CHAPTER 19 GRAYSON
GRAYSON
G rayson wondered if this was what it had felt like for Jameson and Avery, solving the old man’s puzzles. A thrum of energy was palpable in the air as he and Lyra stepped foot on the helipad. Strips of light burst to life all along the edges of the concrete.
There, in the center of the helipad, was the landing target.
“The bull’s-eye,” Grayson said. He and Lyra moved toward it in perfect synchrony. At the center of the target, there was a circle roughly the length of Grayson’s arm from shoulder to fingertip.
Bull’s-eye. Grayson knelt to run a hand over its surface, feeling the concrete beneath his palms, pressing at it with his fingers, looking for…
“A latch.” Grayson found it and pried it upward. There was a click. He pulled, and the edge of the bull’s-eye came up just far enough for him to slip his fingers beneath it. Bracing his body with his legs, Grayson tightened his grip on the concrete.
Lyra slid in beside him, placing her hands next to his. “On three?” she said.
Her voice killed him. She did. For once in his life, Grayson truly understood what it was like being hungry, wanting answers, wanting everything . “Three,” he said.
They put their weight into it, and the disk moved, and soon, they’d removed it altogether, uncovering a circular sheet of metal down below.
“Bull’s-eye,” Grayson murmured. The metal was smooth, nothing engraved on or cut into its surface, except at the very center, where there was a slit.
Less than two inches wide but not by much , Grayson noted. No more than two-tenths of an inch high.
Grayson pressed his hand against the metal, feeling around the slit. The closest thing he had to a flashlight was his watch, so he brought his wrist down to the metal, then lowered his head, trying to look through the slit to whatever his brothers and Avery had hidden below.
“No hinges,” Lyra reported, having finished her own assessment. “The metal can’t be lifted up or moved. It’s locked into place.”
Locked. Having played Hawthorne games for as long as he had, Grayson knew exactly what that meant. “We need a key.”
“A key,” Lyra repeated, and then her eyes lit up, electric in a way that Grayson felt to his core. “Grayson. For every lock a key. ”
He looked back to the slit in the metal—just large enough for the blade of a sword.