The Inheritances Game (Jameson Hawthorne)

Winchester

I sat down on the balcony and sighed. It had been such a long day I just needed to relax. I picked up my pencil and looked down at my sketchbook. Drawing was freedom for me I always can understand something more when I draw it. Before I knew it I was drawing something or someone. I was so focused I didn't realize someone joining me on the balcony.

"Is that me?" I jerked my head up to see Avery looking at my picture.

"Yeah sorry. You just came to mind. Here" I ripped the page out and handed it to her. She looked at it before sitting down.

"This is really good. Do you come out here every night?"

"Just when I want to clear my head."

She nodded. "I was talking to Rebecca earlier. The Laughlin's granddaughter she had a sister." I looked to her.

"Emily." I said, Avery once again nodded. "Emily was magnetizing."

"You knew her."

I turned towards her. "I met Jameson when I was 6, I had ran away from my home. My father was horrible and my mom had died. I was forced to come home a month into meeting him, Mr. Hawthorne paid my father to let me live with them. I met Emily a week into living there, she was a risk taker. Emily had a heart condition and strict parents. The Hawthornes helped her, then she started dating Grayson. She also wanted to date Jameson, but she didn't."

"So Jameson didn't love Emily?"

I shrugged. "He was more.. infatuated with her." Avery nodded.

"I found another clue."

I looked at her surprised. "What is it?"

"Winchester. It didn't mean the forest it meant the gun."

"Mr. Hawthorne did love his rifles how didn't we think of it before. . ."

"I think Jameson knew he was registered as being in there a couple days ago." How dare he go on his own! That kid can't stop for even a minute.

"What did you find?"

"On the gun O. N. E. was etched in and the way it had been etched into the metal made the letters look like initials, but if you read it as number, to go with the one we'd found on the bridge. Not infinity, Eight. And now: One. Eight. One." I nodded.

"So, if Winchester meant a gun than the other names must mean something other than a location too." I looked at Avery who was also smiling.

Avery's Pov

After talking with Catalina, Oren escorted me back to my wing. I thought about knocking on Libby's door, but it was late—too late—and it wasn't like I could just pop in and say, there's murder afoot, sleep tight! Oren did a sweep of my quarters and then took up position outside my door, feet spread shoulder-width apart, hands dangling by his side. He had to sleep sometime, but as the door closed between us, I knew it wouldn't be tonight.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and stared at it. Nothing from Max. She was a night owl and two hours behind me time zone–wise. There was no way she was asleep. I DM-ed the same message I'd texted her earlier to every social media account she had. Please respond, I thought desperately. Please, Max.

"Nothing." I hadn't meant to say that out loud. Trying not to feel utterly alone, I made my way to the bathroom, laid my phone on the counter, and slipped off my clothes. Naked, I looked in the mirror. Except for my face and the bandage over my stitches, my skin looked untouched. I peeled the bandage back. The wound was angry and red, the stitches even and small. I stared at it.

Someone—almost certainly someone in the Hawthorne family—wanted me dead. I could be dead right now. I pictured their faces, one by one. Jameson had been there with me when the shots rang out. Nash had claimed from the beginning that he didn't want the money. Xander had been nothing but welcoming. But Grayson...If you were smart, you'd stay away. From the game. From me. He'd warned me. He'd told me that their family destroyed everything they touched. When I'd asked Rebecca how Emily had died, it hadn't been Jameson's name she'd mentioned. Grayson told me that it was her heart. Catalina told me Jameson never dated her yet he did like her but Jameson had watched her die.