The Final Gambit (The Inheritance Games #3)(9)

“The disk,” I breathed.

The door to the bathroom opened. Eve stood there, wrapped in a white towel, wet hair trailing down the sides of her neck. She wore a locket and nothing else except the towel. Grayson tried very hard not to look at her.

Jameson looked at me.

“Did you need something?” I asked Eve. Her hair was darker wet, less remarkable. Without it to distract from her face, her eyes looked bigger, her cheekbones higher.

“Bandage,” Eve replied. If she was self-conscious about standing there in a towel, she didn’t show it. “My cut split open in the shower.”

“I’ll help you,” I volunteered before Grayson could. The sooner I tended to Eve, the sooner I could get back to Jameson and the possibility I’d just breathed into being.

What if the person who took Toby was after the disk? My mind racing, I led Eve back into the bathroom.

“What disk?” she asked behind me. I pulled out a first aid kit and handed it to her. She took it from me, her fingers brushing mine. “When I came into the room, you were talking about what happened to Toby,” she said stubbornly. “You mentioned a disk.”

I wondered how much else she’d heard and whether she’d meant to eavesdrop. Maybe Jameson was right. Maybe we couldn’t trust her.

“It might be nothing,” I said, brushing off the question.

“What might be nothing?” Eve pressed. When I didn’t answer, she dropped another question like a bomb. “Who’s Emily?”

I swallowed. “A girl.” That wasn’t a lie, but it was so far from the truth that I couldn’t leave it there. “She died. The two of you—you’re related.”

Eve chose a bandage and pushed her wet hair back from her face. I almost offered to help her, but something held me back. “Toby told me he was adopted,” she said, fixing the bandage in place. “But he wouldn’t tell me anything about his biological family—or the Hawthornes.”

She waited, like she expected me to tell her something. When I didn’t, she looked down. “I know that you don’t trust me,” she said. “I wouldn’t trust me, either. You have everything, and I have nothing, and I know how that looks.”

So did I. From experience, so did I.

“I never wanted to come here,” Eve continued. “I never wanted to ask you for anything—or them.” Her voice strained. “But I want Toby back. I want my father back, Avery.” Her emerald eyes locked on mine, radiating an intensity that was nearly Hawthorne. “And I will do anything— anything —to get what I want, even if that means begging for your help. So please, Avery, if you know something that could help us find Toby, just tell me.”





CHAPTER 9

I didn’t tell Eve about the disk. I justified it to myself because, for all I knew, there was nothing to tell. Not every mystery was an elaborate puzzle.

The answer wasn’t always elegant and carefully designed. And even if Toby’s abduction did have something to do with the disk, where did that leave us?

Feeling like I owed Eve something, I asked Mrs. Laughlin to prepare her a room. Tears overflowed the moment the older woman laid eyes on her great-granddaughter. There was no hiding who Eve was.

No hiding that she belonged here.

Hours later, I was alone in Tobias Hawthorne’s study. I told myself that I was doing the right thing, giving Jameson and Grayson space. Seeing Eve had dredged up trauma. They needed to process, and I needed to think.

I triggered the hidden compartment in the old man’s desk and reached for the folder that Jameson and I kept inside. Flipping it open, I stared at a drawing I’d made: a small coinlike disk the size of a quarter, engraved with concentric circles. The last time I’d seen this bit of metal, Toby had just snatched it from my hands. I’d asked him what it was. He hadn’t answered.

All I really knew was what I’d read in a message Toby had once written to my mother: that if she ever needed anything, she should go to Jackson. You know what I left there, Toby had written. You know what it’s worth.

I stared at the drawing. You know what it’s worth. Coming from the son of a billionaire, that was almost unfathomable. In the months since Toby had left, Jameson and I had scoured books on art and ancient civilizations, on rare coins, lost treasures, and great archeological finds. We’d even researched organizations like the Freemasons and the Knights Templar.

Spreading that research out on the desk, I looked for something, anything we’d missed, but there was no record of the disk anywhere, and Jameson’s globe-trotting search of Hawthorne vacation properties hadn’t turned up anything meaningful, either.

“Who knows about the disk?” I let myself think out loud. “Who knows what it’s worth and that Toby had it?”

Who even knew for certain that Toby was alive, let alone where to find him?

All I had were questions. It felt wrong that Jameson wasn’t here asking them with me.

Without meaning to, I reached back into the hidden compartment, to another file, one that billionaire Tobias Hawthorne had assembled on me.

Did the old man know about Eve? I couldn’t shake the feeling that if Tobias Hawthorne had known about Toby’s daughter, I wouldn’t be here. The billionaire had chosen me largely for the effect it would have on his family.