Page 87 of The Final Gambit

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.

CHAPTER 67

Ilocked my hand around the USB. As I pulled it out, my mind raced. The drive definitely hadn’t been sitting in a tomb for twenty years. It looked new.

“You know, Avery, I want to be surprised that you got here first, but I’m not.”Eve.I whipped my head up to see her standing in the chapel doorway beneath a stone arch. “Some people just have that magic touch,” she continued softly. She walked toward me, toward the altar. “What did you find in there?”

She sounded hesitant, vulnerable, but the second Oren stepped into her path, the matching expression on her face flickered like a light bulb a second before it burns out.

“There was supposed to be human remains in there,” Eve said calmly.Toocalmly. “But there weren’t, were there?” She cocked her head to the side, her hair falling in gentle amber waves as her gaze landed on the USB in my hand. “I’m going to need you to give me that.”

“Are you out of your mind?” I asked. I didn’t notice her hands moving until it was too late.

She’s got a gun.Eve held her weapon the way that Nash had taught me to hold mine.Her gun is pointed straight at me.That thought shouldn’t have computed, but I had a knife in my boot. I’d spent all that time training. So when my body should have been panicking, an unnatural calm settled over me instead.

Oren drew his sidearm. “Put the weapon down,” he ordered.

It was like Eve didn’t even hear him, like the only person in this room she could see or hear was me.

“Where did you even get a gun?” I was stalling for time, assessing the situation. “There’s no way you made it onto the estate with one that first morning.” Even as I said the words, I thought about Eve bolting the moment she’d “discovered” Vincent Blake’s name.

“Put the gun down!” Oren repeated. “I guarantee you that I can get a shot off before you can, and I don’t miss.”

Eve took a step forward, utterly, beautifully unafraid. “Are you really going to let your bodyguard shoot me, Avery?”

This was a different Eve. Gone were the layers of self-protection, the vulnerability, the raw emotion—all of it.

“You helped Blake abduct Toby, didn’t you?” I said, certainty washing over me like a wave of heat.

“I wouldn’t have had to,” Eve replied, her tone smooth and hard, “if Toby had opened up. If he’d just agreed to bring me here.But he wouldn’t.”

“This is the last time that I’m going to tell you to put the gun down!” Oren boomed.

“I’m still Toby’s daughter,” Eve said, adopting a familiar, wide-eyed expression, her gun unwavering. “And honestly, Avery, how do you think Gray will feel if Oren shoots me? What do you think will happen if that beautiful, broken boy walks in here to find me bleeding out on the floor?”

At her mention of Grayson, I instinctively looked for him, but he wasn’t there. My body shaking with pent-up rage, I turned to Oren. “Put the gun down,” I told him.

My head of security stepped directly in front of me. “She puts hers down first.”

A haughty expression on her face, Eve lowered her weapon. Oren was on her in an instant, taking her to the ground, pinning her down.

Eve looked up at me from the chapel floor and smiled. “You want Toby back, and I want whatever you found in that tomb.”

She’d called it a tomb. She’d said earlier that there were supposed to be remains in there. I wondered how she’d come to that conclusion, and then I remembered where I’d left her—and with whom. “Mallory,” I said.

“She admitted that Liam didn’t leave. I believe her exact words wereThere was so much blood.” Eve’s gaze went to the altar. “So where’s the body?”

“Is that really all you care about?” I asked her. From the very beginning, she’d told me that there was only one thing that mattered to her. I was starting to think that wasn’t a lie—it was just that her single-minded purpose had nothing to do with Toby.

It had never been about Toby.