Mallory. “I need to know you’re safe.”
“Oh.” Mallory’s expression softened. There was something tragic about the moment the tension gave way, like it was the only thing that had kept her from crumbling. “You need a mother,” she told Eve. The tenderness in her voice was almost painful.
“Come to Hawthorne House,” Eve said again. “For me?”
“For you,” Mallory agreed, not even sparing a look for Rebecca. “But I’m not setting a foot in the mansion. All these years, Tobias Hawthorne let me think my boy was dead. He never told me that I had a granddaughter. It was bad enough that he stole my baby, bad enough that those boys killed my Emily—I am not stepping foot in the House.”
“You can stay at Wayback Cottage,” Oren said soothingly. “With your parents.”
“I’ll stay with you,” Rebecca said quietly.
“No,” her mother snapped. “You love Hawthornes so much, Rebecca? Stay with them.”
CHAPTER 52
Oren called in one of the decoy SUVs to bring Mallory, Rebecca, and Thea back to the estate. Eve opted to ride with them instead of Xander and me, and when the second SUV pulled up to the House, neither she nor Mallory were in it.
“Eve said to tell you she’s staying at the cottage.” Rebecca looked down. “With my mom.”
I am not going to stay where I’m not wanted, I could hear Eve saying. I can’t. I felt another stab of guilt, then wondered if that was the point.
“She said she’ll try to figure out what the number means herself,” Thea added. “Just not here.”
If Eve was trustworthy, I’d hurt her. Badly. But if she wasn’t…
I turned to Oren. “You still have a man on Eve?”
“One for her,” my head of security confirmed, “one for Mallory, six securing the gates, four more guarding the immediate perimeter here, and three besides me in the House.”
That should have made me feel safer, but all I could think was don’t trust anyone.
Alisa was waiting for me in the foyer. Oren must have known, but he hadn’t warned me.
Before I could say a thing, a small barking blur rounded the corner.