The Final Gambit (The Inheritance Games #3)(24)

How many enemies do we have?

A knock broke into my thoughts. I opened my door to find Mr. Laughlin standing there—and Oren, along with Eve’s guard, positioned down the hall.

“Pardon the interruption, Avery. I’ve got something for you.” The old groundskeeper had a cart with him, filled with long rolls of paper.

Another special delivery? My heart rate ticked up. “Did these come by courier service?”

“I dug these out for you myself.” As gruff as Mr. Laughlin’s manner was, there was something almost gentle in his moss-colored eyes. “You just had a birthday. Each year following his birthday, Mr. Hawthorne had plans drawn up for the next expansion on the House.”

Tobias Hawthorne had never finished Hawthorne House. He’d added on every year.

“These are the blueprints.” Mr. Laughlin nodded to the cart as he wheeled it into the room. “One set for each year since we broke ground on the House. Thought you might want to see them if you’re planning an addition of your own.”

“Me?” I said. “Add on to Hawthorne House?”

Eve stepped into the room, wearing the green silk shirt, and for a moment she stared at the blueprints the way she’d stared at the clothes in my closet. Then a figure appeared in the doorway.

Jameson. His face and body were drenched in mud. His shirt was torn, his shoulder bleeding.

Mr. Laughlin put an arm around Eve’s shoulder. “Come on, missy. We should go.”





CHAPTER 22

You’re bleeding,” I told Jameson.

He showed his teeth in a wicked smile. “I’m also dangerously close to getting mud on… everything.”

There was mud on his face, in his hair. His clothes were drenched in it, his shirt clinging to his abdomen, letting me see every line of the muscles underneath.

“Before you ask,” Jameson murmured. “I’m fine, and so is Gray.”

I wondered if Grayson Hawthorne had even a fleck of mud on him.

“Oren said things got Hawthorne ugly.” I gave Jameson a look.

He shrugged. “Skye has a way of messing with our heads.” Jameson did not elaborate on the mud, the blood, or what exactly he and Grayson had gotten up to. “At the end of the day, we all learned what we needed to know. Skye’s not involved in the kidnapping.”

I’d learned a lot more than that since. The words tumbling out, I told Jameson everything: the picture of Toby, the message the kidnapper had hidden in it, Eve’s comment about dark and dangerous secrets, what Oren had told me about the attempts to hire my security team away.

The more I talked, the closer Jameson moved toward me, the closer I needed to be to him.

“No matter what I do,” I said, our bodies brushing, “I don’t feel like I’m getting anywhere.”

“Maybe that’s the point, Heiress.”

I recognized the tone in his voice, knew it as well as I knew each of his scars. “What are you thinking, Hawthorne?”

“This second message changes things.” Jameson’s arms curved around me. I could feel mud soaking into my shirt, feel the heat of his body from underneath his. “We were wrong.”

“About what?” I asked.

“The person we’re dealing with—they’re not playing a Hawthorne game. In the old man’s games, the clues are always sequential. One clue leads you to the next, if only you can solve it.”

“But this time,” I said, picking up his train of thought, “the first message didn’t lead us anywhere. The second message just came.”

Jameson reached one hand up to touch my face, smearing my jawline with mud. “Ergo, the clues in this game aren’t sequential. Working one isn’t going to magically lead you to the next, Heiress, no matter what you do.

Either Toby’s captor just wants you scared, in which case, these are vague warnings with no greater design.”

I stared at him. “Or?” He’d said either.

“Or,” Jameson murmured, “it’s all part of the same riddle: one answer, multiple clues.”

His hip bones pressed lightly into my stomach. “A riddle,” I repeated, my voice rough. “Who took Toby—and why?”

Avenge. Revenge. Vengeance. Avenger. I always win in the end.

“An incomplete riddle,” Jameson elaborated. “Delivered piece by piece.

Or a story—and we’re at the mercy of the storyteller.”

The person doling out hints, clues that went nowhere in isolation. “We don’t have what we need to solve this,” I said, hating what I was saying and how defeated I sounded saying it. “Do we?”

“Not yet.”

I wanted to scream, but I looked up at him instead. I saw a jagged cut on the underside of his jaw and reached for his chin. “This looks bad.”

“On the contrary, Heiress, bleeding is a devastatingly good look for me.”

Xander wasn’t the only Hawthorne who specialized in distractions.

Needing this and not liking the look of that cut on his jaw, I allowed myself to be distracted. “Let’s make this a game,” I told Jameson. “I bet that you can’t shower and wash off all that mud before I find what we need from the first aid kit.”

“I have a better idea.” Jameson lowered his lips to mine. My neck arched. More mud on my face, my clothes. “I bet,” he countered, “that you can’t wash all this mud off before I…”