The door slammed behind him a second later.
“Note to self,” Grayson said, rising effortlessly from the floor and straightening his suit, “kill Mattias Slater if he goes near my little sister again.”
Lyra snorted, then her gaze went to the file in her hand. “You fake drunk pretty well,” she told Grayson, walking over to the table. She swept the chess pieces aside and set the file down.
“I have an impressive tolerance,” Grayson replied, “second only to my aunt Zara’s.” He reached a hand to her face and tilted her eyes up toward his. “And you, Lyra Catalina Kane, are stalling.”
Lyra didn’t deny it. She allowed herself to lean into Grayson’s touch, and then she took a seat and stared bullets at Eve’s file. “What if there’s nothing in here? No real leads?”
“What if everything makes sense after you read it?” Grayson took the seat opposite her. “What if it’s exactly what you’ve been looking for?”
His hand made its way across the table to hers. Lyra’s fingers bent, interweaving with his. She breathed, and so did Grayson.Theybreathed, together.
“You don’t have to be okay,” Grayson told her. “You don’t have to befine.”
“I’m not,” Lyra admitted. And then she flipped open her father’s file.
Chapter 11
LYRA
The first page was nothing but names. Aliases.Thomas,Tomasso, andTomásappeared most frequently, but there were other first names peppered in. Among the dozens of surnames listed, three and only three were asterisked.
Drakos,Reyes, andAquila.
Lyra turned the page with her free hand, but instead of details on those asterisks, what she got was a police report. The second Lyra saw it, her field of vision narrowed, her breath coming more quickly as individual phrases jumped out at her.
Gunshot wounds—
Self-inflicted—
No witnesses.
“No witnesses?” Lyra whispered. She forced herself to read the report, word for word, from the beginning, never letting go of Grayson’s hand. The report, dated two daysafterLyra’s fourth birthday, indicated that the dead man had broken into a stranger’s home while the owner was on vacation and shot himself inside.It wasn’t his house.The fatal injuries listed in the report tracked with what Lyra remembered, butthere was no mention anywhere of a calla lily, a symbol written in blood on the wall, or a child.
No mention that Lyra had been there at all.
There was, however, documentation of a note that the victim had supposedly left behind, explaining his financial woes and laying the blame for his suicide squarely at the feet of billionaire Tobias Hawthorne and his predatory business practices.
“My father didn’t write this,” Lyra said. She felt that in her bones. Her father hadn’t killed himself for run-of-the-millfinancialreasons, and Tobias Hawthorne wasn’t the Hawthorne he’d held responsible for his death.A Hawthornewas. “But why would Alice connect my father’s death to the Hawthorne family at all?” Lyra asked. “Why forgethisnote?”
“To ensure the local sheriff’s department wouldn’t question why a man like Tobias Hawthorne might want the whole affair put to bed quickly and quietly,” Grayson replied. “Cleanly.”
He was right, Lyra realized. It was like the entire case had been tied up with a billionaire’s bow.Quickly. Quietly. Cleanly.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Lyra bit out. “I wasthere. How could anyone cover that up? The police would have found me first. I remember running out into the night—footsteps on pavement. I remember—”
Lyra stopped suddenly, because she didn’t remember, hadneverremembered the moment when she’d been found. She’d only recently remembered seeing Alice Hawthorne that night.
You should not be here, the black-cloaked woman had told Lyra.But who is to say that you were?
Grayson shifted his chair around to Lyra’s side of the table. Together, they read the report again, from the beginning. The investigation had identified the victim asThomas Valasquezvia a driver’s license found on the body. If forensics of any kind had been run to confirm that identity, the report didn’t contain them. If the sheriff’s department had any idea thatThomas Valasquezwas not their victim’s real name, the report gave no indication of that, either.
Tied up with a bow. Put to bed.Something like fury rose in Lyra, andshe forced herself to go past the end of the written report this time—to the crime scene photos.
Blood. His face is gone.
It was just like Lyra remembered, but the wall—the wall on which her father had drawn the omega symbol in his own blood—was nothing but bloody streaks, the symbol destroyed.