CHAPTER 41 GRAYSON #2
Grayson could tell, looking over Avery at Jameson, that were Avery not between them, Jameson would have already surged forward to grab him by his black silk shirt. Grayson’s brother wasn’t okay with any part of this discussion.
This was going to come down to a fight.
Fully accepting that, Grayson pushed on. “You can see why Lyra might have questions about the music box puzzle, Jamie. You know something. She knows that you know something. And I can’t protect her if I don’t know exactly what it is I’m supposed to be protecting her from.”
Jameson lunged forward, and Avery turned, placing her hands flat on his chest, holding him back. Jameson stilled automatically at her touch, and Avery tossed a look back at Grayson, a silent Are you done?
He was not. “Lyra is not the problem here, Jameson. She’s not the threat. You are.” Grayson let that sink in. “Your secrets. Whatever you have gotten yourself and Avery into.”
Jameson’s eyes blazed. Grayson turned to Nash. “Am I wrong?”
“Would you believe me if I said you were?” Nash returned, calm as calm could be. “You’re in deep with this girl, Gray.”
“Tell me that I’m wrong,” Grayson challenged.
Nash gave a shake of his head and addressed his next words to Jameson. “He ain’t wrong, Jamie. Neither one of us can protect you and Avery from threats we can’t see coming.”
Grayson let that sink in, and then he widened his stance and met Jameson’s eyes. “I call.”
Jameson gently removed Avery’s hands from his chest. He lowered them to her side, delicately sidestepped her—and charged .
Grayson didn’t bother planting his feet.
He twisted just before impact. Jameson anticipated it.
Grayson anticipated that he would. The end result still had them both airborne.
That was the thing about fighting someone you knew almost as well as you knew yourself, someone with whom you were very nearly evenly matched: No one was coming out of that kind of fight unscathed—unless there was mud involved, and Grayson had known quite well at the time that that trick would only work once.
Jameson slammed him back into the wall. “I told you not to even say that name.”
“Alice. Hawthorne.” Grayson broke his brother’s hold and reversed their positions. “When have I ever given you the impression that I take orders, little brother?” Grayson locked his arms around both of Jameson’s, pinning them to his sides.
Jameson exploded, sending Grayson flying back. “You gave me until the end of the game, Gray.”
As Jameson stalked toward him, Grayson saw an opening—not a big one. But big enough. He went for it, turning Jameson’s momentum against him, but the second Grayson put Jameson on the ground, someone did the same to him, swiping his legs out from underneath him.
Avery. “Nicely executed,” Nash told her. Then he hauled both Grayson and Jameson to their feet. “And that’s enough, all of you.” Nash let loose of them. “Start talkin’, Jamie.”
With a phrase like that one, it was rarely a good thing when Nash dropped his g .
“Telling you a damn thing could put Libby in danger.” Jameson went straight for the jugular. “Is that what you want?”
“You let me worry about Lib,” Nash said. “Anyone comes at her and the babies, they’ll have to go through me, and personally, I don’t like their chances.” Nash took off his cowboy hat and set it on a dresser. “And Libby would kick your ass herself if she knew you just played that card.”
“You don’t need to know,” Jameson gritted out.
Grayson shook his head. This was not going to end well—for Jameson.
“Just walk away.” Jameson wasn’t looking at Nash now. He was looking at Grayson. “From her. From this.”
Lyra. Jameson was asking him to walk away from Lyra Kane. “No.”
“We’ll call off the game,” Jameson said, like Grayson hadn’t even spoken. “Eve’s interference gives us a plausible reason to.”
“You could call off the game,” Grayson replied evenly, “but I guarantee you, the first thing Lyra will do is take what she learned here and start looking for answers. She is relentless, Jamie, and highly intelligent.” The muscles in Grayson’s throat tightened.
“And she matters. To me, she matters . So you are going to tell me everything you know.”
“I will tell you nothing.” Jameson was halfway through taking another swing when Nash, who’d clearly reached his limit, intercepted it and tossed Jameson onto the bed.
Grayson stalked to stand over the bed. Tell me, Jamie.
Jameson’s jaw stayed clamped shut.
Tell me. Grayson stared down at his brother, a promise in his gaze. There were very few times that any of them had done any kind of actual damage to another, but even Grayson’s control had its limits.
Suddenly, Avery was standing between them. There was something about the look in her eyes that reminded Grayson that he’d put an end to Jameson’s On Spake, but not hers.
“Avery, I call.”
“I’m not fighting you.” Avery held Grayson’s gaze a moment longer, then turned back to look at Jameson.
Grayson could feel an entire silent conversation pass between the two of them before Avery spoke again, her voice quiet and raw.
“He came back that night bleeding and smelling like fire. There was ash on his skin, a cut on his neck.”
Fury surged through Grayson’s veins. No one hurt his family and got away with it. “Elaborate.”
Avery reached out to put a hand on Jameson’s shoulder, and after a moment, Jameson climbed slowly to his feet. “Prague.” His voice was a hollow whisper. “More than a year and a half ago now. You want the short version, Gray? A city of secret passages. A map the old man left behind. I followed it.”
Of course you did. “And?” Grayson said quietly.
Jameson closed his eyes. “I don’t know.” Tension rippled visibly over his brow, jagged and pained. “Not exactly. I was drugged. My memory of that night is full of holes. There are moments —” Jameson cut off.
Grayson put a hand on his brother’s shoulder.
“ Fire ,” Jameson managed finally. “ Voices . And the feeling that I was going to die. That they were going to kill me.”
“They?” Grayson said immediately. But all he could think was: There are always three.
“I don’t know, Gray.” Frustration marked every line of Jameson’s face as he opened his eyes.
“I do remember waking up in a rooftop garden. I had tea with a dead woman. She called me dear boy and made it very clear that she needed to stay dead.” Jameson swallowed.
“Threats were issued. My instructions were clear: Tell no one .”
Wordlessly, Avery wrapped her arms around Jameson. Grayson’s hand was still on Jameson’s shoulder. For a moment, the three of them just stood there, breathing as one, and then Nash joined them, his hand planted firmly next to Grayson’s on Jameson’s back.
“You told Avery.” Grayson stated the obvious.
“Eventually, but we never pursued it,” Avery said. “We never looked for answers, never looked for her .”
Alice. The big picture here clearly extended past one woman. Grayson didn’t like it. “And the flower?” he asked Jameson. “The calla in the music box?”
“ I don’t know ,” Jameson said. “I told you—I remember voices. Smoke. The price of wheat. Fire. And being threatened. That’s it, Grayson.”
That clearly wasn’t it. On some level, whether he could access it or not, Jameson knew more.
“You aren’t alone with this now,” Nash told Jameson. He put a hand on Avery’s shoulder, too. “Either of you. And it has to be asked: What about the other calla lily? The one Grayson and Lyra found.”
“Brady seemed to think it might be for him,” Grayson indicated. “He played it off as if he believed it to be Rohan’s doing, but my money is on someone else—most likely his sponsor.”
“I chose Brady,” Avery said, frowning. “I gave him a ticket to the game. Why would he need a sponsor?”
“What do you know about the girl?” Grayson said. “ Calla something.”
“Missing,” Avery replied. “Presumed dead.” Realization hit her. “Her name—”
Silence blanketed the room. All of them had a mind for puzzles. All of them were trying to make this one make sense.
“What if Brady’s sponsor is Alice?” Jameson pulled away from the rest of them. “If Alice got to Brady somehow, if she’s here, if she’s watching —we can’t let on that we know. None of the rest of you are supposed to know any of this.”
“We can’t call off the game,” Avery concluded. “We have to proceed like everything is normal. Like everything is fine.”
“Why would our grandmother care about the Grandest Game?” Grayson asked. “Or Brady Daniels?”
“Why would she care about the price of wheat?” Jameson replied.
Grayson rolled that question over in his mind. “ They ,” he said finally. “Why would they ?”
This time, the silence lasted even longer. Finally, Avery turned to Nash. “You’re leaving, aren’t you?” she said. “You’re going to Libby.”
“I’m going to Libby,” Nash confirmed. “And I’m dealing Oren in before I do.
He needs to know there’s a threat. We can tell him it relates to what happened in Prague without telling him how—should give him an idea of the seriousness of this.
His men can search every nook and cranny of Hawthorne Island while the players are here on the yacht. Establish a better perimeter—”
“You can’t tell Oren anything,” Jameson said. “Nothing I’ve said can leave this room.”
“Have you met Avery’s head of security?” Nash asked Jameson. “And related question: How would you like John Oren to kill you when he finds out there was a clear and present threat to all of us—to Avery —and you never said a word?”
Jameson chewed on that for a moment. “You might have a point,” he said grimly. “But Alice’s name is never mentioned—not to Oren, not to anyone else.”
“We don’t know that it’s her,” Avery pointed out. “Not for sure.” Her hazel eyes made their way to Grayson’s. “But either way, you need to do damage control, Gray. With Lyra. You need to keep her out of this.”
Lyra. Grayson pictured her, wearing his jacket.
“Keep her focused on the game,” Jameson told him. “That will buy us some time to figure out how best to handle her.”
It was on the tip of Grayson’s tongue to tell all of them that one did not handle Lyra Kane, but if Alice was that much of a threat, for Lyra’s sake and the sake of his family…
I might have to.