The Final Gambit (The Inheritance Games Book 3)

Grayson and I found Zara in the greenhouse. She wore white gardening gloves that fit her hands like a second skin and held a pair of shears so sharp they probably could have cut through bone.

“To what do I owe this pleasure?” Zara angled her head toward us, the look in her eyes coolly advertising the fact that she was a Hawthorne and, by definition, missed nothing. “Out with it, both of you. You want something.”

“We just want to talk,” Grayson said evenly.

Zara ran her finger lightly over a thorn. “No Hawthorne has ever just wanted to talk.”

Grayson didn’t argue that point. “Your brother Toby has been abducted,” he said, with that uncanny ability to say things that mattered as if they were simply facts. “There’s been no demand for ransom, but we’ve received several communications from his kidnapper.”

“Is Toby alright?” Zara took a step toward Oren. “John—is my brother alright?”

He gently met her gaze and gave her what he could. “He’s alive.”

“And you haven’t found him yet?” Zara demanded. Her tone was pure ice. I could see the exact moment she remembered who she was talking to and realized that if Oren couldn’t find Toby, there was a very good chance he couldn’t be found.

“We think there might be a family connection between Toby and the person who took him,” I said.

Zara’s expression wavered, like ripples across the water. “If you came here to make accusations, I suggest you stop beating around the bush and make them.”

“We’re not here to accuse you of anything,” Grayson said with absolute, unerring calm. “We need to ask you about your first husband.”

“Christopher?” Zara arched a brow. “I assure you, you don’t.”

“Toby’s abductor has been sending clues,” I said, rushing the words. “The most recent involves the biblical story of the prodigal son.”

“We’re looking,” Grayson stated, “for someone who viewed Tobias Hawthorne as a father and felt as though he got a raw deal. Tell us about Christopher.”

“He was everything that was expected of me.” Zara lifted the shears to clip a white rose. Off with its head. “Wealthy family, politically connected, charming.”

Wealth, Alisa had said. Power. Connections.

Zara set the white rose in a black basket, then clipped three more. “When I filed for divorce, Chris went to my father and played the dutiful son, fully expecting the old man to talk some sense into me.”

It was Grayson’s turn now to arch a brow. “How thoroughly was he destroyed?”

Zara smiled. “I assure you, the divorce was civil.” In other words: utterly. “But it hardly matters. Christopher died in a boating accident not long after everything was finalized.”

No, I thought, a visceral, knee-jerk reaction. Not another dead end. “What about his family?” I asked, unwilling to let this go.

“He was an only child, and his parents are likewise deceased.”

I felt like the mouse I’d imagined earlier, like I’d been made to think I had a chance when I never really had. But I couldn’t give up. “Is it possible that your father had another son?” I asked, going back to that possibility. “Besides Toby?”

“A pretermitted heir who didn’t come crawling out of the woodwork after the will was read?” Zara responded archly. “With billions at stake? Hardly likely.”

“Then what are we missing?” I asked, more desperation in my tone than I wanted to admit.

Zara considered the question. “My father liked to say that our minds have a way of tricking us into choosing between two options when there are really seven. The Hawthorne gift has always been seeing all seven.”

“Identify the assumptions implicit in your own logic,” Grayson said, clearly citing a dictate he’d been taught, “then negate them.”

I thought about that. What assumptions had we made? That Toby is the prodigal son, Tobias the father. It was the obvious interpretation, given Toby’s history, but that was the thing about riddles. The answer wasn’t obvious.

And on that first phone call, Toby’s captor had referred to himself as an old man.

“What happens if we take Toby out of the story?” I asked Grayson. “If your grandfather isn’t the father in the parable?” My heart drummed in my chest. “What if he’s one of the sons?”

Grayson looked to his aunt. “Did the old man ever talk to you about his family? His parents?”

“My father liked to say that he didn’t have a family, that he came from nothing.”

“That was what he liked to say,” Grayson confirmed.

In my mind, all I could picture were the three chess pieces. If Tobias Hawthorne was the bishop or the knight… who the hell was the king?