Ruminating looked like this: Libby went to make coffee, because when things got bad, she took care of other people. Grayson stood, straightened his suit jacket, and turned his back on the rest of us. Jameson began pacing like a panther on the prowl. Nash took off his cowboy hat and stared at it, an ominous expression on his face. Xander darted out of the room, and Eve lowered her head into her hands.
“I shouldn’t have said anything,” she said hoarsely. “But after he cut Toby off—”
“I understand,” I told her. “And it wouldn’t have mattered if you’d stayed silent. We would have ended up in the exact same place.”
“Not exactly.” Jameson came to a stop directly in front of me. “Think about what he said after Eve interrupted—and the way he referred to you.”
“As the heiress,” I replied, and then I remembered the rest of it. “The one Tobias Hawthorne chose.” I swallowed. “The prodigal son is a story about inheritance and forgiveness.”
“Everyone who thinks that Toby was kidnapped as part of a giant forgiveness plot,” Nash said, his drawl doing nothing to soften the words, “raise your hand.”
All our hands remained down. “We already know this is about revenge,” I said harshly. “We know it’s about winning. This is just another piece of the same damn riddle that we aren’t meant to solve.”
Now I was the one who couldn’t stand still. Rage didn’t
simmer. It burned.
“He wants us driving ourselves crazy, going over and over it,” I said, striding toward the massive tree trunk desk and bracing my hands against it, hard. “He wants us ruminating. And what’s even the point?” I was so close to punching the wood. “He’s not done yet, and he’s not going to give us what we need to solve this until he wants it solved.”
I’ll be in touch. Our adversary was like a cat that had a mouse by the tail. He was batting at me, then letting me go, creating the illusion that maybe, if I was very clever, I could slip his grasp, when he wasn’t the least afraid I would.
“We have to try,” Eve said with quiet desperation.
“Eve’s right.” Grayson turned back toward us—toward her. “Just because our opponent thinks this is beyond our capabilities to figure out doesn’t mean that it is.”
Jameson placed his hands next to mine on the desk. “The other two clues were vague. This one, less so. Even partial riddles can sometimes be solved.”
As futile as it felt, as angry as I was, they were right. We had to try. For Toby, we had to.
“I’m back!” Xander burst into the room. “And I have props!” He thrust his hand out. In his palm, there were three chess pieces: a king, a knight, and a bishop.
Jameson reached for the chess pieces, but Xander smacked his hand away. “The father.” Xander brandished the king and set it down on the desk. “The prodigal son.” He plunked down the knight. “And the son who stayed.”
“The bishop as the son who kept faith,” I commented as Xander placed the final piece on the desk. “Nice touch.” I stared at the three pieces. A wasteful youth, wandering the world—ungrateful. The memory of that voice stuck to me like oil. A benevolent father, ready to welcome him home.
I picked up the knight. “Prodigal means wastrel. We all know what teenage Toby was like. He slept and drank his
way across the country, was responsible for a fire that killed three people, and allowed his family to think he was dead for decades.”
“And through all of that,” Jameson mused, picking up the king, “our grandfather wanted nothing more than to welcome his prodigal son home.”
Toby, the prodigal. Tobias, the father.
“That just leaves the other son,” Grayson said, walking over to join us as the desk. Nash circled up, too, leaving only a muted Eve on the outskirts. “The one who toiled faithfully,” Grayson continued, “and was given nothing.”
He managed to say those words like they held no meaning to him, but this part of the story had to hit close to home for him—for all of them. “We already talked to Skye,” I said, picking up the bishop, the faithful son. “But Skye isn’t Toby’s only sibling.”
I hated to even say it because I hadn’t seen Tobias Hawthorne’s older daughter as an enemy in months.
“It’s not Zara,” Jameson said with the kind of intensity I associated with him and only him. “She’s Hawthorne enough to pull it off, if she wanted to, but unless we believe that the man on that phone call was an actor—a front—we know who the third player in this story is.”
Avenge. Revenge. Vengeance. Avenger. I always win in the end.
The three characters in the story of the prodigal son.
Each piece of the riddle told us something about our opponent. “If Toby is supposed to be the unworthy prodigal,” I said, my entire body wound tight, “and Tobias Hawthorne is the father who forgave him, the only role left for Toby’s abductor is the other son.”
Another son. My body went utterly still as that possibility sank in.
Xander raised his hand. “Anyone else wondering if we have a secret uncle out there no one knows about? Because at this point, secret uncle just kind of feels like it belongs
on the Hawthorne bingo card.”
“I don’t buy it.” Nash’s voice was steady, sure, unhurried. “The old man wasn’t exactly scrupulous, but he was faithful—and damn possessive of anyone or anything he considered his. Besides, we don’t have to go lookin’ for secret uncles.”
I registered his meaning at the exact same time that Jameson did. “That wasn’t Constantine on the phone,” he said. “But—”
“Constantine Calligaris wasn’t Zara’s first husband,” I finished. Tobias Hawthorne might have had only one son, but he’d had more than one son-in-law.
“No one ever talks about the first guy,” Xander offered. “Ever.”
A son, cut from the family, ignored, forgotten. I looked to Oren. “Where’s Zara?”
That question was loaded, given their history, but my head of security answered like the professional he was. “She wakes up early in the mornings to tend the roses.”
“I’ll go.” Grayson wasn’t asking permission or volunteering.
Eve finally joined the rest of us at the desk. She looked up at Grayson, tear tracks on her face. “I’ll go with you, Gray.”
He was going to take her up on the offer. I could tell that just by looking at him, but I didn’t object. I didn’t let myself say a single word.
But Jameson surprised me. “No. You go with Grayson, Heiress.”
I had no idea what to read into that—if he still didn’t trust Eve, if he didn’t trust Grayson around Eve, or if he was just trying to fight his demons, set aside a lifelong rivalry, and trust me.
