Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 100853 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100853 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
“She might not.” I hated even saying the words out loud.
“I have more faith in you than that,” Savannah said, reaching out to squeeze my arm again before she turned to go.
I was glad someone had faith in me. I hadn’t expected it to be Savannah. I watched her leave and headed upstairs to the attics, alone. I tried to tell myself everything was better, safer, if I was on my own. But for the first time since I’d been out of prison—maybe much longer than that—I didn’t want isolation. I wanted Paige, and I wanted my family. But as much as I wanted those things, I wanted this to be over.
I knew Cole wouldn’t be able to resist coming after me himself. And when he did, I reminded myself, we could end this thing once and for all.
Then all of us would be free.
You’ll never really be free until you find out who killed Prentice, a little voice in my head reminded me. And for the first time, I shoved it away. I might never know. The list of people who’d wanted my father dead was long and varied. We hadn’t had security back then. Anyone could have walked into Heartstone. West had been looking for the killer since the day Prentice died and had come up with nothing.
I sat on the edge of an ancient trunk, digging through another box of paperwork. Three sheets down, I found another copy of the ancient, crinkled invoice for concrete in the garage renovation in ’86, the one I’d already called about that had led nowhere. I could swear I’d found and filed the same invoice at least three times, and here it was again, with the same diagonal crease where it had been folded carelessly, the same handwritten notation in the margin—pd 8/27/86. It was way too old to have anything to do with Prentice’s murder, but it was weird that I kept seeing it.
Maybe I was hung up on finding Prentice’s killer because I couldn’t do what Savannah had suggested—find a way to accept who I’d been, the wrong that I’d done, and figure out how to move forward. I didn’t want to be the old Ford Sawyer. I wanted more. I’d spent a lot of my life doing wrong. Now I wanted to figure out a way to do right and find a way to win Paige back when this was over and she was safe.
I made my way to the bottom of the box I’d been going through. Other than that same concrete invoice—nothing. Files I was already familiar with, deals that predated me but weren’t important. There was nothing here.
It was late afternoon. I’d sorted through another bin—this one of household records Savannah would probably be interested in—when my brother Royal dipped his head through the doorway.
“Hey, put that away. Come downstairs.” He came in and grabbed the bin in front of me, giving it a quick glance before he dropped it on a nearby table.
“Now’s not a good time,” I said. “And there are too many windows down there.”
“Not where we’re going. Come on.” When I didn’t move, he propped his hands on his hips and scowled down at me. “You know you’re not in prison anymore.”
“I figured that out,” I said wryly. “The food’s a lot better here.”
“Then stop acting like it. You’ve got yourself in solitary,” he said, grabbing my arm and pulling me toward the door.
“I’m trying to prevent any of you guys getting shot or whatever the next one of them comes up with,” I said, pulling my arm from his grip and following him to the stairs.
“Yeah, I get that. I appreciate you trying to keep us all in one piece.”
“This is all my fault,” I said.
“The fuck it is,” Royal said. “Haywood used Vanessa to try to kill me while you were still in prison. He almost killed JT—Daisy’s best friend—thinking he was me. You had nothing to do with that.”
I shook my head. “I’m the reason. Cole blames me for everything that went wrong.”
“Well, Cole’s an idiot,” Royal said, turning and jogging down the stairs. “And you’re not the reason. Dad is the reason. Dad is the one who fucked him over and stole his wife. Dad ruined Cole Haywood’s life. Not you. So, you put Dad and Caro on a charity committee together. For fuck’s sake, the whole thing was supposed to do good, right? How did you know they were going to jump into bed together? Haywood’s just blaming you because guys like him never blame themselves. And he’s a coward, because if he wasn’t, he would have just gone for Dad after Caro died. But no, he waited till he thought we were vulnerable, and then he decided to get revenge.” Royal stopped at the base of the stairs and shook his head. “Stop acting like a martyr, man. You’ve done plenty of asshole shit in your life—”