The Inheritance Games (The Inheritance Games #1)(71)

It sounded an awful lot like Nan had arranged for that “accident.” She killed her husband?

“Nan,” a voice scolded from the doorway. “You’re scaring the kid.”

Nan sniffed. “She scares that easy, she won’t last here.” With that, Nan made her way from the room.

The oldest Hawthorne brother turned his attention to me. “You tell your sister you’re playing delinquent today?”

The mention of Libby had me flashing back to our argument. She’s talking to Dad. She didn’t want a restraining order against Drake. She won’t block him. I wondered how much of that Nash already knew.

“Libby knows where I am,” I told him stiffly.

He gave me a look. “This ain’t easy for her, kid. You’re at the eye of the storm, where things are calm. She’s taking the brunt of it, from all sides.”

I wouldn’t call getting shot at “calm.”

“What are your intentions toward my sister?” I asked Nash.

He clearly found my line of questioning amusing. “What are your intentions toward Jameson?”

Was there no one in this house who didn’t know about that kiss?

“You were right about your grandfather’s game,” I told Nash. He’d tried to warn me. He’d told me exactly why Jameson had been keeping me close.

“Usually am.” Nash hooked his thumbs through his belt loops. “The closer to the end you come, the worse it’ll get.”

The logical thing to do was stop playing. Step back. But I wanted answers, and some part of me—the part that had grown up with a mom who’d turned everything into a challenge, the part who’d played my first game of chess when I was six years old—wanted to win.

“Any chance you know where your grandfather might have stashed a Davenport desk?” I asked Nash.

He snorted. “You don’t learn easy, do you, kid?”

I shrugged.

Nash considered my question, then cocked his head to the side. “You check the libraries?”

“The circular library, the onyx one, the one with the stained-glass window, the one with the globes, the maze…” I glanced over at my bodyguard. “That’s it?”

Oren nodded.

Nash cocked his head to the side. “Not quite.”





CHAPTER 64


Nash led me up two sets of stairs, down three hallways, and past a doorway that had been bricked shut.

“What’s that?” I asked.

He slowed momentarily. “That was my uncle’s wing. The old man had it walled off when Toby died.”

Because that’s normal, I thought. About as normal as disinheriting your whole family for twenty years and never saying a word.

Nash picked up the pace again, and finally, we came to a steel door that looked like it belonged on a safe. There was a combination dial, and below it, a five-pronged lever. Nash casually twirled the dial—left, right, left—too quick for me to catch the numbers. There was a loud clicking sound, and then he turned the lever. The steel door opened out into the hall.

What kind of library needs that kind of securit—

My brain was in the process of finishing that thought when Nash stepped through the doorway, and I realized that what lay beyond wasn’t a single room. It was a whole other wing.

“The old man started construction on this part of the house when I was born,” Nash informed me. The hallway around us was papered with dials, keypads, locks, and keys, all affixed to the walls like art. “Hawthornes learn how to wield a lockpick young,” Nash told me as we walked down the hall. I looked in a room to my left, and there was a small airplane—not a toy. An actual single-person airplane.

“This was your playroom?” I asked, eyeing the doors lining the rest of the hall and wondering what surprises those rooms held.

“Skye was seventeen when I was born.” Nash shrugged. “She made an attempt at playing parent. Didn’t stick. The old man tried to compensate.”

By building you… this.

“C’mon.” Nash led me toward the end of the hall and opened another door. “Arcade,” he told me, the explanation completely unnecessary. There was a foosball table, a bar, three pinball machines, and an entire wall of arcade-style consoles.

I walked over to one of the pinball machines, pressed a button, and it surged to life.

I glanced back at Nash. “I can wait,” he said.

I should have stayed focused. He was leading me to the final library—and possibly the location of the Davenport and the next clue. But one game wouldn’t kill me. I gave a preliminary flip of the flipper, then launched the ball.

I didn’t come anywhere near the top score, but when the game was over, it prompted me for my initials anyway, and when I entered them, a familiar message flashed across the screen.


WELCOME TO HAWTHORNE HOUSE, AVERY KYLIE GRAMBS!



It was the same message I’d gotten at the bowling alley, and just as I had then, I felt the ghost of Tobias Hawthorne all around me. Even if you thought that you’d manipulated our grandfather into this, I guarantee that he’d be the one manipulating you.

Nash walked behind the bar. “Refrigerator is full of sugary drinks. What’s your poison?”

I came closer and saw that he wasn’t kidding when he said full. Glass bottles lined every shelf of the fridge, with soda in every imaginable flavor. “Cotton candy?” I wrinkled my nose. “Prickly pear? Bacon and jalepeno?”