That night, Avery sleeps beside Jameson and dreams uneasily about Avery’s mother, Toby, fire, and gold. Avery wakes to Libby shouting, not because of the kidnapping, but because Nash has left Libby another cowboy hat: a black, spiked, skull-and-crossbones design that Libby clearly loves despite insisting she and Nash are not a couple.

Oren interrupts with a more serious development: an envelope addressed to Avery arrived by courier in the middle of the night. Oren has screened the package for poison, explosives, and recording devices. Avery fears it might be a ransom demand for Toby and opens it immediately.

Inside the envelope, Avery finds the golden disk, along with a single expensive sheet of paper marked in blood-red writing. The disk’s return overturns Avery and Jameson’s assumption that Toby was kidnapped for it. Jameson reasons that the abductor either does not know the disk’s value or does not care.

Avery and Jameson examine the sparse message, which appears to be a broken pattern of letters. Jameson recognizes the puzzle as one of Tobias Hawthorne’s favorite tricks: the same five-letter sequence must be inserted into each blank. Avery solves it as “venge,” transforming the fragments into “Avenge,” “Revenge,” and “Vengeance.”

The final decoded word is “Avenger,” which Jameson says aloud. The message functions like both a threat and a signature, shifting the mystery away from the disk and toward someone motivated by revenge.