“What about you?” Lyra asked, coming to a stop to catch her breath.Better to talk about him than me.
“I like the feel of the wind,” Nash told her. “The smell of grass and dirt. When I was younger, it was motorcycles—refurbishing them, salvaging parts, proving to myself that there was no such thing as a lost cause.” Nash looked to the horizon, like it wasn’t nighttime and already dark, like he was looking into a Texas sunset instead. “You’re new to all of this, to us. But for the record, Lyra? If any part of you is considering taking this run a little farther, pushing beyond Oren’s airtight security perimeter? Ain’t gonna happen, kid.”
He’s bluffing, Lyra thought.
“Not bluffin’,” Nash informed her, like she’s spoken out loud. “You strike me as a fellow first-born, so this bit might be new to you, but I’ve been riding herd on my brothers their entire lives and Avery since she got here. You’re welcome to try to push this. Wouldn’t go well for you. No grand acts of self-sacrifice allowed. No playing bait.”
Nash reached for Lyra’s hand then and pressed something into it.A velvet box. Alice’s ring.“Gray told me to ask you to hold on to this for him. He mentioned the two of you have an agreement of sorts, ’bout cliffs.”
Lyra stared at that ring box. “He told you to keep an eye on me.” Of course he did. “Asshole,” Lyra muttered—or maybe murmured.
“Yeah,” Nash replied, “but he’s our asshole.”
The muscles in Lyra’s throat and abdomen constricted, because it couldn’t have been clearer that Nash was including her in thatour. The same way that Libby and Max had acted like all three of them were somehow thesame. And that just made Lyra even more desperate to do something, because all of themneededfor Avery to be okay.
“There has to be something we can do,” Lyra said.
“I might be able to help with that,” a voice called.Alisa.It was another few seconds before the lawyer was close enough for Lyra to make out her silhouette in the moonlight. “Credit goes to your wife for this one,” Alisa told Nash. “Libby was the one who pointed out that there arefourpeople in that photograph of Lyra’s father’s family—not three.”
Four…
“The baby,” Lyra said. “In the blanket—the worn blue blanket.”Worn enough, Lyra realized,to be a hand-me-down.Lyra swallowed. “When I asked my mom if Tomás had a brother, she said that his answer always varied. Sometimes he had two brothers, and sometimes they were sisters, and sometimes he was the youngest of seven.”
“Raises a question, doesn’t it?” Nash said.
“What if,” Lyra replied, “the baby in that blue blanket was a girl?”
How old would she be now?Lyra thought.And more importantly, how old would she have been during the Crucible that happened nineteen years ago?
“The timing could work,” Lyra said, doing the math, “for the Omega. If there was a family history with the Gilded Blade, if the Aquila line had fallen out of power, that could have put adaughteron the Judge’s radar.”
“I’ll have my guys do some digging,” Alisa said. “We’ll know more about her—if that babyisa girl—soon.”
Her, Lyra thought.She.
“Don’t be afraid, Lyra Catalina,” Lyra said out loud. “Shewill come for you. What if my uncle wasn’t talking about Alice? Alice was the one who showed up, but what if he was trying to lure out someone else, expecting someone else?”
What if he was expecting his sister?
“Don’t go thinkin’ this changes things,” Nash told Lyra. “Regarding that conversation you and I just had.”
“I’m sorry,” Lyra said. “You can tell Grayson that I’m sorry, but if this is myauntwe’re talking about here—”
“Still no.” Nash didn’t even have the decency to get heated about it.
“I can save you both some back and forth,” Alisa interjected. “I didn’t come out here just to tell you Libby’s theory about the baby, Lyra. I came out here to tell both of you that an envelope was delivered to Hawthorne House ten minutes ago. Oren still has it in forensics, but I took some pictures to show you.”
Alisa held her phone out to Lyra. On its screen, there was a photograph of a plain white envelope bearing Lyra’s name.
LYRA CATALINA.
Lyra’s eyes darted up to Alisa’s.
“Scroll,” the lawyer said.
Lyra scrolled to the next photo, to a single page with a message written on it in the same hand:
I MADE MY CHOICE. IT WASN’T YOU.