The Final Gambit (The Inheritance Games #3)(35)

“Where’s Toby?” I demanded. In response, I received only a chuckle.

“What do you want?” No answer. “At least tell me that you still have him.”

That he’s still okay.

“I have many things,” the voice said.

Holding the phone so tightly that my hand started to throb, I clung to my last shreds of control. Be smart, Avery. Get him talking. “What do you want?” I asked again, more calmly this time.

“Curious, are you?” Luke played with the words like a cat playing with a mouse. “Fine word, curious,” he continued, his voice like velvet. “It can mean that you’re eager to learn or know something, but also, strange or unusual. Yes, I think that description fits you very well.”

“So this is about me?” I asked through gritted teeth. “You want me curious?”

“I’m just an old man,” came the reply, “with a fondness for riddles.”

Old. How old? I didn’t have time to dwell on that question—or the fact that he’d referred to himself in the same way that Tobias Hawthorne’s grandsons referred to the dead billionaire.

“I don’t know what kind of sick game you’re playing,” I said harshly.

“Or maybe you know exactly what kind of sick game I’m playing.”

I could practically hear his lips curving into a knife-sharp smile.

“You have the box,” he said. “You have the phone. You’ll figure the next part out.”

“What next part?”

“Tick tock,” the old man replied. “The timer’s counting down to our next call. You won’t like what happens to your Toby if you don’t have an answer for me by then.”





CHAPTER 31

What did we learn? I tried to concentrate on that, not the threat, not the timer counting down.

Toby’s captor had referred to himself as old.

He’d called me by my full name.

He played with words—and with people. “He likes riddles,” I said out loud. “And games.”

I knew someone who fit that description, but billionaire Tobias Hawthorne was dead. He’d been dead for a year.

“What precisely are we supposed to figure out?” Grayson asked crisply.

I looked reflexively toward Jameson. “There must be something to find or decode,” I said, “just like there was in the earlier deliveries.”

“The next part of the same riddle,” Jameson murmured, our minds in sync.

Eve looked between the two of us. “What riddle?”

“The riddle,” Jameson said. “Who is he? Why is he doing this? The first two clues were straightforward enough to decode. He’s upped his ante with this installment.”

“We must be missing something,” I said. “A detail about the box or the package or—”

“I recorded the phone call.” Xander held up his phone. “In case there’s a clue in something he said. Beyond that…”

“We have the combination,” Jameson finished. “And the calendar entry.”

“Niv,” I said out loud. Moving on instinct, I checked the box for hidden compartments. There weren’t any. There was nothing else on the phone, nothing that popped out when we listened to my exchange with Toby’s captor a second time. Or a third.

“Can your team trace the call?” I asked Oren, trying to think ahead, trying to come at this problem from all sides. “We have the number.”

“I can try,” Oren replied evenly, “but unless our opponent is far less intelligent than he appears, the number is unregistered, and the call was routed through the internet, not a phone tower, with the signal split across a thousand IP addresses, bouncing all over the world.”

My throat tightened. “Could the police help pin it down?”

“We can’t call the police,” Eve whispered. “He could kill Toby.”

“Discreet inquiries could potentially be made to a trusted police contact without providing details,” Oren said. “Unfortunately, my three most trusted contacts have been recently transferred.”

There was no way that was a coincidence. Attacks on my business interests. Attempts to chip away at my security team. Paparazzi set on my every move. Police contacts transferred. I thought about what Alisa had said we were looking for. Wealth. Power. Connections.

“Play the recording again,” I told Xander.

My BHFF did as I asked, and this time, as the conversation ended, Jameson looked to Grayson. “He said that Avery could call him Luke. Not that his name was Luke.”

“Does that matter?” I asked.

Grayson held Jameson’s gaze. “It could.”

Eve started to say something, but the sound of a ringing phone silenced her. It wasn’t the burner phone. It was mine. My eyes darted to the caller ID. Thea.

I answered. “I’m kind of busy right now, Thea.”

“In that case, do you want the bad news first or the really bad news?”

“Is Rebecca—”

“Someone got a picture of Eve standing outside the gates of Hawthorne House. It just went live.”

I winced. “Was that the bad news or—”

“It went live,” Thea continued, “on the internet’s biggest gossip site, alongside a picture of Emily and an exposé on rumors that Emily Laughlin was killed by Grayson and Jameson Hawthorne.”