An alarm went off in the back of my head, because no one was ever that glad to see me.
“Right this way.” He opened the door to his office, and I caught sight of a familiar neon-blue ponytail inside.
“Libby?” I said. She was wearing skull-print scrubs and no makeup, both of which suggested she’d come straight from work. In the middle of a shift. Orderlies at assisted living facilities couldn’t just walk out in the middle of shifts.
Not unless something was wrong.
“Is Dad…” I couldn’t make myself finish the question.
“Your father is fine.” The voice that issued that statement didn’t belong to Libby or Principal Altman. My head whipped up, and I looked past my sister. The chair behind the principal’s desk was occupied—by a guy not much older than me.What is going on here?
He was wearing a suit. He looked like the kind of person who should have had an entourage.
“As of yesterday,” he continued, his low, rich voice measured and precise, “Ricky Grambs was alive, well, and safely passed out in a motel room in Michigan, an hour outside of Detroit.”
I tried not to stare at him—and failed.Light hair. Pale eyes. Features sharp enough to cut rocks.
“How could you possibly know that?” I demanded.Ididn’t even know where my deadbeat father was. How could he?
The boy in the suit didn’t answer my question. Instead, he arched an eyebrow. “Principal Altman?” he said. “If you could give us a moment?”
The principal opened his mouth, presumably to object to being removed from his own office, but the boy’s eyebrow lifted higher.
“I believe we had an agreement.”
Altman cleared his throat. “Of course.” And just like that, he turned and walked out the door. It closed behind him, and I resumed openly staring at the boy who’d banished him.
“You asked how I know where you father is.” His eyes were the same color as his suit—gray, bordering on silver. “It would be best, for the moment, for you to just assume that I know everything.”
His voice would have been pleasant to listen to if it weren’t for the words. “A guy who thinks he knows everything,” I muttered. “That’s new.”
“A girl with a razor-sharp tongue,” he returned, silver eyes focused on mine, the ends of his lips ticking upward.
“Who are you?” I asked. “And what do you want?”With me, something inside me added.What do you want with me?
“All I want,” he said, “is to deliver a message.” For reasons I couldn’t quite pinpoint, my heart started beating faster. “One that has proven rather difficult to send via traditional means.”
“That might be my fault,” Libby volunteered sheepishly beside me.
“What might be your fault?” I turned to look at her, grateful for an excuse to look away from Gray Eyes and fighting the urge to glance back.
“The first thing you need to know,” Libby said, as earnestly as anyone wearing skull-print scrubs had ever said anything, “is that I hadnoidea the letters were real.”
“What letters?” I asked. I was the only person in this room who didn’t know what was going on here, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that not knowing was a liability, like standing on train tracks but not knowing which direction the train was coming from.
“The letters,” the boy in the suit said, his voice wrapping around me, “that my grandfather’s attorneys have been sending, certified mail, to your residence for the better part of three weeks.”
“I thought they were a scam,” Libby told me.
“I assure you,” the boy replied silkily, “they are not.”
I knew better than to put any confidence in the assurances of good-looking guys.
“Let me start again.” He folded his hands on the desk between us, the thumb of his right hand lightly circling the cuff link on his left wrist. “My name is Grayson Hawthorne. I’m here on behalf of McNamara, Ortega, and Jones, a Dallas-based law firm representing my grandfather’s estate.” Grayson’s pale eyes met mine. “My grandfather passed away earlier this month.” A weighty pause. “His name was Tobias Hawthorne.” Grayson studied my reaction—or, more accurately, the lack thereof. “Does that name mean anything to you?”
The sensation of standing on train tracks was back. “No,” I said. “Should it?”
“My grandfather was a very wealthy man, Ms. Grambs. And it appears that, along with our family and people who worked for him for years, you have been named in his will.”
