Chapter 7

The Basilica of St. James was beautiful, a massive, breathtaking Baroque marvel. The moment I stepped across the threshold of the entry, I felt like I’d stepped into another world. And then I looked up—at the arm.

The thief’s arm. I stared at it way longer than I wanted to—an actual, mummified arm, hanging from a pole near the ceiling. Ripping my gaze away from it, I pushed down the urge to shiver and shifted my attention to the church around me.

Borrow or rob?

Don’t nod.

Did that mean I was supposed to keep my chin up? And look for some marker of the war?

“I thought you might end up here.”

Jameson. I turned to face him. His green eyes found mine like a homing beacon, like they’d been made for looking at me. “Guess again, Heiress.”

That was as close to a hint as I was going to get: At some point, I’d misstepped. I was barking up the wrong tree. And he was smirking.

“You’re going down, Hawthorne,” I told him.

Jameson took a single step back. “Catch me if you can, Heiress.” He took off, slipping out of the church before I could even blink.

I followed him—out of the building, down, weaving through a crowded street, around the corner, to—

Nothing.

There was nothing there. No plaques. No addresses involving the number 1561. And no Jameson.

It was like he’d disappeared.

I came to a standstill. Where did you go, Hawthorne? I whirled, but Jameson was gone. I looked up, expecting to see him scaling the side of one of the buildings lining the alleyway, but he wasn’t.

There was nothing for him to have grabbed on to. I looked down the alley. There was nowhere for him to hide.

Where are you? I backtracked around the corner, wondering if my mind was playing tricks on me, if I’d only thought that he’d come this way.

Still nothing. Jameson was nowhere to be seen.

Catch me if you can, he’d said. I was willing to bet he’d known that I wouldn’t be able to. He’d had a plan—but I didn’t have time to go down the rabbit hole of thinking about it.

That mystery could wait.

I refocused on the task at hand and what Jameson had said when he’d found me in the Basilica. Guess again.

That was his way of telling me I was on the wrong track. With the plaques, the thief’s arm, World War II, all of it? I wondered. Or just part?

I stood there, thinking, lost in my own world, for almost a minute. From his position at the entry to the alley, Oren didn’t say a word. My head of security knew better than to interrupt my concentration.

Based on experience, I knew that in a puzzle like this one, when you hit a wall—figuratively or literally—the best thing to do was go back to the beginning and question every assumption and choice you’d made.

I retraced my steps back to the church, but didn’t go in. Closing my eyes, I thought back to that first internet search I’d done in my hotel room, for Prague and war.

Most of the results had been focused on World War II. Most—but not all.

There were at least two different battles referred to as the Battle of Prague—one that had occurred in 1648 and another in 1747. When I searched for monuments related to those battles, I found three.

I hit the third around noon. Charles Bridge. It was one of the most recognizable and iconic locations in Prague. It was also crowded with tourists. At the ends of the ancient stone bridge, there were towers. Carved into one of the towers there was a memorial to the Battle of Prague. An inscription.

I found it just as Jameson found me.

I wondered how long he’d been watching—and then I wondered how he’d managed to lose me before.

Catch me if you can, Heiress. I emphatically shut the door on my memory of that moment and braced myself for his next distraction.

Jameson stepped beside me, his body brushing mine, then nodded toward the words inscribed on the tower. He translated them out loud: “Rest here, walker, and be happy: You can stop here willing, but…”

With a smirk, Jameson trailed off and turned his gaze from the inscription to me.

“You can guess the rest,” he said, far too satisfied with himself—and with his game. “The basic gist is that bad guys were stopped here against their will. Victory! Huzzah!”

I narrowed my eyes. “Huzzah?”

Jameson leaned against the stone wall. “For the record, Heiress, you’re getting warmer.”

I didn’t trust the way he said those words. “For the record,” I told him, “I know that look.”

It was a look that said I’m going to win. It said You don’t see what’s right before your eyes. It said Aren’t I clever?

And yes, he was.

But so was I. “The mention of war,” I said, searching his face, reading him the way that only I could, “is a distraction.”

A very Hawthorne kind of distraction in a city with a thousand plaques. This time, when I pulled out my phone, I tried different search terms—nothing but the date.

January 2, 1561.

One result came up over and over again—one name: Francis Bacon. Apparently, the so-called father of empiricism had been born on January 2, 1561, at least according to some sources.

I glanced up at Jameson, who was watching me with something like anticipation in his eyes.

Narrowing mine at him, I turned back to my phone and did a search for Francis Bacon and Prague. In less than a minute, I’d discovered that there was an Irish artist who shared the name.

There was also a gallery in Prague that had auctioned off a significant collection of that Francis Bacon’s art.

Hitting the gallery took me back through the Old Town Square. Navigating my way down side streets, I managed to find the gallery without too many wrong turns.

Within seconds of my stepping inside, a gallery employee in a very expensive suit fixed me with a piercing look. It was the kind of look that clearly said a teenager in jeans and a worn T-shirt had no place browsing in an establishment like this one—the kind of look that disappeared the moment Oren stepped into the building after me.

There was nothing like a military-trained bodyguard to make people second-guess their first impressions.

As I made my way through the gallery, looking for something, the haughty man in the suit tried to mask the way that he was looking at me, but eventually, his eyes widened. I knew that stare. I’d been recognized—and as far as I could tell, there was nothing here.

Another wrong turn. Before the gallery employee could begin rolling out the red carpet for the Hawthorne heiress, I ducked out of the store. I thought I saw Jameson again—through the crowd, on the move. I followed him, picking up my pace, dodging through groups of people. But the second I hit the Old Town Square, I lost him.

As I scanned the crowd, I noticed that all around me, people’s bodies were orienting in one direction.

Toward the clock. It was massive, old, a work of art—disk layered over disk, turquoise and orange and gold.

“Here in just a moment,” a tour guide said from somewhere behind me, “at the top of the hour, you’ll see a rotating procession of apostles. And there, to the right—that skeleton is Death. The other figures you see around the clock are Catholic saints. In addition to keeping time, the astronomical clock lives up to its name. The smaller ring depicts astronomical charts that allow the clock to display the positions of the sun and the moon, while the—”

The clock struck one.

Like the rest of the crowd, I looked up as the “procession” began. Statues emerged from behind a window in the clock. All around me, phone cameras were raised, trying to capture the moment.

And all I could think—suddenly—was nine minutes ’til seven. I’d been given a time, and here was a clock—a very famous clock, obviously.

I stopped myself there. I couldn’t afford to go down the wrong path again. I’d burned enough time already. I only had eleven hours left, and I was still on the first clue. I needed to focus. I needed to see.

I was missing something.

Tobias Hawthorne’s games had always had a clear answer. Jameson’s would, too. I knew that. I knew it, but I’d been grasping at wisps all morning.

As the procession of apostles continued above, I focused on breathing and clearing my mind. I could do this.

Nine minutes ’til seven. That was 6:51. Something about that number stuck with me. Unsure why, I took out the clue again and read:

Borrow or rob?

Don’t nod.

Now, sir, a war is won.

Nine minutes ’til seven

On the second of January, 1561.

I stared at the last line of the poem. 1561. My heart skipped a beat. 1561 and 6:51 contained three of the same numbers.

I turned to Oren. “Do you have a pen?”

He didn’t—but someone near us did. The only paper I had was the clue itself, so I turned it over and scribbled down the year and the time, and then added two more numbers: The second of January—2 for day, 1 for month.

I stared at my list of numbers: 1651, 6:51, 2, and 1.

And just like that, I saw it. I rearranged the numbers and wrote them out—year first, then day, then month, then time.

156121651.

It was a palindrome. My gaze darted up to the first line of the poem. Borrow or rob? I cursed under my breath, half in frustration with myself for not seeing it until now, half in awe at the extent to which Jameson Hawthorne was a tricky, tricky mastermind of a man.

Borrow or rob?

Don’t nod.

Now, sir, a war is won.

Those sentence were all palindromes—the same backward as forward. Jameson. Freaking. Hawthorne. I of all people should have seen it.

I looked up, certain that somewhere in the crowd, Jameson Winchester Hawthorne was watching. And there he was, lifting some kind of cylindrical pastry to his mouth, a very self-satisfied grin on his face.

The moment Jameson’s eyes met mine across the crowd, he knew. Just from looking at me, he knew that I’d cracked it.

Jameson raised his pastry in salute.

Snorting, I turned to find the tour guide I’d heard speaking earlier. “If I said the words Prague and palindrome to you, would that mean anything?”

The tour guide puffed up a bit, like after lo the many years, his time had finally come. “Of course it would.”