Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 103552 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103552 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
“I’m the fucking Chief of Police,” I reminded her, trying frantically to figure out how to drag this fight back into the land of reason. I couldn’t. Not if she wouldn’t recognize she had to get as far from this investigation as possible.
“I’m not breaking any laws at the moment.” Her voice caught, and she forced out the rest. “So, I think you should leave.” She swallowed hard, yanking her hands from her pockets and crossing her arms across her chest.
“Are you kidding?” I asked, wondering how this had gone so far off the rails so fast. “I’m trying to keep you alive.”
“No, you’re trying to control me. You aren’t my boss or my father. I don’t need this from you.”
What was she talking about? I was trying to save her. “You don’t need this from me?” I shook my head. “You don’t want me to look out for you? To protect you? You just want a good fuck and then I get out of your way?”
She stared back at me, her eyes flat. Finally, she shrugged. “Right now, I just want you to leave my brewery.”
I turned and strode from the building without another word, my chest hollow and my lungs fighting each breath. That hadn’t gone the way I planned. Not that I’d planned it very well.
She’d come around. She had to. I wasn’t going to lose her over a stupid argument. The image of the dead woman flashed into my head again. No, I wasn’t going to lose her to a knife or a bullet. And if her hating me was the price of keeping her safe, I’d have to find a way to live with that. Because whatever happened, I wouldn’t let Avery’s body be the next one we found.
Chapter Twenty-One
AVERY
The taproom was slow—not unusual for early Sunday afternoon, even during leaf season. But was it slower than normal? Or was I just paranoid? Hard to tell. I couldn’t gauge how much damage Matthew’s gossip had been doing to my relationships with other brewers. Clearly, some damage considering what had happened with the Christmas fundraiser. But to our popularity as a local spot to grab a good beer? That was harder to gauge, especially this time of year, when there were so many outsiders around.
I wanted to pretend my crap mood was because I wasn’t selling as much beer as usual. But that was a lie. My crap mood was because I hadn’t spoken to West in four days. I wanted to say that this was his fault. That he was an overbearing, domineering asshole who wanted to control me. And who was he to tell me what to do? If he really cared about me, really knew me, he’d understand that asking me to walk away from my investigation was ridiculous and unfair.
The problem was, I had a sinking feeling in my gut that all of my justifications were bullshit, and that, in this scenario, West was not the one who was wrong.
I’d looked at his number on my phone probably twenty times since our fight, and stopped myself from calling every time. What was I supposed to say? I’m sorry, you were right? Was I willing to go that far? Was he right—all the way right?
I didn’t know, because I was still fucking pissed off, and underneath that, maybe more than a little terrified.
I’d read the article that a local journalist had written about the murder. West hadn’t mentioned all the details. Anna Novak could have been stabbed as many as forty times. I couldn’t wrap my head around that kind of brutality. Who would do that? Did I want to be in the crosshairs of someone who could stab an innocent woman forty times?
Why would I be that reckless?
Ford’s face flashed in my mind. My older brother, who’d been awful to Griffen, but was also the reason I had Sawyers Bend Brewing. He’d looked out for me, run interference with Prentice, and helped give me time to figure out my life rather than let Prentice mold me into the daughter he’d wanted. I wouldn’t be who I was or where I was without Ford. And he’d spent a year in prison for our father’s murder. Whoever killed Prentice had set Ford up to take that fall and was probably also Anna Novak’s murderer.
I didn’t know what prison was like—I hoped I’d never find out—but I knew the brother who had gone in was not the same man who came out. And if I turned my back on this quest for answers, I turned my back on Ford and the possibility of him having a future free and clear of Prentice’s murder. Unless we found the killer, for the rest of his life, everyone he met would assume he’d killed our father. Ford wasn’t a perfect man, but did he deserve that? My heart said no.