The Final Gambit (The Inheritance Games #3)(58)

“More aggressive how?” Alisa pressed.

Xander held Tiramisu up to his face and spoke in the puppy’s voice.

“Don’t worry. The fire was very small.”

“What fire?” Jameson demanded, and he closed the space between us taking my hand. “Tell us, Heiress.”

“Another envelope. The message caught fire when it hit the air. Seven numbers.”

Jameson’s thumb traced the heel of my hand. “Well then, Heiress. Game on.”





CHAPTER 53

We had two potential clues: the seal and the number. Given that we were no closer to identifying the disk than Jameson and I had been for months, I opted to concentrate on the number.

Divide and conquer wasn’t a Hawthorne family motto, but it might as well have been. Grayson took financials: bank records, investment accounts, transactions. Xander, Thea, and Rebecca took the date angle: December 29, 1982. That left a myriad of possibilities for Jameson and me, among them the phone number. If we really were missing an area code, then filling in the blank would accomplish two things: First, it would give us a number to try calling. Second, it would give us a location.

A hint to where Toby was being held? Or another piece of the riddle?

“There are more than three hundred area codes in the United States,”

Jameson said from memory.

“I’ll print out a list,” I told him, but what I really wanted to say was Are we okay?

Thirty minutes into making phone calls—each area code, followed by 3631982—I hadn’t had a single call go through. Taking a break, I plugged the number into an internet search and skimmed the results. A court case involving discriminatory housing practices. A baseball card valued at over two thousand dollars. A hymn from the 1982 Hymnal in the Episcopal Church.

A phone rang. I looked up. Thea held up her phone. “Blocked number,”

she said, and because she was Thea Calligaris and didn’t know the meaning of the words hesitation or second-guess, she answered.

Two seconds later, she passed the phone to me. I pressed it to my ear.

“Hello?”

“Who am I?” a voice— that voice—said.

That question didn’t just get under my skin; it had been living there for days, and I wondered if he’d called Thea’s phone for the sole purpose of reminding me that he’d gotten to her.

“You tell me,” I replied. He wasn’t going to get a rise out of me. Not now.

“I already did.” His voice was as smooth as ever, his cadence distinct.

Jameson grabbed the list with the area codes, then scrawled a message on it. ASK ABOUT THE DISK.

“The disk,” I said. “You knew what it was.” I paused to allow for a response that never came. “When you sent it back to me as proof that you had Toby, you knew what it was worth.”

“Intimately.”

“And you want me to guess? What it is, what all of this means?”

“Guessing,” Toby’s captor said silkily, “is for those too weak in mind or spirit to know.”

That sounded like something Tobias Hawthorne would have said.

“I had a program installed on your little friend’s cell phone. I’ve been tracking you, listening to you. You’re there, in his inner sanctum, aren’t you?”

Tobias Hawthorne’s study. That was what he meant by inner sanctum.

He knew where we were. The phone in my hand felt dirty, threatening. I wanted to hurl it out a window, but I didn’t.

“Why does it matter where I am?” I asked.

“I tire of waiting.” Somehow, that sounded more threatening than any words I’d ever heard this man speak. “Look up.”

The line went dead. I handed the phone to Oren. “He had someone install a program to let him spy on us.” So why had he given it up?

Because he wants me to know that he’s everywhere.

Oren dropped the phone and stamped his heel down on it, hard. Thea’s outraged squeal was drowned out by the cacophony of thoughts in my head.

“Look up.” I repeated the words. My eyes traveled toward Jameson’s.

“He asked me if I was in your grandfather’s inner sanctum, but I think he knew the answer. And he told me to look up.”

I angled my head toward the ceiling. It was high, with mahogany beams and custom moldings. If look up had been part of one of Tobias Hawthorne’s riddles, I would have been fetching a ladder right now, but we weren’t dealing with Tobias Hawthorne.

“He’s been listening to us,” I said, feeling that like oil on my skin. “But even if he hacked Thea’s camera, he wouldn’t have been able to see me. So where would someone picture me in this room if they didn’t know where I was sitting?”

I walked toward Tobias Hawthorne’s desk. I knew he’d spent hours sitting there, working, strategizing. Putting myself in his position, I took a seat behind the desk. I looked down at it, like I was working, and then I looked up. When that didn’t work, I thought about the way that neither Jameson nor Xander could think sitting down. Standing, I walked to the other side of the desk. Look up.

I did and found myself staring at the wall of trophies and medals that the Hawthorne grandsons had won: national championships in everything from motocross to swimming to pinball; trophies for surfing, for fencing, for riding bulls. These were the talents that Tobias Hawthorne’s grandsons had cultivated. These were the kind of results he’d expected.