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)
“Vanessa was useful at first. I aimed her at Royal just to fuck with the Sawyers. Why should you all be one big happy family with Prentice gone and the family legacy sitting in your laps? You all had everything you ever wanted, while I’d lost my wife, my child. I had nothing. Well, fuck that. Prentice was out of the way. Ford was out of the way, and I realized—wouldn’t life be so much better if the Sawyer empire crumbled, piece by piece?”
He rolled his neck, the vertebrae cracking. His easy tone had my nerves on edge. “I’d almost decided to leave the rest of you alone. To go after the business instead of the people. And then Quinn found that necklace, and I learned that you three were looking for the designer, one of the few people who could connect Caro to Prentice. Bad enough I’d lost my wife, and the child that should have been mine. If you’d put those pieces together, everyone would have known. The only good thing Prentice and Caro did was keep their relationship quiet. The humiliation would have been too much to bear.”
He slammed his fist into the dashboard hard enough to leave smears of red on the brown leather.
My heart seized in my chest. So much rage just behind that friendly exterior. I didn’t want it turned on me.
“I wasn’t having it,” he said, his words coming out in crisp, clean bites. “I can’t thank you enough for tracking her down for me.”
“It wasn’t me,” I said, sick at the idea that I’d led him straight to the innocent designer. If no one stopped him, he’d go after Sterling, too. If he wanted to keep Prentice and Caro’s connection quiet, he’d have to.
“Close enough,” he said with a shrug.
“How did you know we found her?” I asked.
“Harvey has a big mouth and shit judgment. He and Edgar were worried about you girls putting yourselves in the line of fire,” he said, sarcasm dripping from the words. “Little did they know they were loading the gun, chatting about it in front of me.”
“Is that what you’re going to use?” I asked. “A gun instead of a knife like you did with Anna Novak?”
Cole’s eyes met mine in the rearview mirror, and I thought I saw a flare of remorse before he looked back to the narrow, bumpy road. “I lost my temper. We were in her kitchen. She made a smartass comment, and I was very, very angry. The knife was just there.”
Just there for forty stab wounds?
He shook his head, this time with genuine remorse. “It was messy. I don’t like messy. But no, I meant a metaphorical gun. If I kill you before you go in the well, I’ll probably strangle you. There’s nothing like it—hands around the neck, watching the light fade from your eyes.” The smile that spread across his mouth was revoltingly handsome, filled with pleasurable anticipation.
Ugh. How had we not seen this beneath his cultured surface? All of this evil. I’d never liked Cole Haywood much, but I’d always thought it was because he was friends with my father and had a stick up his butt. But this? This, I had not seen.
“I’d vote for not being killed at all,” I said.
“You don’t get a vote,” Cole answered with a laugh.
“Who did you strangle? You shot Prentice and Vanessa. You stabbed the jewelry designer,” I reminded him.
Cole just shook his head and said, “Over the years, people have gotten in my way. Nobody that mattered.”
“They mattered enough for you to kill them,” I said.
He cocked his head to the side. “And now they don’t matter at all.”
The sedan came to a rocking halt. “We walk from here. It isn’t far.” Cole turned off the engine and got out. He wrenched open the door and reached in, leaning down to cut through the ties around my ankles with a long, shiny blade. The knife disappeared, and when he straightened, there was a black gun in his hand.
“I thought you said you weren’t going to shoot me,” I said, my stomach turning to ice.
“I’m not planning on it. Doesn’t mean I won’t. We have a hike ahead of us, and I want you to understand that this can go easily, or this can involve a lot of pain for you. It all depends on how bad a mood I’m in when we get where we’re going. I suggest you do as you’re told, and don’t give me any trouble, because I can guarantee you will regret it.”
His words shivered across my skin, leaving me frozen. My throat felt too tight to force out sound. I nodded in rough jerks.
He reached in, closed his hand around my upper arm, and hauled me out of the backseat. “Walk,” he said, shoving me in front of him.