Page 106 of The Brothers Hawthorne

Grayson let his gaze travel to the man’s face. “She sounded perfectly calm to me.”

“Look, kid—”

Grayson arched a brow. “Do I look like a kid to you?” There was a reason he’d started wearing suits as a teenager.

If you’re not wondering who the hell you’re talking to by now—you really should be.

Out loud, Grayson opted for a different statement. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go acquaint myself with the limitations of your warrant.”

Hawthornes didn’t wait to be excused. Grayson started walking. Savannah followed suit. Gigi, on the other hand, stayed at the end of the drive, staring owlishly at the FBI agent.

“Are you all right, Miss Grayson?”

Grayson glanced back. Gigi continued staring at the agent, unblinking, intense. Then she shrugged. “Still not telekinetic,” she announced, before flitting past the agent. She hooked her arms through Savannah’s. “You never know until you try.”

“You shouldn’t agitate the agents,” Acacia told the three of them quietly. She stood with her hands by her sides, her posture straight, looking paler than Grayson had seen her. “There’s no need for it. They’ll be done shortly.”

You almost but didn’t quite sell your confidence in that statement, Grayson thought. Acacia was shaken—badly—and only showing it a little.

“They’re tearing our home apart,” Savannah said, her voice low, as two agents walked by carrying parts of a computer. Acacia drew in a jagged breath.

“Everything is going to be fine,” Grayson said. He laid a steadying hand on Acacia’s shoulder. To his surprise, Acacia brought her hand up to his and squeezed it. Grayson had the oddest sense that she was trying to comforthim.

Grayson knew suddenly and with stunning clarity that if his fatherhadacknowledged him, if he had spent any time at all here growing up, she would have been the one to bandage his knees.

Grayson and his brothers had bandaged one another’s.

I’m supposed to be steadying you, he thought in Acacia’s direction, and then he looked to the girls.All of you.

“You have a copy of the warrant?” Grayson asked, his tone brisk, his volume low.

Acacia reached into her purse. Two minutes later, Grayson had skimmed the whole thing. The warrant was for the Grayson residence, the grounds, and three vehicles registered in Sheffield Grayson’s name.

The girls’ cars weren’t among them.

“Where is your lawyer?” Grayson asked Acacia. The details of this search made no sense. The number of agents. The breadth of the warrant. The timing. Given how long ago Sheffield Grayson had disappeared, the case should have been cold by now.

Unless someone is deliberately heating it up.In his mind’s eye, Grayson saw Eve treading water in the pool. He thought of her asking him what Tobias Hawthorne would have done in her position.

“Kent offered to come,” Acacia replied. “As a friend. But I can’t afford a lawyer right now.”

Grayson’s instincts said that Trowbridge had very little desire to be Acacia’sfriend.

“Savannah and I will pay for a lawyer,” Gigi volunteered. “From our trusts.”

Savannah looked down. “We can’t. Unless…”

Acacia took a step forward and searched her daughter’s face—for what, Grayson wasn’t sure. “I wouldn’t let you,” Acacia told Savannah, her voice quiet but fierce. “Either of you. I’m fine.Everything is fine.”

“Of course,” Grayson agreed. “But as it happens, I know a lawyer who would relish taking care of this situation, and it won’t cost you a thing.”

“I can handle this,” Acacia insisted.

“There’s nothing to handle.” A woman wearing a navy suit approached the four of them. Another person might have misread the situation, thought that the other agents had sent someone with a softer, more feminine touch to question them, but the part of Grayson’s brain that instantly calculated dominance and hierarchies ruled out that possibility immediately.

This was the woman in charge.

“We’re looking for evidence of your husband’s crimes and whereabouts,” the FBI agent continued. “If, as you maintain, you truly have not heard from him and truly are not withholding material evidence of his crimes, then you have very little to worry about.”