That night, when Alisa called to read me the I-can’t-do-my-job-if-you-won’t-let-me riot act, she didn’t allow me to get a word in edgewise. After she’d said a terse good-bye, which seemed to promise more retribution to come, I sat down at my computer.
“How bad is it?” I said out loud. The answer, it turned out, was leading-story-on-every-news-site bad.
Hawthorne Heiress Keeping Secrets.
What Does Avery Grambs Know?
I barely recognized myself in the pictures the paparazzi had taken. The girl in the photos was pretty and full of righteous fury. She looked as arrogant and dangerous as a Hawthorne.
I didn’t feel like that girl.
I fully expected to get a text from Max, demanding to know what was going on, but even when I messaged her, she didn’t message back. I went to close my laptop but then stopped, because I remembered telling Max that the reason I had no idea what had happened to Emily was that Emily was such a common name. I hadn’t been able to search for her before.
But I knew her last name now. “Emily Laughlin,” I said out loud. I typed her name into the search field, then added Heights Country Day School to narrow the results. My finger hovered over the return key. After a long moment, I pulled the trigger.
I hit Enter.
An obituary came up, but that was it. No news coverage. No articles suggesting that a local golden girl had died by suspicious cause. No mention of Grayson or Jameson Hawthorne.
There was a picture with the obituary. Emily was smiling this time instead of laughing, and my brain soaked up all the details I’d missed before. Her hair was layered, and she wore it long. The ends curved this way and that, but the rest was silky straight. Her eyes were too big for her face. The shape of her upper lip made me think of a heart. She had a scattering of freckles.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
My head shot up at the noise, and I slammed my laptop closed. The last thing I wanted was anyone knowing what I’d just looked up.
Thump. This time, I did more than just register the sound. I flipped my bedside lamp on, swung my feet to the floor, and walked toward it. By the time I ended up at the fireplace, I was fairly certain who was on the other side.
“Do you ever use doors?” I asked Jameson, once I’d utilized the candlestick to open the passage.
Jameson cocked an eyebrow and cocked his head. “Do you want me to use the door?”
I felt like what he was really asking was if I wanted him to be normal. I remembered sitting beside him at high speed and thought about the climbing wall—and his hand reaching out to catch mine.
“I saw your press conference.” Jameson had that expression on his face again, the one that made me feel like we were playing chess and he’d just made a move designed to be seen as a challenge.
“It wasn’t so much a press conference as a very bad idea,” I admitted wryly.
“Have I ever told you,” Jameson murmured, staring at me in a way that had to be intentional, “that I’m a sucker for bad ideas?”
When he’d shown up here, I’d felt like I’d summoned him by searching for Emily’s name, but now I saw this midnight visit for exactly what it was. Jameson Hawthorne was here, in my bedroom, at night. I was wearing my pajamas, and his body was listing toward mine.
None of this was an accident.
You’re not a player, kid. You’re the glass ballerina—or the knife.
“What do you want, Jameson?” My body wanted to lean toward him. The rational part of me wanted to step back.
“You lied to the press.” Jameson didn’t look away. He didn’t blink, and neither did I. “What you told them… it was a lie, wasn’t it?”
“Of course it was.” If I’d known why Tobias Hawthorne left me his fortune, I wouldn’t have been working side by side with Jameson to figure it out.
I wouldn’t have lost my breath when I’d seen that map at the foundation.
“It’s hard to tell with you sometimes,” Jameson commented. “You’re not exactly an open book.” He fixed his gaze somewhere in the vicinity of my lips. His face inched toward mine.
Never lose your heart to a Hawthorne.
“Don’t touch me,” I said, but even as I stepped back, I could feel something—the same something I’d felt when I brushed up against Grayson back at the foundation.
A thing I had no business feeling—for either of them.
“Our thrill ride last night paid off,” Jameson told me. “Getting out of my own head let me look at the puzzle with new eyes. Ask me what I figured out about our middle names.”
“I don’t have to,” I told him. “I solved it, too. Blackwood. Westbrook. Davenport. Winchester. They’re not just names. They’re places—or at least, the first two are. The Black Wood. The West Brook.” I let myself focus on the puzzle and not the fact that this room was lit only by lamplight and we were standing too close. “I’m not sure about the other two yet, but…”
“But…” Jameson’s lips curved upward, his teeth flashing. “You’ll figure it out.” He brought his lips near my ear. “We will, Heiress.”
There is no we. Not really. I’m a means to an end for you. I believed that. I did, but somehow what I found myself saying was “Feel like a walk?”
