Notmyphone.Jameson realized that between one breath and the next. He’d turnedhisphone off before he’d gotten on the plane.
From somewhere deeper in the suite, the phone rang a second time.
Either Jameson wasn’t as alone as he’d assumed or someone elsehadbeen there and left a phone, quite possibly intentionally. In either case, Jameson wasn’t about to hang back. He made his way silently toward the sound of the ringing. In a darkened dining room, an envelope lay in the middle of a grand table, the only light in the room comingthroughthe envelope.
From the phone inside.
Jameson reached for a switch and flooded the room with light. He claimed the envelope and tore through it, answering the call with three—and only three—words: “Where is she?”
That was more important to him than other, perhaps more pressing, questions, likewhere are you,who are you, andwhat are you going to do to me?
“If I knew where Avery was,” a familiar voice replied, “I’d have blocked the jet youborrowedfrom ever taking off.”
“Alisa.” It took a moment for Jameson’s body to register:There is no threat here.“I don’t have time for this.”
“Make time,” Alisa suggested. “I would hate to have to tell Nash that you’re in dire need of wrangling. Do you really think Avery would want your brother leaving Libby’s side right now?”
Avery’s sister, Jameson’s sister-in-law, was pregnant with twins. The last thing Jameson wanted was to leave Libby even remotely exposed, and Alisa,damn her, knew that.
“You have three minutes,” Jameson said.
“I’ve replaced all of our phones, not just yours, as a security precaution. All the numbers you might need have already been loaded onto the phone in your hand. You don’t have to answer anyone else’s calls, but youwillanswer mine.”
“How fortunate that I excel at taking orders,” Jameson said. “Especially yours. See also: the chupacabra incident when I was nine.”
Alisa Ortega had grown up alongside the Hawthorne brothers. She was not easily deterred. “We both want Avery home, and we both have our limitations. Yours, Jameson, involve self-control and risk assessment. Mine involve the fact that Oren and I cannot be observed making waves. I deeply suspect the instructions in Avery’s note were for our benefit, not yours.”
Except for the lemniscate, Jameson thought.One way or another, that was for me.
“You think Avery wanted me to look for her?” Jameson asked Alisa, his voice coming out hoarse.
“I think Avery knows you well enough to know that nothing she said could keep you—or Grayson, for that matter—from looking for her.”
Even just hearing his brother’s name hit Jameson in a dark and hollow place.
“Your three minutes are almost up,” he told Alisa.
“Then allow me to be concise: I’ll run point, manage the press, and keep a lid on the situation by any means necessary. You’ll keep me up to date on your progress, and I’ll keep you apprised of anything else anyone manages to dig up. To that end, I can already tell you that the trio we’re looking for—Alice, Calla Thorp, and one as-yet unknown—seem to operate by certain rules.”
Jameson steeled himself against the sound of his grandmother’s name. For more than a year, he’d avoided speaking it, but he was done with that now, done burying his head in the sand. The time forwatchingwas already over.
Avery was already gone.
“What rules?” Jameson said, his voice coming out calmer than he felt.
“Each member of the group has an assigned role: Watcher, Hand, or Judge. Make of those terms what you will. Alice appears to be the current Judge. From what Grayson and Lyra have determined, the group operates in the shadows—as vigilantes, possibly assassins. There’s enough of a ritualized element, in my opinion, to justify calling them a cult.”
Assassins.
Cult.
Bile rose in the back of Jameson’s throat as darkness blanketed his mind. A single shard of memory sliced through.Pain. Little cuts. And a voice, a somehow familiar voice: “I think we can agree this situation merits more than watching.”
“Members of the group appear to move up in rank over time,” Alisa continued, bringing Jameson back to the present. “Watcher to Hand to Judge. The recruitment process for new members is unclear, but it seems to require a woman leaving her old life behind, either by disappearing or by faking her own death.”
“You think that’s what this is.” Jameson’s voice caught in his throat. “Avery. You think she might have gotten the kind ofinvitationthat Gigi was warned about. You think she said yes.”
“I think that the only way Avery would have said yes toanythingwas if she was given certain assurances in return. I think the rest of us are quite possibly safe now in a way that we weren’t before, and I think that Avery fully believes theremightbe a way back from this for her.”
