CHAPTER 22

The next morning, Jameson called to me from the other side of my fireplace, and I pulled the candlestick on the mantel to trigger the release.

“Did you find what I found?” he asked me. “Two of the four charities have connections to victims of the fire. I’m still piecing together the rest, but I have a theory.”

“Does your theory involve Toby having been a patient at Camden House and potentially losing his memory after the fire?” I asked.

Jameson leaned toward me. “We’re brilliant.”

I thought about the rest of what I’d discovered. He hadn’t mentioned Sheffield Grayson.

“Heiress?” Jameson leaned back and assessed me. “What is it?”

It was obvious to me that he hadn’t looked up anything about Colin’s Way beyond the charity’s namesake. Obvious that he hadn’t seen the video I’d seen. Without a word, I pulled it up for him on my phone. I handed it over. As Jameson watched, I finally found my voice.

“His eyes,” I said. “And his last name is Grayson. I know that Skye never told you anything about your fathers, but you all have last names as first names. Do you think…”

Jameson handed the phone back. “Only one way to find out.” He came to stand right behind me. “We could go out your door, like normal people, but one of Oren’s men is stationed outside, and I doubt anyone on your security team would sign off on you going to visit my mother.”

Going to visit a woman who’d tried to have me killed was a bad idea. I knew that. But Grayson was nineteen, which meant that he’d been conceived twenty years ago—not long after the fire on Hawthorne Island. What were the chances that was a coincidence? There was no such thing in Hawthorne House. And right now, the only person who could answer our questions was Skye.

“Oren isn’t going to be happy about this,” I told Jameson.

He smiled. “We’ll be back before anyone realizes we’re gone.”

Jameson knew the secret passageways like the back of his hand. He got us to the massive indoor garage unseen. He pulled a motorcycle off a rack on the wall and solved the puzzle box where the keys were kept. The next thing I knew, he was wearing a helmet and holding a second one out to me.

“Do you trust me, Heiress?” Jameson had donned a leather jacket. He looked like trouble. The good kind.

“Not even a little,” I replied, but I took the helmet from his outstretched hand, and when he climbed onto the motorcycle, I climbed on behind him.