Hello?”
For a moment, there was silence on the phone. “Avery?”
I recognized that low, rich voice in a heartbeat. Not Jameson.
“Grayson?” He’d never called me before. “Did something happen? Are you
—”
“Jameson dared me to call.”
Nothing—literally nothing—about that sentence made sense. “Jameson what?”
“Jameson when, Jameson where, Jameson who?” That was Jameson, in the background, his voice taking on a musical lilt, his tone almost philosophical.
“Am I on speakerphone?” I asked. “And is Jameson drunk?”
“He shouldn’t be,” Grayson said, sounding truly disgruntled. “He doesn’t really turn down dares.”
Grayson wasn’t slurring his words. His speech wasn’t slow. His voice coated me, surrounded me—but it occurred to me suddenly that Grayson might be drunk.
“Let me guess,” I said. “You’re playing Drink or Dare.”
“You’re really good at guessing things,” drunk Grayson said. “Do you think the old man knew that about you?” His tone was hushed and almost confessional. “Do you think that he knew that you were… you?”
I heard a thud in the background. There was a long pause, and then one of them—I was betting on Jameson—started cracking up.
“We have to go,” Grayson said with a great deal of dignity, but when he went to hang up the phone, he must have hit the wrong button, because I could still hear the two of them.
“I think we can both agree,” Jameson said, “that it’s time for Drink or Dare to give way to Drink or Truth.”
A better person probably would have hung up right then, but I turned the volume on my phone all the way up.
“What did you say to Avery,” I heard Jameson ask, “the night we solved the old man’s puzzle?”
Grayson hadn’t said anything to me that night. But the next day, after he’d sent Skye on her way, he’d had plenty to say. I will always protect you.
But this… us… It can’t happen, Avery.
“Because right after that,” Jameson continued, “she took to the tunnels with me.”
Grayson started to say something—what, I couldn’t quite hear—but then he cut off. “The door,” Grayson said, clear as day. He sounded dumbfounded.
Someone’s at the door, I realized. And then I heard some more muffled sounds. And then I heard Grayson’s father.
At first, I couldn’t entirely make out the words being exchanged, but at some point, either the conversation moved closer to the phone, or the phone moved closer to the conversation, because suddenly, I hear every word.
“You obviously aren’t surprised to see me.” That was Grayson. He’d sobered up quickly.
“I’ve built three different companies from the ground up. You don’t achieve what I have achieved without an eye to potential eventualities.
Potential risks. Frankly, young man, I expected Skye to tell you about me years ago.”
A knot in my stomach twisted. Poor Grayson. His father saw him as a risk.
“You were married when I was conceived.” Grayson’s tone was neutral
—almost dangerously so. “Still are. You have children. I can’t imagine that you are happy at my intrusion on your life, so let’s keep this short, shall we?”
“Why don’t you cut to the chase and tell me why you’re really here?”
That was a demand. An order. “You were recently cut out of the family fortune. Financially speaking, you may have found that you have certain…
needs.”
“You think we’re here for money?” That was Jameson.
“I’ve found that the simplest explanation is most often the correct one. If you’re here for a payout—”
My entire body felt tense. I could see Grayson in my mind’s eye, every muscle in his body taut, but his expression even and cool. Bribe. Threaten.
Buyout. Grayson had been raised to be formidable. There was a reason he’d already mentioned the man’s wife.
“For reasons I won’t be sharing with you,” I heard him say, “I am looking into what happened twenty years ago on Hawthorne Island.”
The pause that greeted those words told me that Sheffield Grayson hadn’t been expecting that. “Are you, now?”
“My sources have led me to believe that the press coverage of the tragedy is, shall we say… incomplete.”
“What sources?”
I could practically hear Grayson smile. “I’ll make you a deal. You tell me what the news stories left out, and I’ll tell you what my sources have said about Colin.”
At the mention of his nephew’s name, Sheffield Grayson’s voice went too low for me to hear. Whatever he’d said, Grayson reacted defensively.
“My grandfather was the most honorable man I know.”
“Tell that to Kaylie Rooney,” Sheffield’s voice was audible again, booming. “Who do you think spoon-fed that story to the press? Who do you think quashed anything the least bit unflattering to his family?”
Grayson’s response was garbled. Had he turned away?
“Toby Hawthorne was a little punk.” That was Sheffield again. “No regard for the law, for his own limitations, for anyone but himself.”
“And Colin wasn’t like that?” Jameson was needling the man. It worked.
“Colin was going through a rough patch, but he would have come out of it. I would have dragged him out of it. He had his whole life ahead of him.”
Again, the response was garbled.
“The Rooney girl never even should have been there!” Sheffield exploded. “She was a criminal. Her parents? Criminals. Cousins, grandparents, aunts, and uncles? Criminals. ”
“But the fire wasn’t her fault.” Grayson’s voice was louder now, clearer.
“You’ve implied as much already.”
“Do you know how much I paid to private detectives to get real answers?” Sheffield snapped. “Probably only a fraction of what your grandfather paid the police to bury their report. The fire on Hawthorne Island wasn’t an accident. It was arson—and the person who purchased the accelerant was your uncle Toby.”
