The Final Gambit (The Inheritance Games #3)(47)

“But now that it seems like the old man might be at the center of the current onslaught?” Jameson’s gaze snapped back to the real world. “What if…”

Jameson and I lived for those two words. What if? I felt them now. “You think there could be a connection,” I said, “between the game your grandfather left me and everything else?”

Toby’s abduction. The old man with a fondness for riddles. Someone coming at me from all sides.

My question grounded Jameson, and his gaze leapt to mine. “I think that this game was delivered to you because Eve showed up here. And the only reason that Eve came here was because there was trouble. No trouble, no Eve. If Toby hadn’t been abducted, she wouldn’t be here. My grandfather always thought seven steps ahead. He saw dozens of permutations in how things could play out, planned for every eventuality, strategized for each and every possible future.”

Sometimes, when the boys talked about the old man, they made him sound more than mortal. But there were limits to what a person could foresee, limits to even the most brilliant mind’s strategy.

Jameson caught my chin in his hand and tilted my head gently backward, angling it up toward him. “Think about it, Heiress. What if the information we need to find out who took Toby is really in this game?”

My throat tightened, my entire body feeling the shot of hope with physical force. “Do you really think it could be?” I asked, my voice breaking.

Shadows fell across Jameson’s eyes. “Maybe not. Maybe I’m stretching.

Maybe I’m just seeing what I want to see, seeing him the way I want to see him.”

I thought about the files, about Jameson disappearing into the walls of Hawthorne House. “I’m here,” I told him softly. “I am right here with you, Jameson Hawthorne.” Stop running.

He shuddered. “Say Tahiti, Heiress.”

I brought my hand to the side of his neck. “Tahiti.”

“Do you want to know the worst part? Because the worst part isn’t knowing what my grandfather would do—and has done—to win. It’s knowing in my gut and in my bones, with every fiber of my being, why. It’s knowing that everything he’s done in the name of winning, I would have done, too.”

Jameson Winchester Hawthorne is hungry. That was what Skye had told me during my first few weeks at Hawthorne House. Grayson was dutiful and Xander was brilliant, but Jameson had been the old man’s favorite because Tobias Hawthorne had been born hungry, too.

It hurt me to see them as alike. “Don’t say that, Jameson.”

“It was all just strategy to him,” Jameson said. “He saw connections that other people missed. Everyone else played chess in two dimensions, but Tobias Hawthorne saw the third, and when he recognized a winning move, he took it.”

There’s nothing more Hawthorne than winning.

“Just because you could do it,” I told Jameson fiercely, “doesn’t mean you would have.”

“Before you, Heiress? I absolutely would have.” His voice was intense.

“I can’t even hate him now. He’s a part of me. He’s in me.” Jameson’s fingers lightly touched my hair, then curled into it. “But mostly, I can’t hate him, Avery Kylie Grambs, because he brought me you.”

He needed me to kiss him, and I needed it, too. When Jameson finally pulled away— just one centimeter, then two—my lips ached for his. He brought his mouth to my ear. “Now, back to the game.”





CHAPTER 45

We worked until almost dawn, slept briefly, woke intertwined. We talked to Nan and Zara, played with the numbers, identified the church, which wasn’t even in France, let alone in Margaux. We went back to the unused objects in the bag: a steamer, a flashlight, the USB.

By midmorning, we were stuck in a loop.

As if he’d divined the need for something to snap us out of it, Xander texted Jameson’s phone. Jameson held it out for me to see. 911.

“An emergency?” I asked.

“More like a summons,” Jameson told me. “Come on.” We made it as far as the hallway before we ran into Nash, who was leaving Libby’s room in the clothes he’d worn the day before, holding a small, wiggling ball of chaos and brown fur.

“I really hope you didn’t try to give that incredibly adorable puppy to my sister,” I told him.

“He didn’t.” Libby padded into the hallway wearing an I EAT MORNING

PEOPLE shirt and black pajama pants. “He knows better. That is a Hawthorne dog.” Libby reached out to stroke the puppy’s ear. “Nash found her in an alley. Some drunk assholes were poking at her with a stick.” Knowing Nash as I did, I doubted that had turned out well for the drunk assholes. “He saved her,” Libby continued, letting her hand drop. “That’s what he does.”

“I don’t know, darlin’,” Nash said, giving the pup a scratch, his eyes on my sister. “I was in pretty rough shape. Maybe she saved me.”

I thought about little Nash watching Skye with his baby brothers, watching her give them away. And then I thought about Libby taking me in.

“You get Xander’s nine-one-one?” Jameson asked his brother.

“Sure did,” Nash drawled.

“Nine-one-one?” Libby frowned. “Is Xander okay?”