“Is the Grandest Game over, then?” The man didn’t seem bothered by Knox’s silence. “Dare I ask who won?”
Gigi realized then who the man was: Orion Thorp, Knox’s sponsor in the game and Calla’s father, in name, at least.Does that make the other two some of the cousins who hated Calla?It suddenly occurred to Gigi that the older boys who’d jumped Brady and Knox when they were in elementary school might have been Thorps.
“If youdidwin,” Orion continued when it was clear Knox wouldn’t say a word, “you’ll be hearing from my attorneys, who will collect my due. If you lost, our association is at its end. Either way, boy, there is no need for you to step foot in this town, now or ever again.”
Knox turned his head slowly toward Gigi.Inside.The order was silent this time.
This is bad, Gigi thought, as Knox began slowly descending the steps, stopping only when he was standing toe-to-toe with Calla’s father. Knox and Orion Thorp were the exact same height, their builds equally matched.
“Calla’s alive.” Knox came out swinging—metaphorically—andOrion Thorp responded by backhanding him hard enough to send a man twice Knox’s size to the ground.
Knox didn’t go down. He popped his jaw and cocked his head, and the next thing Gigi knew, Brady was there, at the bottom of the steps, holding Knox back, no Nora in sight.
“Get inside, Gigi.” Brady was the one who issued the order this time, and this time, Gigi did as she was told, not because she was scared and not because Brady Daniels had told her to do it but because she deeply suspected that if Orion Thorp said a word toher, Brady wouldn’t be able to hold Knox back.
So Gigi went inside the museum, her heart pounding and her mind roaring as she thought about Orion Thorp, about Calla and Calla’s necklace, about the entire Thorp family and the one person in this town, other than Nora and Calla herself, who might know something.
The person who’d given Calla that necklace. The person who had presumably plastered the Thorp fleur-de-lis all over this town.
“Can I help you, honey?” a big-haired, pearl-wearing docent asked Gigi.
Gigi offered the docent her most charming smile. “I would love it,” she said sweetly, “if you could point me toward a back exit and tell me where in this town a person might go if they happened to have information that would be of great interest to Helena Thorp.”
Chapter 27
LYRA
Don’t be afraid, Lyra Catalina. She will come for you.Hours after Lyra had recovered the memory, it still lingered. She and Grayson had headed back to the airstrip the moment they’d obtained the file on Lyra’s kidnapping from Alisa’s man. The entire flight back to Texas, Lyra had barely said a word.
They’d been to her home. Now they were headed for Grayson’s, because at Hawthorne House there was yet another file, one that Tobias Hawthorne had assembled on a dead man he’d referred to asThomas, Thomas.Grayson had told Lyra once that everything in that file was a lie, but given the dead billionaire’s proclivity for puzzles, there was at least a chance that thoselieswere actually acode.
The man who’d kidnapped Lyra had been sure that Alice Hawthorne would come afterher. Why?
As their private jet began its descent, Lyra stared at the sketch in her lap, the only useful thing in the sheriff’s file. It wasn’t a police sketch, just the work of an artistic teacher at Lyra’s preschool. After fifteen years, the security footage from Lyra’s abduction had been either lostor deleted, but this sketch had survived, and the man in it—he looked like Lyra.
So very much like her.
“The resemblance is quite strong.” Grayson had given Lyra time to process, time to broach the subject herself, but he seemed to have decided against leaving her to her thoughts any longer.
“No wonder they thought he was my father.” Lyra had never seen anyone who looked as much like her as this man did. Even in black-and-white, the resemblance was remarkable, there in the shape of their eyes, their full mouths, the way high cheekbones were softened by slightly rounded cheeks.
“It’s possible the drawing isn’t fully accurate,” Grayson commented. “If the teacher encoded the two of you as looking alike, that could have affected her memory of your abductor’s face.”
It could have, but did it?Because looking at that drawing, Lyra couldhearthe voice from her dreams. This man’s face was familiar to her in every way the photographs of Tomás had not been. Every part of Lyra that had chantednot him, not him, not himbefore was screamingHIMnow.
This was the man who’d taken her, and he’d had her eyes—and so much more.
“My mom knew next to nothing about Tomás.” Lyra forced herself to be logical, to think through the situation instead offeelingit. “They weren’t together all that long. I don’t think she knew much of anything about his family at all.”
Grayson effortlessly followed Lyra’s train of thought. “Perhaps your father had a brother.”
Genetics were funny. Traits could skip a generation—or ten. A niece could end up looking more like her uncle than her father.
“Whoever this man is,” Lyra told Grayson, “we need to identify him and find out what his connection was to Alice—and why he was so sure she’d come forme.”
Within minutes of their plane touching down, the jet door was open. Through it, Lyra could see a black SUV pulling onto the private runway.
“That will be Alisa,” Grayson told Lyra. “She made it clear to me when I asked for the plane that she would be escorting us to Hawthorne House herself.”