Page 56 of The Final Gambit

“Before you, Heiress? Iabsolutelywould have.” His voice was intense. “I can’t even hate him now. He’s a part of me. He’s in me.” Jameson’s fingers lightly touched my hair, then curled into it. “But mostly, I can’t hate him, Avery Kylie Grambs, because he brought me you.”

He needed me to kiss him, and I needed it, too. When Jameson finally pulled away—just one centimeter, then two—my lips ached for his. He brought his mouth to my ear. “Now, back to the game.”

CHAPTER 45

We worked until almost dawn, slept briefly, woke intertwined. We talked to Nan and Zara, played with the numbers, identified the church, which wasn’t even in France, let alone in Margaux. We went back to the unused objects in the bag: a steamer, a flashlight, the USB.

By midmorning, we were stuck in a loop.

As if he’d divined the need for something to snap us out of it, Xander texted Jameson’s phone. Jameson held it out for me to see.911.

“An emergency?” I asked.

“More like a summons,” Jameson told me. “Come on.” We made it as far as the hallway before we ran into Nash, who was leaving Libby’s room in the clothes he’d worn the day before, holding a small, wiggling ball of chaos and brown fur.

“I really hope you didn’t try to give that incredibly adorable puppy to my sister,” I told him.

“He didn’t.” Libby padded into the hallway wearing anI EAT MORNING PEOPLEshirt and black pajama pants. “He knows better. That is a Hawthorne dog.” Libby reached out to stroke the puppy’s ear. “Nash found her in an alley. Some drunk assholes were poking at her with a stick.” Knowing Nash as I did, I doubted that had turned out well for the drunk assholes. “He saved her,” Libby continued, letting her hand drop. “That’s what he does.”

“I don’t know, darlin’,” Nash said, giving the pup a scratch, his eyes on my sister. “I was in pretty rough shape. Maybe she saved me.”

I thought about little Nash watching Skye with his baby brothers, watching her give them away. And then I thought about Libby taking me in.

“You get Xander’s nine-one-one?” Jameson asked his brother.

“Sure did,” Nash drawled.

“Nine-one-one?” Libby frowned. “Is Xander okay?”

“He needs us,” Nash told my sister, allowing the puppy to lick his chin. “We each only get one a year. A text like that comes in, it doesn’t matter where you are or what you’re doing. You drop everything and go.”

“Xander just hasn’t told us where to go yet,” Jameson added.

Right on cue, Jameson’s phone buzzed; Nash’s, too. A series of texts came through in quick succession. Jameson angled his phone toward me so that I could see.

Xander had sent four photographs, each containing a little drawing. The first was a heart with the wordCAREwritten in the middle of it. I scrolled to the second picture and frowned. “Is that a monkey riding a bicycle?”

Libby moved toward Nash and took his phone from his pocket. There was something intimate about the action—the way he let her, the way she knew he would. “The monkey appears to be sayingEEEEEE!” Libby commented

Nash looked at the picture. “Could be a lemur,” he opined.

I shook my head and looked at the third picture: Xander had drawn a tree. The fourth picture was an elephant jumping on a pogo stick, also sayingEEEEEE!

I looked at Jameson. “Do you have any idea what this means?”

“As previously established, nine-one-one means Xander is calling us in,” Jameson said. “By Hawthorne rules, this summons cannot be ignored. As for the pictures… work it out for yourself, Heiress.”

I looked at the pictures again. Thecareheart. The animals yellingEeee.

“Tree’s an oak, if that helps,” Nash told me. The puppy barked.

Care. Eee. Oak. Eee.I thought—and then I put it all together. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I told Jameson.

“What?” Libby asked.

Jameson smirked. “Hawthornes never kid about karaoke.”

CHAPTER 46