Page 108 of The Brothers Hawthorne

Grayson felt his eyes turn to slits. “Not now, Alexander.”

“Too fresh?” Xander asked. “Sorry, double sorry, triple, up to and including octuple sorry. You needed someone to get you out of your own head, and Nash keeps telling me that there are times when tackling people is inappropriate.”

“Most times,” Nash said.

Xander was not so convinced. “Personally, I think tackling is a valid love language, but let’s not debate semantics here.” He brought his eyes to rest on Grayson’s. “What do you need?”

Being a Hawthorne meant many things, and the best of those was this.Them. Us.“Got any cookies?” Grayson asked quietly.

“I always have cookies!” Xander disappeared into the suite’s kitchen and came back with a half-empty package of double-stuffed Oreos and the single tallest Oreo that Grayson had ever seen. “Octuple-stuffed Oreo?” Xander offered.

Grayson took it.

“It was made with love,” Xander told him. “Just like I tackle with love.”

“No tackling,” Nash said.

Grayson ate the cookie in silence, and then—and only then—did he speak. “I’m slipping.” His brothers were the only people in the world he could have admitted that to. “Getting too emotionally involved.”

“With Eve?” Xander asked.

Grayson set his jaw. “With Gigi and Savannah—and even with their mother.”

“That’s not slipping, Gray.” Nash had a way of going quiet just when the things he was saying mattered most. “That’s living.”

Inexplicably, Grayson thought—again—about that damn ring. “I need to focus.”

“On opening the puzzle box?” Xander guessed.

“Opening it. Going through its contents.” Grayson came to stand directly over the puzzle box. “Removing anything that could tie Sheffield Grayson to the attacks on Avery and anything that suggests he didn’t just disappear. Then I’ll reassemble a harmless version of the box and its contents to give back to the girls.”

“Are you okay with that?” Xander asked.

Grayson thought of the way his sisters had come to stand between him and their aunt. Protecting him. He thought about Acacia, squeezing his hand.

Are you okay with that?

Grayson knelt and fit the not-a-USB into the box. “I have to be.”

CHAPTER 74

GRAYSON

Grayson turned the lock. There was an audible click.A release.He kept his grip on the faux USB and pulled. The entire panel came off the box, revealing a compartment underneath. With steady hands, Grayson turned the panel over. He wasn’t surprised to see a collection of glass vials affixed to the underside.Break the box, break the vials. Break the vials, mix the liquids. Mix the liquids, destroy the contents of the box. Specifically…

Grayson turned his attention to the compartment he’d revealed. There were two and only two things inside: a Montblanc pen and a leather-bound journal.

“He kept records.” To Grayson, that was obvious.

“Records of what?” Nash zeroed in on the key question—the only one that mattered right now.

If there was record of Sheffield Grayson’s last acts before he “disappeared,” if this journal could tie the man to Avery or the Hawthorne family… it had to be destroyed.

There was a comfort in certainty.

“Can I see the pen?” Xander asked. Grayson handed it to him, and the youngest Hawthorne brother immediately began his inspection, dismantling the pen.

Some parts of a riddle hold meaning, Grayson could hear the old man saying,and others are nothing but distraction.In a Hawthorne game, the pen would have been the clue, not the journal. But Sheffield Grayson was not Tobias Hawthorne, and this wasn’t a game. There were noclues, just the extreme steps a paranoid dead man had taken to secure his secrets.