Page 41 of The Final Gambit

My stomach clenching, I thought of Toby, of what Ihadn’tfound in this box. Jameson stepped in front of me, green eyes steady on mine. “Forget the timer for now, Heiress. Go back to the main screen.”

I did and, fury building, checked out the rest of the phone. There was no music loaded onto it. The internet browser’s home screen was a search engine—nothing special there. I clicked on the calendar. There was an event set to begin on Tuesday at six in the morning.When the timer hits zero, I realized.

All the calendar entry said wasNiv.I turned the phone so the others could read it.

“Niv?” Xander said, wrinkling his forehead. “A name, maybe? Or the last two letters could be a roman numeral.”

“N-four.” Grayson took out his own phone and executed a search. “The first two things that come up when I search the letter and the numeral are a federal form and a drug called phentermine hydrochloride—an appetite suppressant, apparently.”

I rolled that over in my mind but couldn’t make sense of it. “What kind of federal form?”

“A financial one,” Eve replied, reading over Grayson’s shoulder. “Securities and Exchange Commission. It looks like it might have something to do with investment companies?”

Investment.There could be something there.

“What else?” Nash threw the words out. “There’salwayssomething else.”

This wasn’t a Hawthorne game, not exactly, but the tricks were the same. I clicked on the icon for email, but that just brought up a prompt with instructions for setting up that function. Finally, I navigated to the phone’s call log.Empty.I clicked over to voicemail messages.None.One more click took me to the phone’s contacts.

There was exactly one number stored on this phone. The name it was stored under wasCALL ME.

I sucked in a breath.

“Let me do it,” Jameson said. “I can’t protect you from everything, Heiress, but I can protect you from this.”

Jameson wasn’t the Hawthorne I usually associated with protection.

“No,” I told him. The package had been sent tome. I couldn’t let anyone do this for me—not even him. I hit Call before anyone could stop me and set it to speakerphone. My lungs refused to breathe until the second someone picked up.

“Avery Kylie Grambs.” The voice that answered was male, deep and smooth with an intonation that sounded almost aristocratic.

“Who is this?” I asked, the words coming out tight.

“You can call me Luke.”

Luke.The name reverberated through my mind. The person on the other end of the line didn’t sound particularly young, but it was impossible to place his age. All I knew was that I’d never spoken to him before. If I had, I would have recognized that voice.

“Where’s Toby?” I demanded. In response, I received only a chuckle. “What do you want?” No answer. “At least tell me that you still have him.”That he’s still okay.

“I have many things,” the voice said.

Holding the phone so tightly that my hand started to throb, I clung to my last shreds of control.Be smart, Avery. Get him talking.“What do you want?” I asked again, more calmly this time.

“Curious, are you?” Luke played with the words like a cat playing with a mouse. “Fine word,curious,” he continued, his voice like velvet. “It can mean that you’re eager to learn or know something, but also,strangeorunusual. Yes, I think that description fits you very well.”

“So this is about me?” I asked through gritted teeth. “You want me curious?”

“I’m just an old man,” came the reply, “with a fondness for riddles.”

Old. How old?I didn’t have time to dwell on that question—or the fact that he’d referred to himself in the same way that Tobias Hawthorne’s grandsons referred to the dead billionaire.

“I don’t know what kind of sick game you’re playing,” I said harshly.

“Or maybe you know exactly what kind of sick game I’m playing.”

I could practically hear his lips curving into a knife-sharp smile.

“You have the box,” he said. “You have the phone. You’ll figure the next part out.”