The Final Gambit (The Inheritance Games Book 3)

Stepping through the stone arches of the chapel, I scanned the room: the delicately carved pews, the elaborate stained-glass windows, an altar made of pure white marble. This early in the day, light streamed in from the east, bathing the room in color from the stained glass. I studied each panel, looking for something.

A clue.

Nothing. I went through the pews. There were only six of them. The woodwork was captivating, but if it held any secrets—hidden compartments, a button, instructions—I couldn’t find them.

That left me with the altar. It came up to my chest and was a little over six feet long and maybe three feet deep. On the top of the altar, there was a candelabra; a gleaming, golden Bible; and a silver cross. I carefully examined each one, and then I knelt to look at the script carved into the front of the altar.

A quote. I ran my fingers over the inscription and read it out loud. “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

That sounded biblical. It was too early to call Max, so I typed the quote into the phone and it gave me a Bible verse: 2 Corinthians 4:18.

I thought about Blake using a different Bible verse as a combination on a lock. How many of his games had a young Tobias Hawthorne played?

“Fix our eyes not on what is seen,” I said out loud, “but on what is unseen.” I stared at the altar. What is unseen?

Kneeling in front of the altar, I ran my fingers along it: up and down, left and right, top to bottom. I made my way around to the back, where I found a slight gap between the marble and the floor. I bent to look, but I couldn’t see anything, so I slid my fingers into the gap.

Almost immediately, I felt a series of raised circles. My first instinct was to push one, but I didn’t want to be rash, so I kept exploring until I had a full count. There were three rows of raised circles, with six in each row.

Eighteen, total. 2 Corinthians 4:18, I thought. Did that mean that I needed to press four of the eighteen raised circles? And if so, which four?

Frustrated, I stood. With Tobias Hawthorne, nothing was ever easy. I walked around the altar again, taking in its size. The billionaire had wanted to build a mausoleum, but he hadn’t. He’d built this chapel, and I couldn’t help but notice that if this giant slab of marble was hollow, there would be room for a body inside.

I can do this. I stared at the verse inscribed on what I suspected was Will Blake’s tomb. “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen,” I read out loud again, “but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

Unseen.

What did it mean to fix your eyes on something that was unseen? I had no way of looking at the raised circles. I couldn’t see them. I’d had to feel them. With my fingers, I thought, and suddenly, just like that, I knew what this inscription meant—not in a biblical sense, but to Tobias Hawthorne.

I knew exactly how I was supposed to see what was unseen.

I took out my phone, and I looked up how numbers were written in Braille. Four. One. Eight.

Crouching back down behind the altar, I slid my fingers under the marble and pressed only the raised circles indicated. Four. One. Eight.

I heard a creak, and my eyes darted to the top of the altar. A slab of marble had separated from the rest. Unlocked.

I moved the candelabra, the Bible, and the cross to the floor. The slab that had released was maybe two inches thick and too heavy for me to move myself.

I looked to Oren, who was standing guard as always. “I need your help,” I told him.

He stared at me, long and hard, then cursed under his breath and came to help me. We slid the marble slab, and it didn’t take much movement to realize that my instincts had been right. The inside of the altar had been hollowed out. There was a space big enough for a body.

But there were no remains. Instead, I found a shroud, the kind that might have once draped a skeleton or a corpse. By the time the chapel and this altar were finished, would there have been anything left but bones? I didn’t smell death. Stretching to reach in and move the shroud, I saw that the marble inside this makeshift crypt had been defaced with familiar handwriting.

Toby’s.

I wondered how long it had taken him to angrily carve six words into the marble. I wondered if this was where he’d found the Blake family seal. I wondered what else he’d found here.

I KNOW WHAT YOU DID, FATHER.

Those were the words he’d left behind—the words that Tobias Hawthorne would have found, once Toby ran away, if he’d checked to see if this secret remained.

And then I saw one last thing in what must have once been Will Blake’s tomb.

A USB drive.