The Final Gambit (The Inheritance Games, #3)(81)

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.”