“Too obvious,” Gigi replied, her throat seeming to tighten around the words. “But yes.”
Grayson knew what it was like to work and work and never be enough. To lose the person who’d made you and live forever thereafter with the knowledge that they’d preferred someone else.
“If you’re starting with the computer,” he told Gigi briskly, “I’ll try the desk.”
The desk was clean. So were the shelves. The chairs and side tables. The moldings on the walls. Grayson continued to search quickly and efficiently, keeping an eye on the girls as he did. He removed shades from lamps, examined every floorboard with military precision. Finally, he turned his attention to the art: two large landscape paintings on the walls and a bronze eagle that matched the two sculptures in the fountain outside.
Nothing hidden behind or in them.
That just left two framed photos. One was of a teenage boy midair, a ball arcing from his fingertips. His coloring matched Gigi’s, his sweat-laden hair a mop of chocolate-colored curls. Colin. Grayson removed the picture from the wall and took off its backing. He searched, found nothing, and replaced it. Then he turned to the second photograph, a family portrait. Savannah was straight-faced, Gigi smiling, the two of them dressed in matching outfits. Grayson tried to place their age. Four, maybe five? Behind them, their mother leaned against their father.
They look like a family. They looked happy enough. Normal. There had been nothing normal about his own childhood.
Pushing back against that thought, Grayson removed the frame from the wall and the back from the frame, to no avail. And then he spotted a seam in the wood of the frame.
A seam that had no reason to be there.
Grayson ran his fingers along the side, prodding until he found the trigger. A small piece of wood popped out, revealing a compartment inside the frame—a very small one. Shifting to shield his actions fully from view, Grayson tipped the frame sideways. A small square fell out.
A USB drive.
He palmed it, and less than a second later, it was secured in the cuff of his dress shirt. One more smooth motion set the frame to right, but before he could set it back down, he felt one of the girls approach. Savannah. Without a word, she picked up the photo of Colin. “I don’t know what game you’re playing here, Grayson, and I don’t care.”
Had she seen him take the USB? Grayson didn’t think so and proceeded accordingly. “If you’re about to issue a warning,” he told Savannah softly, “I take it you know your target? What do you have that I want? What do I have that I’m terrified to lose?” He brought his eyes to hers. It felt far too much like looking in a mirror. “What type of person,” he continued, “am I?”
She raised a delicate brow. “Do you really want me to answer that?”
Answering a question with a question. Good.
“You two look cozy!” Gigi declared from across the room.
“Grayson was just about to call it a night,” Savannah said. “We found nothing, Gigi. There’s nothing to be found. Satisfied?”
“Always,” Gigi replied emphatically. “Also, never! I am full of contradictions.”
Grayson felt another tug toward her, toward both of them—and did his best to dismiss it. “I think we’re done in here,” he said. “What’s step zero?”
“The step in between steps negative one and one!” Gigi beamed at him. “You catch on quickly, my pseudonymous friend.”
“Not quickly enough.” Savannah sidled between the two of them. “It’s getting late.”
Grayson waited for Gigi to object, but she didn’t. “Totally. And step zero involves beauty sleep and outfit selection, because tomorrow night, we party.”
CHAPTER 22
GRAYSON
Gigi saw him out but didn’t follow him down the front steps. As Grayson paced toward the Ferrari, he heard a voice farther down the drive. Acacia’s. “You left her there overnight? And didn’t call me?”
Grayson could go still with a moment’s notice. Complete control of his body made it that much easier to disappear into his surroundings.
“She has to learn sometime.” That voice was male, unremarkable. “Do you know what would have happened if I hadn’t intervened, Acacia?”
Pinpointing their location to be inside the portico, Grayson allowed himself two more steps in that direction. Silent. Measured.
“It is not your job to teach my daughters anything, Kent.”
“And that’s not the only thing that’s bothering you, Mrs. Grayson.”