Chapter 5

We soon discovered that the player in question was Libby. I found her sitting outside the walk-in freezer she’d used as her base, covered in tinsel.

“Caught in the explosion of one of your own tinsel bombs?” I asked.

Libby didn’t reply. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor, cradling something in her lap. In one smooth movement, Nash hunkered down beside her, crossing his own legs and leaning back against the wall. My eyes were drawn to the object in Libby’s hands. It appeared to be a picture frame.

“The perfect gift?” I asked.

Libby looked up at me with tears glistening in her eyes. “So damn perfect.”

I sank down next to her, on the opposite side as Nash, to get a better look. The picture frame itself was simple, made of what appeared to be a high-quality silver. It was the picture inside the frame that had a breath catching in the back of my throat.

Libby couldn’t have been older than eight or nine in the picture. She wore her brown hair long and loose, but a veritable rainbow of clip-in hair streaks—all of them neon—made her look more like the Libby I knew.

Beside her, there was a toddler. Me.

And beside me… “Mom,” I said, my voice little more than a whisper. I had pictures of my mother, but not any from when I was this young.

“My ninth birthday,” Libby told me. “Your mom had a friend take this picture.” My sister—my half sister, though I never thought of her that way—brought a finger to the photo. Little Libby and Toddler Avery were both wearing reams of Mardi Gras beads. We were smiling.

I had no memories of this day, no memories of the days when Libby’s mom had used mine as a babysitter at all, but Libby had told me before: Her ninth birthday, the only birthday she’d celebrated with my mom and me, had been the best day of her life.

And there it was, immortalized in a frame.

“Who?” I managed to ask. Who was Libby’s Secret Santa? Which of the Hawthorne brothers had managed to get ahold of this picture after all these years?

Libby hugged the frame to her chest. “I have no idea.”

My money was on either Jameson or Grayson. Nash had seemed as surprised by the gift as Libby and I had been, and the execution didn’t feel like Xander to me. This had been the work of someone who noticed everything, someone who hadn’t stuck around to see Libby open the present.

Someone who was playing this game to win.

If Jameson is the one who took out Libby, I thought, once I’d left Libby and Nash to their own devices, then Jameson just inherited Libby’s target: Grayson. The wheels in my head turned a little further. But if Grayson did it…

I wondered what happened if a person ended up as their own target.

Regardless, it was clear to me that if Libby’s present was the blueprint for what qualified as perfect, I had some work to do to take Nash out.

Big time.

I also needed a plan to get back to the garage without him catching me. One time, he might be able to chalk up to coincidence and me looking for Xander’s base. But twice?

I’d be toast.

Hawthorne Secret Santa required strategy.

Over the next few days, as I strategized, it finally occurred to me to take advantage of the fact that, along with Tobias Hawthorne’s fortune, I’d also inherited his security team.

“Hypothetically speaking,” I said to Oren around December tenth, “if I asked you to start following me around the House again to guard against an impending threat, what would you say?”

“Threat of being temporarily taken out of the game?” My head of security might have been amused by the request, but he kept a mostly straight face. “I hear the boys have started using red and green eggnog instead of water in their guns, and I’m afraid eggnogging falls outside of my purview.” He gave me a look. “I’m also not going to provide any reports on the specific Hawthorne or Hawthornes who may or may not have been tailing you.”

In other words, someone had been tailing me. Maybe multiple someones.

I resisted the urge to look over my shoulder. “You’re not going to help me,” I summarized. “But I’m guessing you’re not going to prevent me from accessing the security feeds, either.”

Surrounded by monitors, I made myself right at home. I’d been scanning the feeds for all of five minutes when I felt someone else step into the room behind me.

“Why, Heiress, I’m shocked.”

I kept my gaze on the monitors but couldn’t help the way the edges of my lips crept upward, just hearing his voice. “No, you aren’t.”

Jameson made no attempt to mask the sound of his footsteps as he paced slowly toward me. “No,” he admitted. “I’m not.”

He lowered himself into the chair next to mine, angling his body so that his left knee brushed oh-so-lightly against my right one.

“Hardly sporting of you,” he continued. “Almost as bad as hiding your base in the vault.”

Busted. I kept my poker face firmly in place and turned to angle my eyes toward Jameson. I looked for the story told by the tiny details of his facial expression: Did he know where my base was, or was he guessing?

I considered my options, then played my next card. “Not in the vault,” I said.

The slightest twitch of Jameson’s lips told me: He hadn’t been guessing. He knew where my base was—not in the vault, but in front of it. And that led me to one rock-solid conclusion.

“You didn’t draw my name,” I said. “I’m not your target.” If I had been, he would already have made an attempt to take me out—and he probably would have succeeded.

I knew Jameson Hawthorne well enough to know that he wouldn’t have any trouble at all finding a perfect present for me.

“You aren’t my target,” Jameson confirmed. “Yet.” That had the air of a promise. “I’m very good at Secret Santa,” he told me. “If I take out enough targets…”

Sooner or later, he’d get my name.

I leaned forward in my chair and pushed Jameson back in his. “You didn’t draw my name,” I said, shifting my weight forward, “and neither did Nash.” I paused, letting my eyes do my talking for me for just a moment. “Neither did Libby.”

“If this is your attempt to distract me,” Jameson said, “it is one hundred percent working and will continue to work more or less indefinitely.”

I read between the lines of everything that had happened and everything he had and hadn’t said.

“You drew Libby,” I said. “You’re the one who took her out.” He was the miracle worker who’d found that photograph.

“I can neither confirm nor deny that statement.” Jameson lifted a hand to brush my hair back from my face. “Your mom was beautiful,” he said softly. “She had your smile.”

In other words: He was definitely the person who’d found the photograph. A lump rose in my throat. “I think most people would probably say that I have hers,” I told him.

“I have other pictures.” Jameson brought his hand to my hair again, tucking another stray wisp behind my ear. “For you, Heiress—and not a part of the game.”

Not a part of the game. When I’d first come to Hawthorne House, everything had been a game to him, and now…

“You’re perfect,” I said, my voice a little rough. “You know that?”

“I think you might be confusing me with someone else,” Jameson quipped.

I gave him a look. “Never.”

He gave me a look. “I keep thinking about last Christmas. You were still recovering from the coma.”

Last Christmas, we hadn’t played Secret Santa.

Last Christmas, we’d been together, but I hadn’t been his and he hadn’t been mine the way we were now.

“Just for the record…,” Jameson told me, standing and reaching for my hand, pulling me inward, like we’d just been transported to a ballroom and this was our dance. “When I take out enough targets to inherit your name, my present will be beyond perfect.” He smiled that dangerous, heady smile of his. “Also for the record: If you thought that this room escaped the mistletoe treatment…” He looked pointedly upward. “You were wrong.”