The Final Gambit (The Inheritance Games Book 3)

My arms were aching by the time the ground caved in, revealing a chamber below—part of the tunnels, but not a part I’d ever seen.

Before I could say a word, Jameson leapt into the darkness.

I lowered myself down more cautiously, landing beside him in a crouch. I stood, shining the light from my phone. The chamber was small—and empty.

No body.

I scanned the walls and saw a torch. Latching my fingers around the torch, I tried to pull it from the wall, to no avail. I let my fingers explore the metal sconce that held the torch in place. “There’s a hinge back here,” I said. “Or something like it. I think it rotates”

Jameson placed his hand over mine, and together we twisted the torch sideways. There was a scraping sound and then a hiss, and the torch burst into flame.

Jameson didn’t let go, and neither did I.

We pulled the flaming torch from the sconce, and as the flame came close to the wall’s surface, words lit up in Toby’s writing.

“I was never a Hawthorne,” I read out loud. Jameson let his hand fall to his side, until I was the only one holding the torch. Slowly, I walked the perimeter of the room. The flame revealed words on each wall.

I was never a Hawthorne.

I will never be a Blake.

So what does that make me?

I saw the message on the final wall, and my heart contracted. Complicit.

“Try the floor,” Jameson told me.

I brought the torch low, careful of the flame, and one final message lit up. Try again, Father.

The body wasn’t here.

It had never been here.

A light shone down from up above. Mr. Laughlin. He helped us out of the chamber, silent the whole time, his expression absolutely unreadable, right up to the point that I tried to step from the center back into the maze, and he moved to stand right in front of me.

Blocking me.

“I heard about Alisa.” The groundskeeper’s voice was always gruff, but the visible sorrow in his eyes was new. “The kind of man who would take a woman—he’s no man at all.” He paused. “Nash came to me,” he said haltingly. “He asked me for help, and that boy wouldn’t even let you help tie his shoes as a toddler.”

“You know where Will Blake’s remains are,” I said, giving voice to the realization as it dawned on me. “That’s why Nash went to you and asked you for help.”

Mr. Laughlin forced himself to look at me. “Some things are best left buried.”

I wasn’t about to accept that. I couldn’t. Anger snaked through me, burning in my veins. At Vincent Blake and Tobias Hawthorne and this man who was supposed to work for me but would always put the Hawthorne family first.

“I’ll raze this entire thing to the ground,” I swore. Some situations required a scalpel, but this? Bring on the chain saws. “I’ll hire men to tear this maze apart. I’ll bring out cadaver dogs. I will burn it all down to get Alisa back.”

Mr. Laughlin’s body trembled. “You have no right.”

“Grandpa.”

He turned, and Rebecca stepped into view. Thea and Xander followed, but Mr. Laughlin barely noticed them. “This isn’t right,” he told Rebecca. “I made promises—to myself, to your mother, to Mr. Hawthorne.”

If I’d had any doubts that the groundskeeper knew where the body was, that statement erased them. “Vincent Blake has Toby, too,” I said. “Not just Alisa. Don’t you want your grandson back?”

“Don’t you talk to me about my grandson.” Mr. Laughlin was breathing heavily now.

Rebecca laid a calming hand on his arm. “It wasn’t Mr. Hawthorne who killed Liam,” she said quietly. “Was it?”

Mr. Laughlin shuddered. “Go back to the cottage, Rebecca.”

“No.”

“You used to be such a good girl,” Mr. Laughlin grunted.

“I used to make myself small.” Rebecca’s was a subtle kind of steel. “But here with you—I didn’t have to. I used to live for the few weeks we spent here each summer. I’d help you. Do you remember? I liked working with my hands, getting them dirty.” She shook her head. “I was never allowed to get dirty at home.”

Back when Emily was young and medically vulnerable, Rebecca’s home had probably been entirely sterile.

“Please go back to the cottage.” Mr. Laughlin’s tone and mannerisms were a perfect match for his granddaughter’s: quiet, understated steel. Until that moment, I’d never seen the resemblance between the two of them. “Thea, take her back.”

“I loved working with you,” Rebecca told her grandfather, the sun catching her ruby-red hair. “But there was one part of the maze that you always insisted on doing yourself.”

My stomach twisted. Rebecca knows where to dig.

“Emily looked like your mother,” Mr. Laughlin said roughly. “But you have her mind, Rebecca. She was brilliant. Is still.” He choked on the next words. “My little girl.”

“It wasn’t Mr. Hawthorne who killed Vincent Blake’s son,” Rebecca said softly. “Was it?” There was no answer. “Eve’s gone. Mom lost it when she couldn’t find her. She said—”

“Whatever your mother said,” Mr. Laughlin cut in harshly, “you forget it, Rebecca.” He looked from her to the horizon. “That’s how this works. We’ve all done our share of forgetting.”

For more than forty years, this secret had festered. It had affected all of them—two families, three generations, one poisonous tree.

“Your daughter was only sixteen.” I started with what I knew. “Will Blake was a grown man. He came here with something to prove.”

“He used your daughter.” Xander took over for me. “To spy on our grandfather.”

“Will used and manipulated your sixteen-year-old daughter. He got her pregnant,” Jameson continued, cutting straight to the heart of the matter.

“I’ve given my life to the Hawthorne family. I don’t owe any of you this.” Mr. Laughlin’s voice wasn’t just harsh now. It was vibrating with fury.

I felt for him. I did. But this wasn’t theoretical. It wasn’t a game. This might well be life or death.

“Show us the part of the maze he wouldn’t let you work on,” I told Rebecca.

She took a step, and Mr. Laughlin grabbed her arm. Hard.

“Let her go,” Thea said, raising her voice.

Rebecca caught Thea’s gaze, just for a moment, then turned back to her grandfather. “Mom’s distraught. She started rambling. She told me that Liam was angry when he found out about the baby. He was going to leave her, so she stole something from the House, from Mr. Hawthorne’s office. She told Liam that she had something he could use against Tobias Hawthorne, just so he would meet with her again. But when he came, when she went to give him what she’d taken, it wasn’t in her bag.”

I pictured them someplace isolated. The Black Wood, maybe.

“Tobias.” At first that was all Mr. Laughlin managed—the dead billionaire’s name. “He was spying on them. He followed Mal that day. He didn’t know why she’d stolen from him, but he was damn set on finding out.”

“What he found,” Jameson concluded, “was Vincent Blake’s adult son taking advantage of a teenage girl under his protection.”

I thought about the reason that Tobias Hawthorne had turned on Blake in the first place. Boys will be boys.

“That little bastard Liam got angry when Mal couldn’t give him what she’d promised. He went cold, told her that she was nothing. When he went to leave, she tried to stop him, and that monster raised a hand to my little girl.”

I got the very real sense that if Will Blake rose from the dead right now, Mr. Laughlin would put him six feet under all over again.

“The second Liam got rough, Mr. Hawthorne stepped out from wherever he’d been hiding to issue some very pointed threats. Mal was sixteen. There were laws.” Mr. Laughlin let out a breath, and it was a ragged, ugly sound. “The man should have slunk away like the rat he was, but Mal—she didn’t want Liam to go. She threatened him, too, said that she would go to his father and tell him about the baby.”

“Will needed to keep his father’s favor to keep his seal,” I said, thinking about Vincent Blake’s short string for his family. “More than that, if he’d come here to prove something to Blake, to impress him—the idea of doing the opposite?”

I swallowed.

“Liam snapped and lunged for her again. Mal—she fought back.” Mr. Laughlin’s eyes closed. “I came in just as Mr. Hawthorne was pulling that man off my daughter. He got that bastard under control, had his arms pinned behind his back, and then—” Mr. Laughlin forced his eyes open and looked toward Rebecca. “Then my little girl picked up a brick. She went at him too quick for me to stop her. And not just once.… She hit him over and over again.”

“It was self-defense,” Jameson said.

Mr. Laughlin looked down, then forced his gaze to mine, like he needed me, of everyone here, to understand. “No. It wasn’t.”

I wondered how many times Mallory had hit her Liam before they stopped her. I wondered if they had stopped her.

“I got a hold of her,” Mr. Laughlin said, his voice heavy. “She just kept saying that she thought he loved her. She thought—” There were no tears in his eyes, but a sob racked his chest. “Mr. Hawthorne told me to go. He told me to take Mal and get her out of there.”

“Was Liam dead?” I asked, my mouth almost painfully dry.

There wasn’t a hint of remorse in the groundskeeper’s face. “Not yet.”

Will Blake had been breathing when Mr. Laughlin left him alone with Tobias Hawthorne.

“Your daughter had just attacked Vincent Blake’s son.” Jameson was wired to find hidden truths, to turn everything into a puzzle, then solve it. “Back then, our family wasn’t wealthy enough or powerful enough to protect her. Not yet.”

“Do you even know what happened after you left?” Rebecca asked after a long and painful silence.

“My understanding is that he needed medical attention.” Mr. Laughlin looked at each of us in turn. “Shame he didn’t get it.”

I pictured Tobias Hawthorne standing there and watching a man die. Letting him die.

“And afterward?” Xander said, uncharacteristically muted.

“I never asked,” Mr. Laughlin said stiffly. “And Mr. Hawthorne never told me.”

My mind raced—through the years, navigating through everything we knew. “But when Toby moved the body…” I started to say.

Mr. Laughlin locked his gaze back on the horizon. “I knew he’d buried something. Once Toby ran off and Mr. Hawthorne started asking questions, I figured out pretty quick what that something was.”

And you never said a word, I thought.

“Show them the spot if you have to, Rebecca.” Mr. Laughlin gently pushed his granddaughter’s hair away from her face. “But if Vincent Blake asks what happened, you protect your mother. You tell him that it was me.”