The Inheritances Game (Jameson Hawthorne)

Toby's Diary

I paced in my room, all day I haven't been able to think about anything other than the puzzle. I needed to get back into Toby's room, I paced back in forth a little more before heading to his room. I stepped over the debris and headed straight to the bookshelf. I took a law book of the shelf and opened it. The book's index directed me to the entry for the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine. As I reached the page in question, my heart sped up. There it was. 

Certain letters in certain words were blacked out. The notations went on for pages. Every once in a while, there would be a punctuation mark that had been struck through—a comma, a question mark. I didn't have a pen or paper, so I used my phone to record the letters, painstakingly typing them in one by one. The result was a string of consonants and vowels with no meaning. For now.

"Hey Cal." My head shot up to see Jameson and Avery.

"Hey." I closed the book.

"Is that the Fruit of the poisonous tree?" Avery said sitting down next to me.

I nodded. "Some letters are crossed out," I showed her the list on my phone. "Do you know what it means?" Avery stood up.

"You're thinking." Jameson paused. "You know something."

"I found a cipher disk yesterday," Avery said, "but it was set at neutral. I don't know the code." 

"Numbers." Jameson's reply was immediate and electric. "We need numbers, Heiress. Where did you find the cipher?" My breath caught in my throat. I watched as Avery walked over to the clock. I followed her over and watched as she turned it over and stared at its face: the hour hand frozen at twelve and the minute hand at five. 

"The fifth letter of the alphabet is E," I looked from Avery to Jameson "The twelfth is L." 

Avery started running out of the room, I followed her. Once in her suite she pulled a cipher disk out of her drawer and matched the letters. Beside me, Jameson grabbed a pen, but Avery grabbed it back from him. 

"My room," she told Jameson. "My pen. My cipher disk." 

"If you want to get technical, Heiress, it's all yours. Not just this room or that pen." I ignored him and watched Avery transpose letter after letter, until the entire message was decoded. Once she was done a poem was left. One that I could only assume was a Toby Hawthorne original. 

Secrets, lies, All I despise. 

The tree is poison, Don't you see? 

It poisoned S and Z and me.

The evidence I stole is in the darkest hole. 

Light shall reveal all writ upon the... 

I looked to Jameson.

"That's it," Avery said. "It ends there." 

 "Secrets, lies, all I despise. The tree is poison, don't you see? It poisoned S and Z and me." I paused. "S for Skye, Z for Zara." 

"The evidence I stole," Avery picked up, then paused. "Evidence of what?" 

"Is in the darkest hole," Jameson continued. "Light shall reveal all I writ upon the..." 

He trailed off, and in the back of my head, something clicked. 

"There's a word missing," I said. "And it rhymes with all." 

An instant later, Jameson was in motion—and so was Avery and I. We ran back, through corridor after corridor, to Toby's abandoned wing. We came to a stop just outside the door. Jameson looked at me as he stepped over the threshold. Light shall reveal all I writ upon the...