The Final Gambit (The Inheritance Games Book 3)

Oren commandeered the package. It was hours before I got it back—and by the time I did, I was safely ensconced inside the walls of Hawthorne House, and Eve, Libby, and all the Hawthorne brothers had joined me in the circular library.

“No note this time,” Oren reported. “Just this.”

I stared at what looked to be a jewelry box: square, a little bigger than my hand, possibly antique. The wood was a dark cherry color. A thin line of gold rimmed the edges. I went to open the lid, then realized the box was locked.

“Combination lock.” Oren nodded toward the front edge of the box, where there were six dials, grouped in pairs. “Added recently, I would guess. I was tempted to force it open, but given the circumstances, preserving the integrity of the jewelry box seemed like a priority.”

After two envelopes, the fact that Toby’s abductor had sent a package this time felt like an escalation. I didn’t want to think about what I might find inside that jewelry box. The first envelope had contained the disk, the second, a picture of a beaten Toby. As far as proof went, as far as a reminder of the stakes, a reminder of who held the power here…

How long until the kidnapper starts sending pieces?

“The combination might be just a combination.” Jameson stared at the box like he could see through it—into it. “But there’s also the possibility that the numbers themselves are a clue.”

“The package was sent to the school?” Grayson’s gaze was sharp. “And it made it all the way to the headmaster’s office? Whoever sent it knows how to get around Country Day security protocols.”

That seemed like a message in and of itself: The person who’d sent this wanted me to know that they could get to me.

“It would be best,” Oren stated calmly, “if you planned to stay home from school for a few days, Avery.”

“You, too, Xan,” Nash added.

“And just let someone make us run and hide?” I looked from Oren to Nash, furious. “No. I’m not going to do that.”

“Tell you what, kid.” Nash cocked his head to the side. “We’ll spar for it. You and me. Winner makes the rules, and loser doesn’t whine about it.”

“Nash.” Libby gave him a reproachful look.

“If you don’t like that, Lib, you ain’t gonna love my thoughts about your safety.”

“Oren and Nash are right, Heiress.” Jameson’s hand found its way to mine. “It’s not worth the risk.”

I was fairly certain Jameson Hawthorne had never said those words before in his life.

“Can you all just stop arguing?” Eve demanded, her voice high and terse. “We have to open it. Right now. We have to get inside that box as quickly as humanly possible and—”

“Evie,” Grayson murmured. “We need to be careful.”

Evie?

“For once,” Jameson declared, “I agree with Gray. Caution isn’t the worst idea here.”

That wasn’t like Jameson, either.

Xander turned to Oren. “How certain are we that this box won’t explode the second we open it?”

“Very,” Oren replied.

I made myself ask the next question—the question—even though I didn’t want to. “Any idea what’s inside?”

“From the looks of the X-rays,” Oren replied, “a phone.”

Just a phone. Relief rolled over me slowly, like feeling coming back to a limb that had gone numb. “A phone,” I said out loud. Did that mean Toby’s captor was planning to call?

What happens if I don’t answer?

I didn’t let myself linger on that question. Instead, I turned my attention back to the boys. “You’re Hawthornes. Who knows how to crack a combination lock?”

The answer was all of them. Within ten minutes, they had the combination: fifteen, eleven, thirty-two. Once it clicked open, Oren took the box, inspected its contents, and turned the whole thing back over to me.

The inside of the box was lined with deep red velvet. A cell phone sat nestled in the fabric. I picked the phone up and turned it over, looking for anything out of the ordinary, then I turned my attention to the touch screen. I tried the same combination that had opened the box as a passcode. Fifteen. Eleven. Thirty-two.

“I’m in,” I said. I clicked through the icons on the phone one by one. The photo roll was empty. The weather app was set to local weather. There were no notes, no text messages, no locations saved in the map function. Under the clock app, I found a timer counting down.

12 HOURS, 45 MIN, 11 SEC…

I looked up at the others, feeling each tick of the timer in the pit of my stomach. Eve said what I was thinking. “What happens when it hits zero?”

My stomach clenching, I thought of Toby, of what I hadn’t found 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 was Niv. 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’s always something 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 was CALL 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 to me. 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, strange or unusual. 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.”

“What next part?”

“Tick tock,” the old man replied. “The timer’s counting down to our next call. You won’t like what happens to your Toby if you don’t have an answer for me by then.”