The Hawthorne Legacy (The Inheritance Games #2)(50)

Once we arrived back at Hawthorne House, I asked Oren to show me the elusive Hawthorne vault. He took me, and only me, to see it. We zigged and zagged through hallways until we reached an elevator. When the elevator door opened, I went to step on, but Oren stopped me. He pressed the call button a second time, holding his index finger flat against it.

“Fingerprint scan,” he told me. After a moment, the back wall of the elevator began to slide, revealing a small walkway.

“What happens if someone pries the doors open while the elevator is on a different floor?” I asked.

“Nothing.” Oren’s lips parted in a very subtle smile. “The passage only opens if the elevator is present.”

“Whose fingerprints can open it?” I asked.

“Currently?” Oren returned. “Mine and Nan’s.”

Not Zara’s. Not Skye’s. And not mine. In Tobias Hawthorne’s will, he’d left all of his wife’s jewelry to her mother. At the time of the will’s reading, that had seemed trivial, but as we walked toward an honest-to-God vault door—the kind you’d expect to see on a bank vault—it didn’t seem so trivial now.

“If everything in the Hawthorne vault belongs to Nan…,” I started to say.

“Not everything,” Oren cut in. “Nan owns the late Mrs. Hawthorne’s jewelry, but Mr. Hawthorne also had an impressive collection of watches and rings, as well as pieces he purchased for artistic and sentimental reasons. Mrs. Hawthorne’s jewelry passed to Nan, but many of the museum-quality pieces are yours.”

“Museum-quality?” I swallowed. “Am I getting ready to see the crown jewels?” I was only partially joking.

“Of what country?” Oren replied—and he wasn’t joking at all. “Anything valued over two million dollars is kept off the premises, in a more secure location.”

The vault’s lock disengaged. Oren spun the handle on the door and opened it. Holding my breath, I stepped into a steel room lined, ceiling to floor, with metallic drawers. I reached for one at random. When I pulled it out, displays popped up: three of them, each containing a set of tear-drop earrings: diamonds, bigger than any engagement ring I’d ever seen. I opened three or four more drawers and blinked. Repeatedly.

My brain refused to compute.

“Is there something in particular you were looking for?” Oren asked me.

I tore my eyes away from a ruby half the size of my fist. “Wedding ring,” I managed. “Tobias Hawthorne’s.” Oren stared at me for a second or two, then walked over to the far wall. He pulled one drawer, then another, and I found myself staring at a dozen Rolex watches and a pair of varnished silver cuff links.

“Is the ring hidden?” I asked, my fingers wandering toward one of the watches.

“If the ring isn’t in that drawer, it isn’t here,” Oren said. “My guess would be that Mr. Hawthorne had it placed in the envelope that was given to Zara at the reading of the will.”

In other words: I was surrounded by a fortune in jewels, but the one thing I needed wasn’t here.





CHAPTER 50


You’re going to need someone to run interference if you want to search Zara’s wing.” Grayson had apparently meant it when he promised to help me see this through to the end.

“Gray excels at distraction,” Jameson said loftily. “I attribute it to his uncanny ability to be boring and long-winded on cue.”

Grayson didn’t rise to the bait. “We’ll need to make sure Constantine stays clear, too.”

“I, too, excel at the art of distraction,” Max volunteered. “I attribute it to my ability to channel any or all of my favorite fictional spies on cue.”

“Grayson and Max can set up a perimeter.” Xander’s voice was uncharacteristically muted. “Jameson, Avery, and I will do a sweep of the wing.”

Rebecca had split the moment the plane landed. Thea hadn’t lingered long once Rebecca was gone. Xander’s team had abandoned him, but he wasn’t backing down.

He wasn’t about to let Jameson and me search for the ring on our own.

“This is a very bad idea.” Eli didn’t even pretend that he hadn’t been eavesdropping.

That’s why we waited until Oren was off duty to do it, I thought.





The door to Zara’s wing was at least ten feet tall—and locked.

“Do you want to pick it?” Jameson asked Xander. “Or should I?”

Two minutes later, the three of us were in. Grayson and Max stayed behind and took up posts at the far ends on the hall. Eli grumbled as he followed me into the belly of the beast.

A quick inspection told me there were seven doors lining the main hall in Zara’s wing. Behind three of them we found bedrooms, each one the equivalent of an entire suite. Two of the three suites were clearly in use.

“Do Zara and her husband sleep in different rooms?” I asked Jameson.

“Don’t know,” he replied.

“Don’t want to know,” Xander added cheerily.

I saw men’s shoes in one room. The other was immaculate. Zara’s. There was a marble fireplace near the back of the room. Built-in shelves lined the wall to the left. There were books on the shelves, large, leather-bound volumes. The kind of books a person displayed, not the kind they read.