CHAPTER 24 GRAYSON
GRAYSON
T he instant Grayson realized what Lyra was holding, he reclaimed their longsword and went to her, his gaze trained on the person who’d set off the motion detectors on the helipad: Brady Daniels. Holding his longsword. Crossing to the bull’s-eye.
Grayson laid his free hand on the back of Lyra’s neck. “Are you with me?”
“I’m fine.”
She wasn’t, Grayson knew, but some people didn’t know how to be anything else. First the notes with her father’s names. Now the flower. Someone was playing mind games with her—extremely personal ones.
Up on the helipad, Brady planted his sword in the metal slit, driving it in up to its hilt. Soon enough, he held the ledger in his hand.
“Stay behind me,” Grayson told Lyra, as he leapt back up onto the helipad. Lyra didn’t argue, a clear sign, as she fell in behind him, that she was fighting the undertow of memory.
“Do you think it was him?” Lyra asked, her voice muted. “Watching us.”
And the lily? Grayson was not yet ready to make a determination on either of those fronts, but he had no regrets whatsoever about alerting his brothers and Avery to a potential perimeter breach.
Hopefully, they would act quickly and either identify or rule out a third-party presence. In the meantime…
Grayson tracked Brady’s movements. Physical intimidation was not, as a general rule, a favored maneuver in the Hawthorne playbook, but Grayson was willing to entertain the idea of making an exception.
He strode across the helipad toward Brady, stopping just three feet away from his target and saying nothing.
“Grayson Hawthorne.” Brady’s voice was deep, but his tone was mild. “Your reputation precedes you.”
“A useful thing,” Grayson said crisply. “A reputation. What, I wonder, is yours?”
“I’m the scholar.”
“What kind of game are you playing, scholar?”
Seemingly unbothered, Brady pressed his watch to the ledger. “The same game as everyone else.”
“I doubt that very much.” Grayson had always excelled at fighting calm with calm. “Tell me that you don’t have a sponsor, Mr. Daniels,” Grayson suggested, just enough silk in his tone. “Tell me that the only game you’re playing is one with clues.”
Brady told him nothing and walked to the compartment he’d just revealed, removing from it the charm and the bracelet. He listened to the recorded hint, and it took him all of two seconds to drop his key into the liquid.
A scholar, indeed—either that, or he’d been spying on them all along.
Once Brady had reclaimed his key and skimmed his gaze over the highlighted letters, he finally turned his attention and calm-waters gaze back to Grayson.
“I’m not your enemy. Or hers.” Brady shifted pensive brown eyes to Lyra.
Grayson marked the exact moment that the scholar saw the calla lily in Lyra’s hand.
His gaze lingered on it at least a second and a half longer than it should have.
“You were saying?” Lyra replied.
“Is that a part of the game?” Brady queried.
“No,” Grayson said. “It most certainly is not.” He’d played enough Hawthorne games to be sure of that. “Tell me you don’t know where that flower came from.”
“I don’t know where that flower came from.” Brady weathered Grayson’s stare for three seconds, then looked away and adjusted his glasses. “I just know that it’s probably for me.”
Lyra stepped past Grayson, and it took every ounce of control Grayson had not to pull her back and put himself between her and Brady Daniels once more.
“Why would this be for you?” Lyra asked Brady, brandishing the lily.
The scholar’s left hand reached for his jacket pocket. Grayson prepared to move should the need arise, but all Brady withdrew from his pocket was a photograph. “I have a theory,” Brady told Lyra, “that everyone is playing this game for a reason.”
“Like twenty-six million dollars?” Lyra said dryly.
“There are a lot of things a person could do with twenty-six million dollars,” Brady agreed. He held the photograph out to Lyra, and after a moment, she took it.
“The girl in the photograph,” Brady told Lyra quietly. “Her name is Calla. She would be in her twenties now.”
Calla, like the lily , Grayson registered, but he read more into Brady’s statement than just that. Language had a way of betraying people—her name is but she would be . Part present tense, part conditional. Whoever the girl in that photograph was, Brady hadn’t seen her in years.
Whoever this Calla was, Brady Daniels was not entirely certain she was still alive.
“Calla?” Lyra looked down at the flower in her hand. “What was her last name?”
“Does it matter?” Brady asked.
Grayson’s brain was wired to look for connections, to hunt for layers hidden from ordinary minds.
A third party had put Lyra in this game, but Avery had chosen Brady as a player herself.
If there was any connection whatsoever between the girl in Brady’s photograph and the flower Lyra’s father had given her the night he died, that was a very big coincidence.
Too big.
“If that flower was meant for you”—Grayson aimed those words at Brady with the same precision with which he’d learned to throw knives—“where did it come from?”
Who left it on that rock?
Brady gave the barest of shrugs. “My money’s on Rohan. I get the sense that the Brit trades in knowledge and subterfuge, don’t you?”
Grayson recognized redirection when he heard it. Brady hadn’t been lying before, but he was now.
“You have a sponsor,” Grayson said.
“I am not your enemy.” Brady addressed that sentiment to Lyra this time instead of Grayson.
“I’m not anyone’s enemy. I’m a doctoral student.
I’m interested in how the artifacts we interact with form us into the people we are.
I like books. I like stars. I like numbers.
And I am playing this game for a very good reason. ”
All of that, in Grayson’s judgment, was true. None of it was the truth that mattered most. You have a sponsor, and whoever it is, you think they might have left a calla lily for you.
“I don’t expect you to take me at my word—on anything,” Brady told Lyra. “But maybe a show of good faith would help?” The scholar bowed his head toward Lyra and murmured something too low for Grayson to hear.
What are you telling her? What kind of move are you making, scholar?
With one last glance at Lyra, Brady made his way to the end of the helipad, the side of it away from the water. And then he was gone.
Lyra waited a bit longer before she turned back toward Grayson.
“A show of good faith?” Grayson queried.
“Roman numerals,” Lyra replied.
“We’d solved that much already,” Grayson said.
“He solved more.” Lyra brought her amber eyes to rest on Grayson’s, and he recognized the glint in them. “And when an answer is right—you know.”