Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
WEST
B y the time Griffen walked in the room, followed by Hawk, I was sitting a respectable distance from Avery, nothing to hint at what had happened except for my fingers still tangled in hers.
Griffen didn’t miss a thing, his eyes lighting on our clasped hands for a split second that was just long enough.
I’d deal with that later. My stomach was twisting at the thought of telling my oldest friend I’d kissed his sister.
It would be awkward, probably uncomfortable, but that wasn’t enough to scare me away.
Not from Avery. Not now. I don’t know what I had intended with that kiss.
Maybe a brush of the lips to test the waters.
That was assuming I was thinking at all.
I hadn’t expected her response. If I’d known she could kiss like that?—
Avery shot me a guilty, embarrassed look, shocking me back to reality. Damn, that kiss was hard to shove to the back of my mind, but somehow, I needed to. There would be time to deal with that later. For now, we had business to discuss.
“Ford’s getting stitched up,” Hawk said, taking a position in the open doorway, where he could keep an eye on us and the traffic in the hall at the same time.
“He’s okay?” Avery asked.
“He’s fine,” Griffen answered, standing at the foot of her bed, his arms crossed over his chest. “Ford said you hit your head pretty hard.”
“It hurts,” Avery said, “but not as bad as it did before. I was woozy. I think I passed out for a minute, but I don’t know if that was from hitting my head or just shock. It happened so fast, and there was so much blood.”
“And you had no idea who it was?” Griffen asked, his eyes glued to his sister, soaking in every detail—her pale cheeks, the bandage covering the cut on her collarbone and arm.
“No,” she whispered. “I wish I did.”
“Give me a description,” Hawk said. Before Avery could start, he looked at me.
I pulled out my phone. “I’ll take your statement now,” I said to Avery. “We might as well do it this way and save you coming in later.”
“Sure,” she said, eyeing my phone as I hit record.I added the identifying info—who I was interviewing, time, date, all that. Then I said, “Tell us what happened. Start with the altercation with Matthew.”
Her dark brows pulled together, and I knew she wanted to argue.
She didn’t want to talk about Matthew, especially not in front of Griffen and Hawk.
She was embarrassed and angry. I knew all of that, and still, I needed her statement.
All of it. She eyed the screen of my phone, watching the stopwatch tracking the length of the recording.
I squeezed her fingers. “Forget about the recording. Just tell us what happened.”
Avery nodded. “Matthew approached me while I was on the way to get dinner,” she began, telling us step by step everything that had happened from when we’d parted ways to when I found her on the ground covered in blood.
“All I saw were his eyes. Really just the whites of his eyes. I want to say they were dark brown, but they could have been hazel. It was so dark. His clothes were dark and?—”
“You sure it was a man?” I asked.
She closed her eyes for a second, I thought to replay the attack in her head.
Her eyes still closed, she said, “I’m pretty sure.
He was tall, taller than me, almost as tall as Ford.
Not bulky though. He was rangy. Lean, but strong.
He had something over his head—a costume or a mask.
I wish...” She let out a short laugh. “I was going to say I wish it had lasted longer so I could have gotten a good look, but if it had lasted longer, one of us would probably be dead.”
“Before,” I said, “you thought he wanted to stab Ford. What made you think that?”
“Because he had a knife, and he came at us,” she answered, her eyes wide. “It seems kind of obvious he wasn’t there to play chess or ask for my beer recipe.”
“How do you know?” I asked. I could practically hear Griffen’s teeth grinding together at the question.
None of us liked the idea that the stranger with the knife had been after Avery.
Ford seemed like a logical target. Someone had already tried to kill him in prison.
Now that he was out, he’d stuck close to home, reluctantly putting up with the security that Griffen and Hawk assigned.
Whoever wanted him dead hadn’t had a lot of opportunity to go after him. Until tonight.
“I just, I guess I just assumed they were after Ford,” Avery said, letting out a breath. “I mean, who would come after me?”
“The same person who broke into the brewery?” Hawk asked with a raised eyebrow.
“But they just stole my file and my recipe, they didn’t try to hurt me. And I don’t even know what that was really about. Maybe...”
“Did he say anything?” I asked. “Anything that indicated that Ford was the target?”
“He barely made a sound,” she said, her voice rough with frustration.
Griffen, Hawk, and I exchanged a long look.
“At this point,” Hawk said, “we need to assume either one of you could have been the target.”
“No,” Avery protested, trying to push herself into a higher sitting position. “No, it couldn’t have been me. I don’t want?—”
I squeezed her hand. “Hey, I know you don’t want to think about it. I know it’s fucking scary. And I know you don’t want the added security that your brother and Hawk are definitely going to put on you after this.”
“I really don’t,” she said, sending a frightened glare at her brother and Hawk.
“But until we know what’s going on,” I went on, “the priority is keeping you safe. It’s better to waste manpower watching your back than to assume we know what’s going on and put you at risk. Do you understand?”
She didn’t answer, just huffed out a breath. Hawk took a step into the room to make space for the nurse pushing a wheelchair. “Anybody want to go for a ride?” she asked, and I clicked off the recorder on my phone.
“I do,” Avery said, sounding grateful for the excuse to escape the conversation. I helped Avery into the wheelchair, ready to follow them, when Hawk smoothly stepped in my way.
“I’ll escort the patient,” he said, his gaze flicking from Griffen to me. Hawk hadn’t missed anything either. “You can question Ford while we’re gone.”
I didn’t need Hawk’s permission to question my witness, but I knew it wasn’t about permission. In his own tight-lipped way, he was giving me a minute with Griffen. I took it. We watched Hawk wheel Avery out of the room, following the nurse down the hall.
“This is a fucking mess,” Griffen said, his arms dropping to his sides.
“I can’t get it out of my head,” I admitted. “It was a great night. Huge crowd, everyone loved her beer, and then Matthew was there, getting in her face.”
“That fucking guy,” Griffen said. “You kicked him out? I was at the craft tables with Hope and missed what happened.”
“I escorted him off the property,” I said. “I wanted to do a hell of a lot more than that, but?—”
“It would have been awkward if your deputy had to arrest you for assault,” Griffen finished for me, raising an eyebrow.
“Yeah, something like that. I went to find Avery to make sure she was okay.” I shook my head, the image of her covered in blood flashing behind my eyes again. It would be a long time before the memory didn’t make my heart freeze.
“I kissed Avery,” I admitted, annoyed that Griffen didn’t look surprised. His only response was a small curl to his lips and a slight shake of his head.
“What?” I demanded. “Do you have cameras in here or something? How did you know?”
“I didn’t know,” Griffen said with a shrug, “but I had a feeling.”
“Well, I didn’t,” I said, shoving my hands in my pockets. “Until I did. And now...” Griffen just raised an eyebrow. “If you have a problem with it, you might as well say something.”
“Would you back off if I did?” Griffen asked, his voice tight, but run through with a thread of amusement. Since he was my oldest friend, and this was his sister we were talking about, I figured I was better off being honest.
“No, I’m not backing off unless she wants me to.”
“I didn’t think so,” Griffen said. “Did you think I’d have a problem with it?”
I rolled my shoulders back, annoyed that he wasn’t giving me a straight answer.
“I don’t know, man. She’s your little sister.
I don’t have a sister. I’d think you’d want to beat up anyone who kissed her, even your best friend.
Maybe if we were still teenagers—but if we were still teenagers, she’d be in grade school and that would be fucked up.
” For a second, I felt like I was in grade school again.
”You know, I never thought about her like that. Not back then.”
Griffen snorted a laugh. “Yeah, I know. I would have killed you. And you’re not a creepy weirdo, so obviously. But now she’s an adult. She can handle herself. If she doesn’t want you kissing her, I’m pretty sure she’ll let you know.”
My cheeks felt hot for a second. I was not going to talk about Avery’s response to my kiss with her brother, best friend or not.
“West, you’re my best friend for a lot of reasons, one of them being that you’re not an asshole. You’re a good man. You’re not going to be a dick to my sister, yeah?”
“Of course not.”
“Then, I’m not going to get in your way. She could do a fuck ton worse than you, and not much better.”
“Thanks, man.” A knot in my chest I hadn’t fully realized was there loosened.
I didn’t know where this thing with Avery was going.
I’d barely gotten past the fact that I’d kissed her, and she’d kissed me back.
But at least I didn’t have to worry about hiding it from Griffen.
Or him being pissed I’d dared to touch his sister.
“I want her to stop investigating the necklace,” I said, changing the subject to take advantage of our temporary privacy.
Griffen sighed. “Do you think she was the target?”
I shook my head. “We don’t have enough evidence either way.
It’s clear that one of them was. That wasn’t random.
They waited until those two were away from the crowd.
I think it’s even odds it could have been her.
” I paused, gathering the thoughts I’d been keeping at bay.
“She’s not exactly keeping a low profile in this whole fucking mess.
If she is the target, it means her lead on the necklace isn’t a dead end. ”
“And if she’s not the target, the lead could still go somewhere,” Griffen said. “Somebody needs to find that jeweler.”
He was right, and this attack could mean that the jeweler was exactly the person we needed to find to solve the biggest fucking question of all: who had killed Prentice?
It burned that while Ford’s name had been cleared, until we knew who’d killed Prentice, people would think he was the killer—only free on a technicality. As much as I wasn’t Ford Sawyer’s biggest fan, I didn’t want him to live with that for the rest of his life.
“So, what are you saying?” I asked, knowing Griffen was getting at something.
“I’m saying,” he said, “that I don’t think she should stop. She’s getting somewhere, she and Sterling. And Sterling has access to sources you can’t use.”
I shifted, pulling my hands from my pockets to cross my arms over my chest. For one, this could be dangerous for both Avery and Sterling if the attacker had anything to do with the jeweler.
Second, there were things I wouldn’t do, even for my closest friend.
And that included using information obtained illegally.
“I’m not going to break the law to solve this, Griffen. ”
“I’m not asking you to, but you can keep an eye on one of your citizens, can’t you?”
I stared him down. “Let me get this straight. Not only are you not mad, you want me to spend more time with Avery, helping her investigate your father’s murder—an act which may have almost gotten her killed?”
Griffen shrugged, his eyes glinting with what I knew from long experience meant trouble. “Do you think you can stop her or Sterling at this point?”
“No,” I answered immediately. “They’ll just lie and go around us. They’re too invested.”
“Exactly. So, rather than waste our time trying to stop them, take advantage of what they can do that you can’t. Stay close. Maybe we’ll finally figure this thing out.”
“Fine,” I agreed. “Let’s go talk to Ford.”
“Works for me,” Griffen agreed, following me out of Avery’s room and into Ford’s, where Ford corroborated everything that Avery had said, adding little of any use.
Avery returned, wheeled in by the same nurse who confirmed her diagnosis of a mild concussion. She’d have to stay until the next day while Ford was going home with Griffen and Hawk. Griffen looked at me, eyebrow raised. I nodded.
“I’m staying,” I confirmed. “I’ll bring her home later, when they spring her. Probably mid-morning.”
“West, you can’t sit in the chair beside my bed all night,” Avery protested.
“I’m not leaving until you do,” I said, too exhausted to argue.
Griffen nodded again and left, taking Hawk and Ford with him. I sat in the quiet room, holding Avery’s hand until I thought she was asleep. Just when I was sure she’d drifted off, I heard her voice in the dark.
“Did you kiss me, or did I make that up?”
I pressed my lips to the back of her hand. “I kissed you,” I said. “And I’m going to do it again.”
“Right now?” she asked, her voice caught between interest and alarm.
I thought about the beeping of the heart rate monitor and shook my head. “Not now. I don’t want the whole nursing staff running in.” A quiet giggle took the weight off my heart. “But soon.”
“Okay.” Avery’s fingers squeezed mine. She whispered, “Soon,” as her eyes slid shut, and I started to calculate exactly how soon “soon” would be.