What did we learn? I tried to concentrate on that, not the threat, not the timer counting down.
Toby’s captor had referred to himself as old.
He’d called me by my full name.
He played with words—and with people. “He likes riddles,” I said out loud. “And games.”
I knew someone who fit that description, but billionaire Tobias Hawthorne was dead. He’d been dead for a year.
“What precisely are we supposed to figure out?” Grayson asked crisply.
I looked reflexively toward Jameson. “There must be something to find or decode,” I said, “just like there was in the earlier deliveries.”
“The next part of the same riddle,” Jameson murmured, our minds in sync.
Eve looked between the two of us. “What riddle?”
“The riddle,” Jameson said. “Who is he? Why is he doing this? The first two clues were straightforward enough to decode. He’s upped his ante with this installment.”
“We must be missing something,” I said. “A detail about the box or the package or—”
“I recorded the phone call.” Xander held up his phone. “In case there’s a clue in something he said. Beyond that…”
“We have the combination,” Jameson finished. “And the calendar entry.”
“Niv,” I said out loud. Moving on instinct, I checked the box for hidden compartments. There weren’t any. There was nothing else on the phone, nothing that popped out when we listened to my exchange with Toby’s captor a second time. Or a third.
“Can your team trace the call?” I asked Oren, trying to think ahead, trying to come at this problem from all sides. “We have the number.”
“I can try,” Oren replied evenly, “but unless our opponent is far less intelligent than he appears, the number is unregistered, and the call was routed through the internet, not a phone tower, with the signal split across a thousand IP addresses, bouncing all over the world.”
My throat tightened. “Could the police help pin it down?”
“We can’t call the police,” Eve whispered. “He could kill Toby.”
“Discreet inquiries could potentially be made to a trusted police contact without providing details,” Oren said. “Unfortunately, my three most trusted contacts have been recently transferred.”
There was no way that was a coincidence. Attacks on my business interests. Attempts to chip away at my security team. Paparazzi set on my every move. Police contacts transferred. I thought about what Alisa had said we were looking for. Wealth. Power. Connections.
“Play the recording again,” I told Xander.
My BHFF did as I asked, and this time, as the conversation ended, Jameson looked to Grayson. “He said that Avery could call him Luke. Not that his name was Luke.”
“Does that matter?” I asked.
Grayson held Jameson’s gaze. “It could.”
Eve started to say something, but the sound of a ringing phone silenced her. It wasn’t the burner phone. It was mine. My eyes darted to the caller ID. Thea.
I answered. “I’m kind of busy right now, Thea.”
“In that case, do you want the bad news first or the really bad news?”
“Is Rebecca—”
“Someone got a picture of Eve standing outside the gates of Hawthorne House. It just went live.”
I winced. “Was that the bad news or—”
“It went live,” Thea continued, “on the internet’s biggest gossip site, alongside a picture of Emily and an exposé on rumors that Emily Laughlin was killed by Grayson and Jameson Hawthorne.”
