The Inheritance Games (The Inheritance Games #1)(52)

I thought about Grayson, telling me that Jameson was a sensation seeker. Fear. Pain. Joy. Which of those had Emily been—for him?

“What happened to her?” I asked. My internet search hadn’t yielded any answers. Thea had made it sound like the Hawthornes were somehow to blame, like Emily had died because she spent time at Hawthorne House. “Did she live at the cottage?”

Jameson ignored my second question and answered the first. “Grayson happened to her.”

I’d known, from the moment I’d said Emily’s name in Grayson’s presence, that she had mattered to him. But Jameson seemed pretty clear on the fact that he’d been the one involved with her. There is nothing that Emily and I didn’t do.

“What do you mean, Grayson happened to her?” I asked Jameson. I glanced back, but I couldn’t see Oren anymore.

“Let’s play a game,” Jameson said darkly, his pace ticking up a notch as we hit a hill. “I’ll give you one truth about my life and two lies, and it’s up to you to decide which is which.”

“Isn’t it supposed to be two truths and one lie?” I asked. I may not have gone to many parties back home, but I hadn’t grown up under a rock.

“What fun is it,” Jameson returned, “playing by other people’s rules?” He was looking at me like he expected me to understand that.

Understand him.

“Fact the first,” he rattled off. “I knew what was in my grandfather’s will long before you showed up here. Fact the second: I’m the one who sent Grayson to fetch you.”

We reached the top of the hill, and I could see a building in the distance. A cottage—and between us and it, a bridge.

“Fact the third,” Jameson said, standing statue-still for the span of a heartbeat. “I watched Emily Laughlin die.”





CHAPTER 47


I didn’t play Jameson’s game. I didn’t guess which of the things he’d just said was true, but there was no mistaking the way his throat had tightened when he’d said those last words.

I watched Emily Laughlin die.

That didn’t tell me what had happened to her. It didn’t explain why he’d told me that Grayson had happened to her.

“Shall we turn our attention to the bridge, Heiress?” Jameson didn’t make me guess. I wasn’t sure he really wanted me to.

I forced my focus to the scene in front of us. It was picturesque. There were fewer trees here to block the moonlight. I could make out the way the bridge arched the creek, but not the water below. The bridge was wooden, with railings and balusters that looked like they’d been painstakingly handmade. “Did your grandfather build this himself?”

I’d never met Tobias Hawthorne, but I was starting to feel like I knew him. He was everywhere—in this puzzle, in the House, in the boys.

“I don’t know if he built it.” Jameson flashed a Cheshire Cat grin, his teeth glinting in the moonlight. “But if we’re right about this, he almost certainly built something into it.”

Jameson excelled at pretense—pretending that I’d never asked him about Emily, pretending he hadn’t just told me that he’d watched her die.

Pretending that what happened after midnight stayed in the dark.

He walked the length of the bridge. Behind him, I did the same. It was old and a little creaky but solid as a rock. When Jameson reached the end, he backtracked, his hands stretched out to the sides, fingertips lightly trailing the railings.

“Any idea what we’re looking for?” I asked him.

“I’ll know it when I see it.” He might as well have said when I see it, I’ll let you know. He’d said that he and Emily were alike, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that he wouldn’t have expected her to be a passive participant. He wouldn’t have treated her as just another part of the game, laid out in the beginning to be useful by the end.

I’m a person. I’m capable. I’m here. I’m playing. I took my phone from the pocket of my coat and turned on its flashlight. I made my way back over the bridge, shining the beam on the railing, looking for indentations or a carving—something. My eyes tracked the nails in the wood, counting them out, mentally measuring the distance between every one.

When I finished with the railing, I squatted, inspecting each baluster. Opposite me, Jameson did the same. It felt almost like we were dancing—a strange midnight dance for two.

I’m here.

“I’ll know it when I see it,” Jameson said again, somewhere between a mantra and a promise.

“Or maybe I will.” I straightened.

Jameson looked up at me. “Sometimes, Heiress,” he said, “you just need a different point of view.”

He jumped, and the next thing I knew, he was standing on the railing. I couldn’t make out the water down below, but I could hear it. The night air was otherwise silent, until Jameson started walking.

It was like watching him teeter on the balcony, all over again.

The bridge isn’t that high. The water probably isn’t that deep. I turned my flashlight toward him, rising from my crouched position. The bridge creaked beneath me.

“We need to look below,” Jameson said. He climbed to the far side of the railing, balancing on the bridge’s edge. “Grab my legs,” he told me, but before I could figure out where to grab them or what he was planning to do, he changed his mind. “No. I’m too big. You’ll drop me.” He was back over the railing in a flash. “I’ll have to hold you.”