“What’s wrong?” Xander demanded immediately.
Grayson frowned. “What would make you think there’s something wrong?”
“You said hello.”
Grayson’s frown deepened. “I say hello.”
“No, you don’t.” Xander’s grin was audible in his voice. “Now say it in French!”
Grayson did not oblige. “I stole what appeared to be a USB drive from Sheffield Grayson’s home office,” he reported instead. “He had it hidden in a secret compartment in a framed portrait of his family.”
Xander processed that. “Gray, would now be an appropriate time to talk about your feelings?”
Hands in cement, paintings on the wall. “No.” Grayson didn’t belabor that point. “Whatever the drive is, it’s not a USB. I don’t think it’s digital at all. There was also an index card, apparently blank.”
“Invisible ink?” Xander said.
“Possibly,” Grayson replied. “I’ll try the basics.”
“Light, heat, blacklight,” Xander rattled off, a grin audible in his voice. “Sodium iodide.”
“Exactly.” Grayson let his eyes go back to the card.
“And how is everything going with the sister?” Xander probed.
Still staring at the index card, Grayson corrected him. “Sisters.” The word escaped him. He’d been careful not to think of the girls that way up to this point, but he could feel himself on a slippery slope.
They were his to protect, even if he wasn’t their family.
“Sisters, plural? As in you met the other one?”
“She knows who I am and despises me on principle.” Grayson gave a slight shake of his head. “I’m a threat to her family.”
“And threats must be extinguished,” Xander intoned. “Is she blonde?”
Grayson scowled. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Does she like giving orders?” Xander asked excitedly. “What are her thoughts on suits?”
The point Xander was making did not escape Grayson. “The fact that she doesn’t trust me is going to make my job more difficult.”
“Gray?” Xander said gently. “That’s not the difficult part.”
Grayson thought fleetingly of the family portrait. Of the picture of Colin. Of Acacia saying that if she’d known about him earlier, things might have been different.
Damn Xander.
“Repeat after me, Gray: My feelings are valid.”
“Stop talking,” Grayson ordered.
“My emotions are real,” Xander continued. “Go on. Say it.”
“I’m hanging up on you now.”
“Who’s your favorite brother?” Xander called loudly enough that Grayson could still hear him even as he removed the phone from his ear.
“Nash,” he answered loudly.
“Lies!”
Grayson’s phone vibrated. “I’m getting another call,” he told Xander.
“More lies!” Xander said happily. “Give my regards to Girl Grayson!”
“Good-bye, Xander.”
“You said good-b—”
Grayson hung up before Xander could finish, switching over to take the incoming call. “Yes?”
On the other end of the line, there was silence.
“Hello?” Grayson tried. See? He aimed a mental retort at Xander. I say hello.
“Is this Grayson Hawthorne?” The voice that asked that question was female and unfamiliar. There was something about it—the tone, the timbre, the spacing in that question—that kept him from hanging up.
“To whom am I speaking?” Grayson asked.
“That doesn’t matter.” She said that like a simple truth, but the subtle rise and fall of her pitch and the way her voice sounded to his ears made him think that she was wrong.
Who this girl was mattered very much.
“To whom am I speaking?” Grayson repeated. “Or would you prefer I rephrase the question: On whom am I about to hang up?”
“Don’t hang up.” That wasn’t a plea, but it wasn’t quite an order, either. “You’re speaking with someone from whom the Hawthorne family has taken a great deal.”
The way she tossed the word whom right back at him did not go unnoticed—and neither did the way her voice got a little quieter and a little deeper.
“I presume that when you say the Hawthorne family, you mean my grandfather.” Grayson kept his own tone even. “Whatever Tobias Hawthorne did or didn’t do, it’s none of my concern.”