I headed back to the solarium empty-handed, having hit yet another dead end. I’ll be in touch. That sinister promise echoed in my mind as I rounded the corner and saw Eve’s guard. I nodded to him, glanced briefly back at Oren, then pushed opened the solarium door.
Inside, Eve was sitting with a file laid out on the ground in front of her and a phone in her hand. Taking pictures.
“What are you doing?” I asked, startled.
Eve looked up. “What do you think I’m doing?” Her voice broke. “I need sleep. I know I need sleep, but I can’t stop. And I can’t take these files out of this room, so I thought…” She shook her head, her eyes tearing, amber hair falling into her face. “Never mind. It’s dumb.”
“It’s not dumb,” I told her. “And you do need sleep.”
We all did.
I checked Jameson’s wing before I returned to my own. He wasn’t in either. I remembered what it had been like when I’d discovered that my mom wasn’t who I’d thought she was. I’d felt like I was mourning her death all over again, and the only thing that had helped was Libby reminding me of the kind of person my mom had been, proving to me that I had known her in every way that mattered.
But what could I say to Jameson or Xander or any of them about Tobias Hawthorne? That he really was brilliant? Strategic? That he’d had some small shreds of conscience? That he’d cared for his family, even if he’d disinherited all of them for a stranger?
By the time this is over, you’ll know what kind of man I was—and what kind of man you want to be. I thought about the billionaire’s last words to Xander. By the time what was over? By the time Xander had found his father? By the time all the games that Tobias Hawthorne had planned before his death had been played?
That thought drew my gaze to the leather satchel on my dresser. For two days, I’d been consumed with Toby’s captor’s sick riddle and the hope, however thin, that we were getting closer to solving it. But the truth was that all the ruminating we’d done had gotten us nowhere. It had probably been designed to lead us nowhere—until the riddle was complete.
I’ll be in touch.
I hated this. I needed a win. I needed a distraction. By the time this is over, you’ll know what kind of man I was. Slowly, I walked over to my dresser, thought about Tobias Hawthorne and those files, and picked up the satchel.
Moving methodically, I laid out the objects I hadn’t yet used. The steamer. The flashlight. The beach towel. The glass circle. I said the last clue Jameson and I had uncovered out loud. “Don’t breathe.”
I cleared my mind. After a moment, my gaze locked on the towel, then on the blue-green circle. That color. A towel. Don’t breathe.
With sudden, visceral clarity, I knew what I had to do.
A person stopped breathing when they were terrified, surprised, awed, trying to be quiet, surrounded by smoke—or underwater.
