“So maybe he did skip town,” Avery told Grayson. “But maybe he hired someone to go after me on his way. You don’t have to tell your sisters everything, but you could tell them he was behind the bombing, tell them that you were protecting them from the truth and protecting me from having to relive the worst time of my life.”
This is Avery, protecting me. “As a general rule,” Grayson told her, “voluntarily opening a can of worms rarely goes well.”
“As a general rule, Gray, when people get close to you, you bolt.”
No one except his brothers was allowed to talk to him like that. No one except her.
“Toby called me,” Avery continued after a moment. “He was under the impression that Eve called you.”
What seemed on the surface like a subject change probably wasn’t, coming from her.
“You don’t need to worry about Eve calling me.” Grayson clipped his words. “You don’t need to worry about Eve and me, period.”
“Toby said that Vincent Blake survived his double bypass.” Avery’s own tone was measured. “He’s expected to make a full recovery.” She took a step toward him, just as measured as her words. “Toby asked me to tell you that Eve has been surveilling your sisters.”
“I am aware.” Grayson gave her a quelling look meant to end this conversation, but she was Avery Grambs, and he was Grayson Hawthorne, and she’d never once been quelled by anything he’d thrown at her.
“Eve sent someone to watch your sisters,” Avery reiterated, “but that’s all she did, Grayson—surveillance, nothing else. Eve hasn’t made a move against your family. Toby’s sure of it.”
Grayson had been raised a skeptic, but Avery, he bone-deep believed. “Toby’s sure of it,” he echoed. “And you’re sure of him.”
“He called me horrible girl.” Avery smiled wistfully. “He’s telling the truth.”
“You are pretty horrible,” Grayson agreed, his tone deadpan, a ghost of a smile pulling at his lips. His mind began sifting through the implications of Toby’s claim, disassembling a puzzle Grayson had thought was solved, piecing the elements back together a different way.
“What are you thinking?” Avery prodded.
Grayson removed his phone from his pocket to call his brothers. “I’m thinking that if Toby’s right, if the FBI’s sudden burst of interest in the Sheffield Grayson case really wasn’t Eve’s doing—I need to get back to Phoenix.”
CHAPTER 92
JAMESON
The game is afoot. Jameson relished the thought, knowing perfectly well that the meaning of the phrase had nothing to do with the kind of game you played, but rather, the kind of game you hunted.
None of them were about to let Grayson go hunting alone.
This nine-one-one had just gotten a lot more interesting.
“Details,” Xander said encouragingly, as the whole lot of them piled into a bulletproof SUV. “Don’t be shy, Gray. We’re all family here, and most of us can look you in the eye without thinking about the face drawn on your stomach.”
Grayson was clad once again in a suit. Jameson had made the symbolic decision to don one of his own—and he wasn’t the only one who’d done so. Four Hawthornes, four suits. Avery wore black.
Jameson didn’t know who had landed in his brother’s crosshairs, or why, but finding out would be half the fun.
“Right before I left Phoenix,” Grayson said, as Oren began the drive to the airstrip where Avery’s jet awaited, “the FBI raided the Grayson family home. It’s been more than eighteen months since Sheffield Grayson was last seen. Even if the investigation into his questionable business practices is ongoing, a warrant like that doesn’t just suddenly happen, eighteen months out, without someone stirring the pot.”
Someone, Jameson thought, who is going to regret it.
Nash was the first to reply to Grayson’s statement out loud. “You thought that someone was Eve.”
Xander twisted in his seat. “It’s not?”
“Kent Trowbridge,” Grayson bit out. The name meant nothing to Jameson—yet. “He’s a lawyer,” Grayson continued. “Worked for Acacia Grayson’s mother. There’s history there.”
“Lawyerly history?” Xander queried.
“If I were a betting man,” Grayson stated calmly, “I would guess the history between Acacia and Trowbridge is more of the ‘you married a penniless Sheffield Grayson instead of me’ variety.”