The Hawthorne Legacy (The Inheritance Games #2)(55)

“I think,” Jameson murmured, “that you finally let go.”

I remembered the way his skin had felt under my hands in the hot tub. That was letting go. This was me, hanging on to something. I didn’t even know what.

“He doesn’t want me to find him.” Saying the words out loud made it feel real.

“Which suggests,” Jameson added, “that he thinks we might be able to.”

We.

I stepped into Toby’s bedroom. The black lights were still there. Jameson turned them on. The writing was still on the literal walls.

“I’ve been thinking,” Jameson said, like it was a confession, like his mind wasn’t always on the move. “The old man didn’t leave Xander an impossible task. He left a game, one originally meant for Zara and Skye. And that means that if we follow this through to the end, there will be an end. This is all leading somewhere. I can feel it.”

I took a step toward him. Then another. And another.

“You can feel it, too, can’t you?” Jameson said as I closed the space between us.

I could feel it. The chase was gaining momentum. The hunt was closing in. Eventually, we’d figure out what the dates on the rings meant. We were barreling forward. Jameson and me.

I pushed him up against the closest wall. I could see Toby’s writing all around him, but I didn’t want to think about Toby, who’d told me to stop looking.

I didn’t want to think about anything, so I kissed the boy. This time it wasn’t rough or frantic. It was gentle and slow and terrifying and perfect. And for once in my life, I didn’t feel alone.





CHAPTER 55


The next day at school, I didn’t wait for Jameson to find me. I found him. “What if the numbers aren’t dates?” I said.

That got me a slow, winding, wicked smile. “Heiress, you took the words right out of my mouth.”





I half expected to end up back on the roof, but this time Jameson took me to one of the “learning pods” in the STEM Center. Basically, it was a small, square room where the walls, ceiling, and floor were all painted with whiteboard material. There were two white rolling chairs in the center of the room, and nothing else.

Eli started to follow us inside, and Jameson took that as his cue to run a hand down my back and bring his lips to the spot where my neck met my jawline. I arched my neck, and Eli went bright red and stepped out of the room.

Jameson shut the door—and went to work. There were five dry-erase markers attached to the back of each of the rolling chairs. Jameson grabbed one of the markers and began writing on the wall directly in front of the chair. “Eight, three, seven, five,” he said.

I rattled off the next four numbers from memory as he continued writing. “Nine, seven, four, eight.”

Writing the numbers without the dashes freed up countless possibilities. “A passcode?” I asked Jameson. “A PIN number?”

“Not enough digits in either of them for a phone number or a zip code.” Jameson stepped back, sat down in one of the chairs, and pushed off. “An address. A combination.”

I flashed back to the moment when he and I had stepped off a helicopter, with a different sequence of numbers. The air between us had felt electric—just like it did now. We’d been flying high—and thirty seconds later, he’d gone cold.

But this time was different, because this time we were on the same page. This time there were no expectations. I was in control. “Coordinates,” I said. That had been one of Jameson’s suggestions, the last time around.

He turned the chair and, with a push of his heels, came skidding back to me. “Coordinates,” he repeated, eyes alight. “Nine-seven-four-eight. Assuming the numbers are already in the correct order, nine has to be the number of degrees. Ninety-seven is too big.”

I thought back to my fifth-grade geography class. “Latitude and longitude run from negative ninety to ninety.”

“You two don’t know the valence of any of the numbers, obviously.”

Jameson and I whipped our heads back toward the door of the pod. Xander was standing there. I could see Eli, still red-faced, behind him. Xander stepped into the pod, shut the door, and, with no hesitation whatsoever, leaped forward to flying-tackle Jameson to the ground.

“How many times do I have to tell you?” the youngest Hawthorne demanded. “This is my game. No one is solving this without me.” He plucked the marker from Jameson’s hand and stood. “That was a friendly tackle,” he assured me. “Mostly.”

Jameson rolled his eyes. “We don’t know the valence of the numbers.” He echoed the last thing Xander had said pre-tackle. “And we also don’t know which is latitude and which is longitude, so nine degrees could be nine degrees north, south, west, or east.”

“Eight-three-seven-five.” I grabbed another marker off one of the chairs and underlined the numbers on the board in different combinations. “The degrees could be eight or eighty-three.”

Jameson smiled. “North, south, east, or west.”

“How many total possibilities?” Xander mused.

“Twenty-four,” Jameson and I answered at the exact same time.

Xander gave us a look. “Is there something going on here that I should be aware of?” he asked, gesturing between the two of us.