Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 93002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 465(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 465(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
“It’s odd, right?” I asked.
Avery nodded. “I think…” She hesitated.
“What?” I asked, needing to know what she was thinking. I’d hated Brax for years. Forever. It never occurred to me that I wasn’t the only one.
“I think,” Avery said, “he wants something from Ford. I don’t really get it. But I…” She hesitated again, drew in a quick breath, and said, in a rush, “I overheard a conversation they had in the library the other day. I was walking down the hall, and I heard Brax’s voice raised, and I stopped. I was curious.” She rolled her eyes, a clear assessment of her own nosiness. “Brax told Ford that he was the only one who didn’t care that Ford had killed our father. That he was the only one who understood Ford, and they needed to stick together.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. We all knew Ford hadn’t done it, so Brax was clearly up to something. Or knew something we didn’t. I knew Brax liked to go after the weak, the unprotected. And while Ford could certainly protect himself, he was vulnerable and alone right now.
“Shit. Really?” I said. “Does he seriously think Ford killed Dad?”
“It sounded like it,” Avery said, “but I mean, come on. There’s no way.”
“Definitely not,” I agreed. “For one thing, if he had, there’s no way Ford would have been caught so easily.”
Avery laughed. “He’s not at the top of my list of favorite people, but I know he didn’t kill Prentice. So, I don’t know why Brax seems to think he did.”
“What did Ford say?” I asked.
“He said…” Avery closed her eyes as if trying to see the memory clearly. “Ford said… ‘I can’t give you what you’re looking for, Brax. I can’t help you if you can’t see.’”
“What? What did he mean?” Before Avery could answer, I asked, “Did Brax understand?”
Avery opened her eyes and shook her head. “I don’t think so. Mostly because he said, ‘What the fuck does that mean?’ Ford didn’t answer, and Brax stormed out.”
“Did he see you?”
“No,” she said. “The whole thing was weird.”
“Everything about Brax these days is weird,” I said, filing the conversation away to think about later. “Anyway, the necklace.”
I grabbed my phone off the desk in my room and flipped through the photo album until I got to the pictures Quinn had texted me of the necklace. I dropped them to Avery’s phone.
“Exactly what are you going to do with these?” I asked.
Avery shrugged. “Go around town asking questions. See if I can find anything similar. I don’t know. I just… I’m tired of this, Sterling.”
“Tired of what?” I asked, rubbing Shadow’s soft ears until she relaxed into me, boneless and vibrating with purrs.
“Living like this. It’s been almost a year and a half since Dad was shot, and we’re still on lockdown with no idea who killed him. No one’s come after any of us directly in a while, but that doesn’t mean they won’t. Especially now that Ford’s home. I’m just tired of it. I want to know who killed Dad. I want to know who tried to frame Ford. I want us all to be safe. And I’m fucking frustrated as hell that nobody seems to be doing anything about it.”
I thought Hawk, Griffen, and West, our police chief, might push back on the idea that no one was doing anything about it. But I got where Avery was coming from.
“We can’t go on like this indefinitely,” she continued, staring down at the pictures of the necklace, in the shape of a gold oak leaf, now on her phone.
No one had been able to trace the necklace to the original owner. But then again, no one had been able to figure out the code on the Vitellius statue until I’d done it. Maybe Avery could figure out who killed our father. “You’re being careful, right?” I asked. “Someone tried to kill Ford before he got out of prison. Whoever did this, they’re still out there.”
Avery shrugged one shoulder, keeping her eyes on her phone. “Careful enough.”
I wasn’t sure I believed her. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
“Old you or new you?” she asked, flashing me a bright smile that felt like a hug.
“Let’s try new me,” I said. “If you’re poking around in Dad’s murder, I don’t think old me is a good role model.”
Avery shoved her phone in her pocket. “I like all of you, Sterling. Though I think new Sterling has a longer shelf life than the old version.”
“Me too,” I said, returning her smile. “Keep me posted if you find anything.”
Avery shut the door behind her without answering.
Alone in my room, I looked around again, remembering Brax standing just outside my door. Shadow was fine, and everything in here looked untouched. But…
I strode across the room, pulled open my desk drawer, and dug under the notebooks to close my fingers around the peppermint tin. The sudden tension in my gut relaxed at finding it exactly where I’d left it. I opened it, closed it, and set it on the desk with a click.