Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 78598 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 314(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78598 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 314(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
“I’m bringing up Roan’s laptop right after I leave this room,” Legend said. “He’ll get started tonight.”
“Good. So while the conversation is on her, we can talk about what we’re actually here to talk about.” Jacques swept over us. “Ivy de Souza.”
“What’s there to talk about?” I asked. “She doesn’t get to walk away after everything she’s seen. All that she knows.” I sat up, anger hooking into me. “Why? Is she trying to leave?”
“No,” Legend said. “The opposite. She thinks nothing’s changed and we can all keep going as we were. Doesn’t fucking help that Roan is singing the same tune. He doesn’t care that we’ve been living with a woman who has needed psychiatric help for the last two years. She thought she was her dead sister, and acted like it. We don’t know who the real Ivy is. We only know who she thought she was.”
“Doesn’t matter. She’s ours now.”
“How are you of all fucking people saying that?” Cairo barked. “Ivy got spun up in Cavendish’s web. He turned her into a killer, and she’s still got people on her hit list—including my dad and the person who got him to cover up her grandmother’s death. We’re not after the same thing. What happens when we get in the way of her revenge?”
I laughed. “What? You think she’d plunge a knife in our sleeping backs? Didn’t Mariner say she already had that opportunity with you?”
“Yeah, and she didn’t take it. The real Rainey died as a result. She won’t make the same mistake twice.”
“No,” I said with absolute certainty. “She’s got no one else to lose now, except us. We have her loyalty.”
“She’s got no one else to lose.” Legend’s face cloaked in shadows as he propped against the wall. “But she’s got plenty to avenge. If those shits murdered my family, can’t say I’d let any of you bastards get in my way.”
I chuckled. “You think she’s playing us? Biding her time until she’s got a clear path to Sheriff Sharpe and Dante? If that’s true, it’s more reason to keep her exactly where she belongs—with us. Can’t watch her if she slips back into the shadows like her old friends taught her to do.”
“Agreed,” said Jacques. “We don’t yet know why, but Ivy’s a lightning rod drawing the Men of Honor to her. Cavendish resurfaced after years of peace to send her those letters. Mariner came for her turn after his death. Dante demanded the Crows’ punishment after they attacked her and Paris. And Steven Ellis bribed her into a contract for the sale of her farm. Jeremy told her the guys in his crew got way less than she did, and they were beating on women and blowing up cars. A lot more risk than reporting on us.
“The more we learn, the more certain I am that understanding why her grandmother was killed and what makes that farm so special, is the key to connecting all these seemingly random and unnecessary events. So no, we’re not in Ivy’s way. We want the same thing.”
“Don’t we know what makes her farm special?” Legend asked. “It’s what makes every patch of dirt in Crystal Canyon special.”
Inexplicably, he shook his head. “Remember what she said? I’m not sure she realized the significance of it herself, but Ivy told us AgriProspects was one of Steven Ellis’s investment companies. Just another front like Foundry, but that one went bankrupt after Clein murdered Abigail, so they never bought the farm.” He flicked between us, clearly expecting to see understanding dawn on our faces.
“Want to finish your thought?” Cairo returned.
“AgriProspects was a front, guys. What the fuck did it matter if they couldn’t buy the farm? It wasn’t as though Ellis went bankrupt too. If he wanted that farm, he had two fucking years to buy it like he’s done every other scrap of land he could get his hands on. Why—?”
“—did he wait until he could use it as leverage over Ivy?” Legend finished. Understanding was clear in his expression now. “Did any of us ever read that contract?”
One after the other, we shook our heads.
“Now you see,” Jacques said. “There is more going on here than either of us comprehend. We don’t find out what that is without her close. In the meantime, her insights have already proved useful. She’s twice as smart and three times as ruthless as any of us. On that bridge when Mariner gave her a choice of our lives or hers, she jumped without a second’s hesitation.”
Jacques turned on Legend. “Mariner admitted to killing her sister. The real choice was to live and make her suffer for it, or die and save us. Seems to me she already chose us over revenge.”
Neither Legend nor even Cairo had a slick-ass response to that. Good. There was never any question of them sending Ivy away. I didn’t have an off-the-charts IQ like Jacques, or a half a psych degree like Cairo, but I know what I saw that night I took my prize to visit Axel Verlice.