Alisa left. Oren took up position in the hall, and all I could do was stare at the bag. Even without opening it, I knew in my gut what I would find inside. A game.
The old man had left me a game.
I wanted to call Jameson, but everything he’d said the night before lingered, ghostlike in my mind. I didn’t know how long I stood there staring at my last bequest from Tobias Hawthorne before Libby poked her head into my room.
“Cupcake pancakes?” My sister held out a plate, piled high with her latest concoction, then followed the direction of my gaze. “New laptop bag?” she guessed.
“No,” I said. I took the pancakes from Libby and told her about the leather satchel.
“Are you going to… open it?” my sister prodded innocently.
I wanted to see what was in that bag. I wanted—so badly—to play a game that actually went somewhere. But opening the satchel without Jameson here felt like admitting that there was something wrong.
Libby handed me a fork, and my gaze caught on the inside of her left wrist. A few months ago, she’d gotten a tattoo, a single word inked from wrist bone to wrist bone, just under the heel of her hand. SURVIVOR.
“Still thinking about what you want for the other wrist?” I asked.
Libby looked down at her arm. “Maybe, for my next tattoo, I should go with… open the bag, Avery!” The enthusiasm in her voice reminded me of the moment when we’d first found out that I’d been named in Tobias Hawthorne’s will.
“How about love?” I suggested.
Libby narrowed her eyes. “If this is about me and Nash…”
“It’s not,” I said. “It’s just about you, Lib. You’re the most loving person I know.” Enough of the people she’d loved had hurt her that, these days, it seemed like she saw her giant heart as a point of weakness, but it wasn’t one. “You took me in,” I reminded her, “when I had no one.”
Libby stared at both of her wrists. “Just open the darn bag.”
I hesitated again, then got annoyed with myself. This was my game. For once, I wasn’t a part of the puzzle, a tool. I was a player.
So, play.
I reached for the bag. The leather was supple. I let my fingers explore the bag’s strap. It would have been just like the old man to leave a message etched in the leather. When I found nothing, I unclasped the flap and flipped it open.
In the main pouch, I found four things: a handheld steamer, a flashlight, a beach towel, and a mesh bag filled with magnetic letters. On the surface, that collection of objects seemed random, but I knew better. There was always a method to the old man’s madness. At the beginning of each Saturday-morning challenge for the boys, the billionaire had laid out a series of objects. A fishing hook, a price tag, a glass ballerina, a knife. By the end of the game, all of those objects would have served a purpose.
Sequential. The old man’s games are always sequential. I just have to figure out where to start.
I searched the side pouches and was rewarded with two more objects: a USB drive and a circular piece of blue-green glass. The latter was the size of a dinner plate, as thick as two stacked quarters, and just translucent enough that I could see through it. As I held up the glass and peered through it, my mind went to a piece of red acetate that Tobias Hawthorne had left taped to the inside cover of a book.
“This could serve as a decoder,” I told Libby. “If we can find something written in the same blue-green shade as the glass…” My head swam with the possibilities. Was this the way it was for the Hawthorne boys after so many years of playing the old man’s games? Did every clue call to mind one they’d solved before?
Libby darted to my desk and grabbed my laptop. “Here. Try the USB.”
I plugged it in, feeling like I was on the verge of something. A single file popped up: AVERYKYLIEGRAMBS.MP3. I stared at my name, mentally rearranging the letters. A very risky gamble. I clicked on the file. After a brief delay, I was hit with a blast of sound, undecipherable, verging on white noise.
I pushed down the urge to cover my ears.
“Should we turn it down?” Libby asked.
“No.” I hit Pause, then pulled the audio track back to the start. Bracing myself, I turned the volume up. This time, when I hit Play, I didn’t just hear noise. I heard a voice, but there was no way I could make out actual words. It was like the file had been corrupted. I felt like I was listening to someone who couldn’t get a full sound out of their mouth.
I played the full clip six, seven, eight times—but repeating it didn’t help. Playing it at different speeds didn’t help. I downloaded an app that let me play it backward. Nothing.
I didn’t have what I needed to make sense of the USB. Yet.
“There has to be something here,” I told my sister. “A clue that starts things off. We might not be able to make out the audio file now, but if we follow the trail the old man left, the game might tell us how to restore the audio.”
Libby gave me a wide-eyed look. “You sound exactly like them. The way you just said the old man, it’s like you knew him.”
In some ways, I felt like I did. At the very least, I knew how Hawthornes thought, so this time, I didn’t just trail my fingers over the leather of the satchel. I gave the entire bag a thorough inspection, looking for anything I’d missed, then went through the objects one by one.
I started with the steamer, plugging it into the wall. I released the compartment that would hold water. After verifying that it was empty, I added water, half expecting some kind of message to appear on the sides when I did.
Nothing.
I clicked the compartment back into place and waited until the ready light came on. Holding the steamer away from my body, I gave it a try. “It works,” I said.
“Should we try it on that bag, which probably costs ten thousand dollars and undoubtedly should not be steamed?” Libby asked.
We did, to no effect—at least, none related to the puzzle. I turned my attention to the flashlight next, turning it on and off, then checking the battery chamber to ensure that it contained nothing but batteries. I unfolded the beach towel and stood up so I could get an eagle’s-eye view of the design.
Black-and-white chevron, no unexpected breaks in the pattern.
“That just leaves this,” I told Libby, picking up the mesh bag. I opened it, spilling dozens of magnetic letters onto the floor. “Maybe it spells out the first clue?”
I began by sorting the letters: consonants in one pile, vowels in another. I hit a 7 and started a third pile for numbers.
“Forty-five pieces in total,” I told my sister once I was done. “Twelve numbers, five vowels, twenty-eight consonants.” Moving as I spoke, I pulled out the five vowels—one each of A, E, I, O, and U. That didn’t strike me as a coincidence, so I started pulling out consonants, too—one of each letter, until I had the whole alphabet represented, with seven letters left behind.
“These are the extras,” I told Libby. “One B, three P’s, and three Q’s.” I did the same thing for the numbers, pulling out each digit from one to nine and turning my attention to the leftovers. “Three fours,” I said. I stared at what I had. “B, P, P, P, Q, Q, Q, four, four, four.”
I repeated that a few times. A phrase came into my head: Mind your P’s and Q’s. I lingered on it for a moment, then dismissed it. What wasn’t I seeing?
“I’m not exactly a rocket scientist,” Libby hedged, “but I don’t think you’re going to get words out of those letters.”
No vowels. I considered starting over again, playing with the letters in a different way, but couldn’t bring myself to do it. “There’s three of each,” I said. “Except for the B.”
I picked up the B and rubbed my thumb over its surface. What wasn’t I seeing? P, P, P, Q, Q, Q, 4, 4, 4—but only one B. I closed my eyes. Tobias Hawthorne had designed this puzzle for me. He must have had reason to believe not just that it could be solved, but that I could solve it. I thought about the file folder the billionaire had kept on me. Pictures of me doing everything from working at a diner to playing chess.
I thought of my dream.
And then I saw it—first in my mind’s eye, and once my eyelids flew open, right in front of me. P, Q, 4. I pulled those three down, then repeated the process. P, Q, 4. When I saw what I had left, my heart jumped into my throat, pounding like I was standing at the edge of a waterfall.
“P, Q, B, four,” I told Libby breathlessly.
“Cream cheese frosting and black velvet corsets!” Libby replied. “We are just saying random combinations of things now, right?”
I shook my head. “The code—it’s not words,” I explained. “These are chess notations—descriptive, not algebraic.”
After my mother had died, long before I’d ever heard the name Hawthorne, I’d played chess in the park with a man who I’d known as Harry. Toby Hawthorne. His father had known that—known that I played, known who I played with.
“It’s a way of keeping track of your moves and your opponent’s,” I told Libby, a rush of energy thrumming through my veins. “This one—P-Q4—is short for pawn to Queen four. It’s a common opening move, which is often countered by black making the same move—pawn to Queen four. Then the white pawn goes to Queen’s Bishop four.”
P-QB4.
“So,” Libby said sagely, “chess.”
“Chess,” I repeated. “The move—it’s called the Queen’s Gambit. Whoever’s playing white puts that second pawn in a position to be sacrificed, which is why it’s considered a gambit.”
“Why would you sacrifice a piece?” Libby asked.
I thought about billionaire Tobias Hawthorne, about Toby, about Jameson, Grayson, Xander, and Nash. “To take control of the board,” I said.
It was tempting to read more meaning into that, but I couldn’t linger. I had the first clue now. It would lead me to another. I started walking.
“Where are you going?” Libby called after me. “And do you want me to have Jameson meet us there? Or Max?”
“The game room.” I made it to the door before I answered the second half of that question, my stomach twisting. “And yes to Max.”