Page 55 of The Brothers Hawthorne

“If you tell me your father’s name…” Grayson started to say.

She cut him off. “No.”

Annoyance surged. “What do you expect me to do without a name?”

“I don’t know.” She sounded… not vulnerable. Not angry, exactly. “The last thing he said, at the top of the stairs…”

“Words that didn’t even make sense,” Grayson murmured.

“What begins a bet?” she quoted. “And then he said:Not that.” The girl waited for Grayson to speak, but impatience didn’t let her wait long. “Does that mean anything to you, Hawthorne boy?”

What begins a bet? Not that.

“No.” Grayson almost hated to say that to her.

“I shouldn’t have called. I don’t know why I keep doing this.”

She was going to hang up. Grayson realized that simultaneously with another, more unexpected realization: He didn’t want her to. “It might be a riddle.” Grayson heard a little hitch of breath, then continued. “My grandfather was very big into riddles.”

“What begins a bet?”The girl’s voice took on a different tone now.“Not that.”

And then she really did hang up. Grayson kept holding the phone to his ear for the longest time. He realized that he was dripping water onto the mat, that his skin, still pink from the punishing heat of the shower, was now chilled.

Grabbing a towel, he turned the riddle over in his head, and then he texted Xander.Are you back at Hawthorne House?

The reply came almost instantly:Nope, followed by a suspicious array of tiny illustrated symbols: a party popper, musical notes, a flame, and a crown.But I have connections, Xander’s next text read.What do you need?

“Connections?” Grayson snorted—but that didn’t stop him from replying to Xander’s text.I need someone to look back through the old man’s List.

CHAPTER 38

GRAYSON

That night, Grayson dreamed of a labyrinth. He stood at the center, glass shards suspended in the air all around him. He couldn’t walk forward, couldn’t step back without one slicing into his flesh. In the shining surface of each shard, he saw an image.

The black opal ring. Avery. Emily. Eve. Gigi and Savannah—

Grayson bolted up in bed, a phantom fist locked around his lungs. He tossed back the covers and reached over to hit a switch on the wall. The shade covering the bedroom window slowly rose, revealing that the sun was high in the sky.

He’d slept late.

Grayson checked his phone. No updates on the old man’s List yet—and none from Gigi, for that matter. He considered reaching back out but fought the urge to do so. Patience was a virtue. He’d seen to it that she wouldn’t get anywhere with her search of any password-protected files. That gave him time.

Once he had a decoy key…

Once he had a more thorough understanding of the situation with the FBI…

Once Gigi was ready to hand over the files…

Then Grayson would make his next move. In the meantime, if his presence in Phoenix had caused Eve to pull her spy off the Grayson family and onto him—and the night before suggested that she had—all the better.

The next morning, as Grayson was swimming his twentieth lap in the hotel pool, Zabrowski finally got back in touch.

I’m here.

The time for waiting was over.

Grayson changed into dry clothes and walked to meet Zabrowski in an alley two blocks away. The first thing the PI did was hand over two envelopes, each containing one of the models Grayson had supplied and a matching metal key. Grayson inspected the keys, ensuring a visual match between the color of the metal Zabrowski’s contact had used and Gigi’s key.