CHAPTER 43

Oren and the arctic specialist got me back to True North in impressive time. Eli and another guard were waiting outside when we got there.

“Do a sweep of the perimeter,” Oren told his men. “If anyone needs a reminder that this is private property, feel free to provide it.”

“I guess that’s it for skiing,” I said. In theory, that was a good thing. I now had an excuse to stay at True North, to do what I’d come to do. Less time on the mountain with Grayson.

Pressing that thought down, I took my skis off. Grayson did the same, and we headed inside, but before we made it to the back door, a clump of snow fell down from the roof, right at our feet.

I looked up just in time to see Jameson dropping. He landed beside me on skis, no poles in sight.

“Nice entrance,” Grayson told him dryly.

“I try.” Jameson smiled, and then he brandished an object in his hands. It took me a second to realize that it was a picture frame.

Why is he holding a picture frame? This was Jameson Hawthorne. We’d come here for a reason. I knew why. My heart jackrabbited. “Is that…,” I started to say.

Jameson shrugged. “What can I say? I really am just that good.” He lazily placed the frame in my hand, then turned to grab a pair of ski poles leaning against the side of the house. “And I challenge you,” he told Grayson, “to a Drop.”

The picture in the frame was one I’d seen on the stairs, of all three of Tobias Hawthorne’s children. Jameson hadn’t provided any information before taking off, but as I walked down the interior stairs toward the basement, I turned the frame over in my hands and saw the image carved into the back.

The face of a compass.

I was so engrossed in what I was looking at that I almost ran into Rebecca. And Thea. Thea and Rebecca, I realized, taking a step back. The former had the latter pressed up against the wall of the stairwell. Rebecca’s hands were on the sides of Thea’s face. Thea’s hair looked like it had been torn from its ponytail.

They were kissing.

The last words I’d heard them exchange rang in my ears. Some things are unforgivable. People aren’t perfect.

Thea noticed me but didn’t pull back from the kiss until Rebecca’s green eyes went almost comically wide, and even then Thea took her sweet time stepping back.

“Avery.” Rebecca sounded mortified. “This isn’t—”

“Any of your business,” Thea finished, her lips lifting up on the ends.

I sidestepped both of them. “Agreed.” This star-crossed—and probably ill-advised—make-out session was not my concern.

The frame in my hand was. So I made my way down the rest of the staircase, a woman on a mission. On the lower level, I found Max on Xander’s shoulders, inspecting the blades of a fan.

“He’s very tall,” Max told me approvingly. “And he’s only dropped me once!”

Thea and Rebecca came into the room behind me. Xander shot them a look, but I stayed on task.

“Jameson gave me this.” I held up my bounty and sat down on an oversized suede chair. “A picture frame from the stairwell.” I placed it facedown on my lap. “Look at the back.”

Max dismounted, and everyone crowded around me.

“Take the back off the frame,” Xander said immediately.

I looked up at him. “We’re going to need a screwdriver.”

Four minutes later, all five of us were sequestered in the third-floor room that had once belonged to Skye. I removed the final screw and lifted the back off the frame. Beneath it, behind the picture of Toby, Zara, and Skye, I found a piece of notebook paper folded in half. Inside, there was another picture.

This photo had clearly been taken around the same time as the one that had been on display in the frame. Zara and Skye were wearing the same jackets. They both looked to be teenagers. Zara had one arm around Skye and the other around a boy who looked slightly older than either of them. He had shaggy hair and a killer smile.

I turned the picture over. There was no caption on the back. Max bent to pick up the piece of paper that had been folded over the photo.

“Blank,” she said.

“For now,” Xander corrected.

Max didn’t get the implication right away. She wasn’t used to the Hawthornes and their games. “Invisible ink?” Rebecca asked, before I could. “On either the picture or the paper it was wrapped in?”

“Almost certainly,” Xander replied. “But do you know how many different kinds of invisible ink there are?”

“A lot?” Thea said dryly.

Xander blew out a long breath. “My guess is that this is only half a clue. The old man left half to Skye and half to—”

“Zara,” I finished. “The ring.” Carefully, I took the blank page from Max. I had no idea how we were supposed to use a ring to make writing appear on this page, but I could see the logic in what Xander was saying. It was Hawthorne logic.

Tobias Tattersall Hawthorne logic.

He gave himself that middle name as a signal that he intended to leave them all in tatters. He used that name to sign a will and buried clues in the will for his daughters. I’d known that this game hadn’t originally been meant for us. I’d known we were here to find Skye’s clue. But now I had to wonder.

“What do you think this picture would mean to Skye?” I asked, holding up the photo that had been hiding behind Tobias Hawthorne’s smiling children. Skye, Zara, and a guy. “Who is he?” I asked, and then I thought about the message we’d found in the bottle hidden under the floorboards in the passage between Skye’s room and Zara’s.

You knew, and you did it anyway. I will never forgive you for this.

“My psychic senses,” Max announced, “are now attuned to that picture, and I’m getting some pretty clear messages about communing and abs.”

They fought over a boy, I thought. The same way Jameson and Grayson had over Emily Laughlin.

“Jameson just gave you this?” Xander flopped down on the bed. “He found it and just gave it to you?”

I nodded. I could tell it bothered Xander that he hadn’t been the one to find the clue.

“And where is Jameson now?” Xander asked, sounding a little more mutinous than I’d ever heard him.

I cleared my throat. “He challenged Grayson to something called a Drop.”

“Without me?” Now Xander sounded downright offended. “He gave you this and challenged Grayson to a Drop?” Xander bounded to his feet. “That’s it. The gloves are coming off. No more Mr. Nice Xander. Avery, can I see that picture?”

I handed him the photograph of Zara, Skye, and the boy with the shaggy hair. A second later, Xander was on his way out the door.

“Where are you going?” Rebecca and I called after him in unison.

Max jogged to catch up. “Where are we going?” she corrected.

Xander glowered at us—though it wasn’t a terribly convincing glower. “To the lodge.”