I knew the path that would take us to the heart of the maze. I’d been there before, more than once—with Grayson.
“I don’t suppose you know where he went, do you, Heiress?” Jameson had a way of making every question sound a little wicked and a little sharp—but I knew, I knew what he was really asking.
What he was always trying not to ask himself when it came to Grayson and me.
“I don’t know where Grayson is,” I told Jameson, and then I hung a left, and the muscles in my throat tightened. “But I do know that he’s going to be okay. He confronted Eve. I think he finally let go of Emily, finally forgave himself for being human.”
Right turn. Left turn. Left again. Straight. We were almost to the center now.
“And now that Gray is okay,” Jameson said close behind me, “now that he’s so delightfully human and ready to move on from Emily…”
I hit the center of the maze and turned around to face Jameson. “Don’t finish that question.”
I knew what he was going to ask. I knew he wasn’t wrong to ask. But still, it stung. And the only way that he was ever going to stop asking—himself, me, Grayson—was if I gave him the full, unvarnished truth.
The truth I hadn’t let myself think too often or too clearly.
“You were right before when you called my bluff,” I told Jameson. “I can’t say that it was always going to be you.”
He walked past me toward the hidden compartment in the ground where the Hawthornes kept their longswords. I heard him opening the compartment, heard him searching.
Because Jameson Winchester Hawthorne was always searching for something. He couldn’t stop. He would never stop.
And I didn’t want to, either. “I can’t say that it was always going to be you, Jameson, because I don’t believe in destiny or fate—I believe in choice.” I knelt next to him and let my fingers explore the compartment. “You chose me, Jameson, and I chose to open up to you, to all of the possibilities of us, in a way that I had never opened up to anyone before.”
Max had told me once to picture myself standing on a cliff overlooking the ocean. I felt like I was standing there now, because love wasn’t just a choice—it was dozens, hundreds, thousands of choices.
Every day was a choice.
I moved on from the compartment that held the swords, running my hands over the ground at the center of the maze, looking, searching still. “Letting you in,” I told Jameson, the two of us crouched feet apart, “becoming us—it changed me. You taught me to want.”
How to want things.
How to want him.
“You made me hungry,” I told Jameson, “for everything. I want the world now.” I held his gaze in a way that dared him to look away. “And I want it with you.”
Jameson made his way to me—just as my fingers hit something, buried in the grass, wedged into the soil.
Something small and round and metal. Not the Blake family seal. Just a coin. But the size, the shape…
Jameson brought his hands to my face. His thumb lightly skimmed my lips. And I said the two words guaranteed to take that spark in his eyes and set it on fire.
“Dig here.”
CHAPTER 73
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.