That smile was devilish. It was dangerous.
“No way,” I told Jameson. “I’m not even allowed to leave the estate without Oren. And I can’t drive a car like these!”
“Luckily,” Jameson replied, ambling toward a box on the wall, “I can.” There was a puzzle built into the box, like a Rubik’s Cube, but silver, with strange shapes carved onto the squares. Jameson immediately began spinning the tiles, twisting them, arranging them just so. The box popped open. He ran his fingers over a plethora of keys, then selected one. “There’s nothing like speed for getting out of your own head—and out of your own way.” He started walking toward the Aston Martin. “Some puzzles make more sense at two hundred miles an hour.”
“Is there even room for two people in that?” I asked.
“Why, Heiress,” Jameson murmured, “I thought you’d never ask.”
Jameson drove the car onto a pad that lowered us down below the ground level of the House. We shot through a tunnel, and before I knew it, we were going out a back exit that I hadn’t even known existed.
Jameson didn’t speed. He didn’t take his eyes off the road. He just drove, silently. In the seat next to him, every nerve ending in my body was alive with anticipation.
This is a very bad idea.
He must have called ahead, because the track was ready for us when we got there.
“The Martin’s not technically a race car,” Jameson told me. “Technically, it wasn’t even for sale when my grandfather bought it.”
And technically, I shouldn’t have left the estate. We shouldn’t have taken the car. We shouldn’t have been here.
But somewhere around a hundred and fifty miles an hour, I stopped thinking aboutshould.
Adrenaline. Euphoria. Fear. There wasn’t room in my head for anything else. Speed was the only thing that mattered.
That, and the boy beside me.
I didn’t want him to slow down. I didn’t want the car to stop. For the first time since the reading of the will, I feltfree.No questions. No suspicions. No one staring or not staring. Nothing except this moment, right here, right now.
Nothing except Jameson Winchester Hawthorne and me.
CHAPTER 41
Eventually, the car slowed to a stop. Eventually, reality crashed down around us. Oren was there, with a team in tow.Uh-oh.
“You and I,” my head of security told Jameson the second we exited the car, “are going to be having a little talk.”
“I’m a big girl,” I said, eyeing the backup Oren had brought with him. “If you want to yell at someone, yell at me.”
Oren didn’t yell. He did personally deposit me back in my room and indicate that we would “talk” in the morning. Based on his tone, I wasn’t entirely sure that I would survive atalkwith Oren unscathed.
I barely slept that night, my brain a mess of electrical impulses that wouldn’t—couldn’t—stop firing. I still had no idea what to make of the names highlighted in the Red Will, if they really were a reference to the boys’ fathers, or if Tobias Hawthorne had chosen his grandsons’ middle names for a different reason altogether.
All I knew was that Skye had been right. Jameson was hungry.And so am I.But I could also hear Skye telling me that I didn’t matter, that I was no Emily.
When I did fall asleep that night, I dreamed of a teenage girl. She was a shadow, a silhouette, a ghost, a queen. And no matter how fast I ran, down one corridor after another, I could never catch up to her.
My phone rang before dawn. Groggy and in a mood, I grabbed for it with every intention of launching it through the closest window, then realized who was calling.
“Max, it’s five thirty in the morning.”
“Three thirty my time. Where did you get that car?” Max didn’t sound even remotely sleepy.
“A room full of cars?” I replied apologetically, and then sleep cleared from my brain enough for me to process the implications of her question. “How did you know about the car?”
“Aerial photo,” Max replied. “Taken from a helicopter, and what do you meana room full of cars? Exactly how big is this room?”
“I don’t know.” I groaned and rolled over in bed. Of course the paparazzi had caught me out with Jameson. I didn’t even want to know what the gossip rags were saying.
