Chapter 5
Chapter Five
STERLING
“ Y our father imagined you’d go on this journey together,” Mr. Webber said to Forrest, “but it does my heart good to see you with your beautiful future wife beside you. You can’t do this with your father, but it means something that you can do it with someone you love.”
Forrest looked poleaxed. I didn’t think he’d expected this trip down memory lane. Neither had I. I’d only been thinking about the box and how to talk our way into opening it without a key. And now here we were.
Except there wasn’t a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Just another code to break. Well, really, this time, it was a clue and a code. At least I hoped A mockingbird on my shoulder, singing with my strings in the Poplars, was a clue. I had no idea.
“I’m assuming we can take this with us,” Forrest said, plucking the index card from my hands.
“Of course,” Mr. Webber said. “Guard it carefully.”
“I will.” Forrest tucked the index card into the inside pocket of his suit coat.
My head was spinning, torn between elation and consternation. I’d done it. I’d cracked the code, found the bank, and bullshitted my way into Alan Buckley’s safe deposit box only to find another fucking code.
I slid into the comfortable social niceties I could perform without much conscious thought, saying goodbye to Mr. Webber with a handshake and a half hug, thanking Mrs. Grady for her help, and following Forrest out of the bank, the whole time trying to figure out what the clue meant. Did it lead somewhere? Was it the key to decode the letters and numbers beneath? How could it be?
I’d done something no one else had been able to do—I’d gotten us this far. But damn it, I thought that would be it. We’d find the box, get our payday, and I could sail off into the sunset, loaded down with cash.
I buckled myself into the passenger seat of Forrest’s car, trying to figure out what was next. The part of me that loved cracking Alan Buckley’s code shouted that the next step was obvious. I’d just have to decipher the clue about mockingbirds and strings and hope that led me to the key I needed to decipher the code. My fingers tingled with the desire to act, to solve the puzzle and decode those letters and numbers into the next step in our quest.
The rest of me wasn’t so sure that twenty-five percent of Alan’s money was worth the risk.
I wanted the money. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to work. I did. I’d been studying and mapping out a new career. I wanted to do more with my life than sleep late, drink, and party. I’d wasted too many years on that already. But I’d also learned money wasn’t just for buying things or showing off. Money was safety. If I could pay my own way, no one could tell me what to do. I could take care of myself on my own terms.
My father and I always had an uneasy relationship. Most of the time, he’d ignored me. According to Miss Martha, our family housekeeper, I’d thrown some memorable tantrums when I was a toddler. I’d come to Heartstone at four years old, probably terrified and alone after my mother died, and I’d screamed out all that fear and grief, pounding my little fists into Darcy, my stepmother.
I didn’t remember my mother, Trina. From everything I’d heard, she’d been happy to be Prentice’s mistress, not as thrilled about raising a child. Then she was gone, and there was Darcy, who loved me with everything she had despite my being a constant reminder of her husband’s infidelity. Darcy had absorbed my tantrums, returning my screams with love, and eventually, I’d settled. It took too long for Prentice. He wrote me off as a hellion and a disaster before I made it to kindergarten.
My father had seen his children as vehicles to further profit, bartering us and arranging marriages to suit his purposes. As I’d grown, my sisters tried to protect me from Prentice’s machinations. Their efforts were a waste of time. Prentice continued to ignore me, too afraid to try to set me up with one of his associates in case I embarrassed him. Which I most certainly would have, completely on purpose.
The best way to keep Prentice at a distance was to be the hellion he expected, a loose cannon he couldn’t trust. It worked to protect me from my father’s actions, but I couldn’t escape his words. When we crossed paths, he took every opportunity to remind me what a useless disappointment I was. I was born to be a party girl, beautiful but brainless. What makes you think you’re anything special?
Well, fuck him. He was dead, and I was still here. And more than that, I’d solved the riddle he’d been chasing for most of my life. I didn’t have the money, but I was a step closer than Prentice Sawyer would ever be. How could I stop now? My father might be dead, but I still wanted to prove him wrong. I needed to. I wanted the money and the triumph. I couldn’t walk away.
That was my ambition talking. I had a lot more ambition than anyone around me realized. Maybe too much, because chasing after Alan Buckley’s fortune was going to be a hell of a lot more painful than I’d thought. I’d planned to ignore Forrest, focus on the money, and walk away. I was fooling myself. I was playing with fire with every second I spent with him, risking my ability to walk away whole. He’d taken enough of my heart as it was. I didn’t need to hand him the rest.
Forrest sat beside me in silence, smoothly navigating the road back to Sawyers Bend. Everything would be so much simpler if I was over him. I didn’t want to care about the way he’d frozen when Mrs. Grady said he looked like his father. The way he’d gone still when he’d learned the key was his own name: Buck.
He’d come to Sawyers Bend to get revenge for the father he’d loved. I understood revenge. Solving the code and finding Alan’s fortune would be my own revenge, and I wanted it so badly I could taste it. I wanted to stand over my father’s grave and gloat.
So, I was a hypocrite. I was still furious with Forrest, but I understood why he’d come to Sawyers Bend. I snuck a glance at his profile. Why did he have to be so fucking good-looking? It wasn’t just the cheekbones and the strong line of his jaw or the way his hair twisted into soft curls at the top of his head, where he let it get a little longer.
I’d loved running my fingers through the short bristles at the back of his head, then sinking them into those luscious brown curls. And his hazel eyes, punctuated by flecks of green and gold at the center, his lashes so long I was torn between admiration and envy. I needed four coats of mascara for my lashes to look like that.
I’d tried, but I couldn’t forget what he looked like under that suit. Forrest wasn’t a fitness nut, but he ran and lifted weights most days. And God , did it show. Forrest Powell had stamina. I’d never had sex like that in my life. I’d had plenty of mediocre sex, some pretty bad sex, and some that was good enough. But getting naked with Forrest was like nothing I’d ever known. I’d shut off that part of myself in the year since he’d shattered my heart, not remotely ready to let anyone close enough to touch.
My broken heart wasn’t healed. Scabbed over, maybe, but all that raw pain was right under the surface. Now, to get the things I wanted most—the money, revenge on my father—I was stuck with Forrest Powell.
I glanced at his jacket pocket. “Can I see the card?”
After a pause, he pulled it out. I took it, examining it for anything I’d missed on my short initial viewing. There was nothing new. I lifted my phone and got a great shot of Forrest’s hand.
“No pictures,” he said. Tucking the card back in his pocket, he glanced at me, his eyes impenetrable. “You want to look at it? You do it with me.”
I huffed out a breath. “Fine.”
I tried to think. Mr. Webber hadn’t said anything concrete, but I could tell he knew we were in pursuit of something big. If it was my father’s wild-goose chase, I would have bet that any account at the end of the rainbow would be empty. But this was Alan Buckley we were talking about, and from what Mr. Webber had said, this was an adventure he’d planned to go on with his son. He wouldn’t stiff his own kid.
I set my phone on the center console, screen down. Forrest handed me back the card.
“Does the clue mean anything to you?” he asked.
“No,” I admitted. “I have no idea what it means.”
“Well, what’s the plan?”
“I don’t know. It took me a while to figure out the first one.”
Forrest cleared his throat, his eyes fixed on the road. “I meant what I said. That card is worth a lot. If you want to look at it, you do it with me. No pictures, no copies.”
“You think I’m going to steal it?” I asked, incredulous. For once, I met his gaze without a flinch, pissed off at him all over again.
Forrest’s eyes were guarded as they met mine before moving back to the road ahead. “I don’t know,” he said. “I know you hate me. You’ve made that clear.”
“I don’t—” I started to say, though I didn’t know why. I did hate him.
“Yeah. You do,” he said, his voice heavy. I wanted to think it was with regret. “I get it. I lied. I hurt you. And I can tell you all day how sorry I am, but I know you don’t believe me. I deserve that. If I’d stopped and thought about what I was doing, what was at risk, I would have done everything differently. But it’s too late.”
My chest felt like it was caving in, my eyes hot and stinging. He’d apologized last year when he came clean to all of us, but I’d been too angry and hurt to listen to anything he’d said. He was a liar, and I was done with him. End of story. But now?—
I was still hurt. Still furious. But this time, I heard his apology, every word of it. He didn’t make excuses. I believed that he was sorry. And still, I couldn’t bring myself to let him off the hook.
The silence stretched, and Forrest cleared his throat. “Right. So, we’ve established that you hate me,” he said. “And we’re both aware that index card is worth a lot of money. Potentially.”
“Agreed.” Though, I thought he was wrong about the potentially part. I was very sure that card was worth a lot of money.
“Then you understand why I say no pictures, no copies. And if you want to see it, you do it with me.”
I let out a sigh. I couldn’t argue. If our situations were reversed, I’d say the same thing. “Fine,” I agreed. I could do this. I’d solved the first code. Surely, that meant I could solve the next. It was just going to take time. And I realized, with a rush of relief, not all of that time had to be spent with Forrest.
I looked back at the card. The words would point me to the key. And once I figured out what the key was, then I could go back to Forrest and decode the numbers and letters below. I didn’t need the card. I didn’t need the code. I just needed to figure out what the clue meant.
I stared down at the card in my hand, reading the clue over and over, committing it to memory.
A mockingbird on my shoulder, singing with my strings in the Poplars.
I’d let the words rattle around in my brain for a while. They didn’t mean anything. Not yet. But they would.
Handing the card back to Forrest without looking at him, I said, “I’ll let you know when I need to see it again.”
That was the last thing I said to Forrest Powell for seven days.