The Morning After

I wasn’t worried about him. Worrying about Jameson Winchester Hawthorne was about as useful as trying to argue with the wind. I was smart enough to know that there was no sense in shouting at hurricanes or worrying about a Hawthorne with a love of Hail Mary passes, semi-calculated risks, and walking right up to the edge of incredible drops.

Jameson had a habit of landing on his feet.

“Avery?” Oren announced his presence, a mere courtesy considering my head of security was never far away. “It’s almost dawn. I can have my team take another sweep and—”

“No,” I said quietly. I couldn’t shake the feeling that Jameson wouldn’t want me looking for him. This wasn’t Hide and Seek. It wasn’t Catch Me If You Can.

Every single one of my instincts said that this was… something.

“It’s been fourteen hours.” Oren’s voice was a military kind of calm: brisk, matter-of-fact, always prepared for the worst. “He disappeared with no warning. He left no trace behind. It happened in an instant. We have to consider the possibility of foul play.”

Considering nefarious possibilities was Oren’s job. I was the Hawthorne heiress. Jameson was a Hawthorne. We attracted attention—and sometimes threats. But deep down, my gut was saying the same thing it had been saying from the moment Jameson had disappeared: I should have seen this coming.

Something electric had been building in Jameson for days—an unholy energy, a powerful drive. A secret. Memories flashed rapid-fire through my head, moment after moment after moment from the day I’d stepped foot in Prague.

The spire.

The knife.

The clock.

The key.

What are you up to, Hawthorne? You have a secret. What is it?

“Give it an hour,” I told Oren. “If Jameson’s not back, then you can send out a team.”

When it was clear that my bodyguard—and sometimes father figure—wasn’t going to argue with me, I made my way to the foyer of our luxury hotel suite. The Royal Suite. I took a seat in a chair made of crushed red-and-black velvet and stared at a wall that wasn’t just a wall, my mind working its way through this puzzle for the hundredth time.

A decadent gold mural stared back at me.

Where are you, Jameson? What am I missing?

My eyes found the well-masked seams in the wall. A hidden door. Its existence was a reminder to me that Jameson’s deceased grandfather, Tobias Hawthorne, had once owned this hotel, that the Royal Suite had been built to the exacting, puzzle-obsessed billionaire’s specifications.

Traps upon traps, I thought. And riddles upon riddles. That phrase had been among the first words Jameson had ever spoken to me, back when he’d been fighting grief and chasing the next puzzle, the next high, determined not to care about anyone or anything.

Back when he’d taken risks in part because he wanted to hurt.

As I stared at the wall and the hidden door, I told myself that the Jameson of those early days wasn’t the same Jameson Hawthorne who’d pushed my hair back from my face the day before, spreading it out like a halo on the mattress.

My Jameson still took risks—but he always came back.

I know better than to worry about Jameson Hawthorne. And yet…

I willed the hidden door to open. I willed Jameson to be standing on the other side of it.

And finally—finally—just before my hour was up, it did, and he was. Jameson Winchester Hawthorne.

The first thing I saw, as he crossed into the light, was the blood.