Chapter 32
The next three weeks were probably the best of my life. Quinn and I settled in as if we”d always been two halves of a pair. It was so seamless it might have been scary, but I”d faced far scarier things than the woman I loved fitting me like a puzzle piece. I was done running from Quinn. I was done running from my feelings. I was just flat-out done with running.
For so long, I’d only been surviving, putting one foot in front of the other, focused on my work without any plan for a life outside of that. Now there was Quinn and Leo and a dog to come. I had my own little family. A home. For the first time in years, I woke up in the morning exactly where I wanted to be.
It would have been perfect, except for that fucking stranger out there who was after Quinn. I’d waited my entire life for Quinn Sawyer. I wasn’t going to let anyone hurt her. She’d been hurt enough as it was. I couldn’t stop thinking of that man from her childhood, the way he’d essentially stalked her in her own home, and with her father’s permission. Now, all these years later, it was happening again. Someone out there was after her, and he’d come for her in the two places she felt safe: the woods and her business. I wanted to say we were close to catching him, but it would be a lie. We had nothing solid, although it wasn’t for lack of trying.
Lucas Jackson had showed up from Atlanta two days after his system had been hacked, with four extra people to supplement our team. He went through the system, cursing most of the time, and left after assuring us he”d added some safeguards and that no one was fucking getting in. He’d also commented that when we found the guy who got through his code, we should send him Lucas’s way. He had some questions. I figured that once he’d grilled the guy, Lucas would try to put him to work. Since he’d been with Sinclair Security, Lucas had been collecting hackers for his team. He wasn’t getting this one. The second I knew who we were after, I was taking them straight to West and jail.
Since Lucas’s visit, we’d been in stasis, waiting for something to break. Someone had tried to get back into the guide business, but the added security we’d put in scared them off. All we got was video of someone in dark pants, a dark hoodie, and a balaclava. Not much to go on. Based on size and weight, we were fairly confident the perpetrator was male. He was a match for the man Quinn had described in the woods, but that was all we knew.
Two days after Quinn’s business was hit, Harvey”s house was broken into and searched. Fortunately, he’d turned the necklace over to West and it was securely locked in the property room, in an area only West had access to. A week after Harvey’s house was hit, someone broke into his office again, this time not as quietly or carefully as the first search.
After the second break-in at Harvey’s office, I brought my team over with some extra equipment, and we added Harvey”s office to our surveillance along with Quinn’s guide business. Since then, things had been quiet. I wasn’t fooled. None of this was over, and as the peace and quiet stretched out, the itch under my skin got worse. I was missing something. I had to be.
I wasn’t the only one who was getting increasingly restless. Quinn”s ankle was almost healed. She and Sterling had rebooked a few of her canceled trips, those that wouldn’t be too much strain on her barely healed ankle. I hated the idea of her out there, living her normal life, when we didn’t know who was after her, or why. Everything pointed to the necklace, but…that didn’t feel like the answer.
The man from her past, the one she said Ford had taken care of—I couldn’t find any evidence that he was connected to Prentice’s murder, or the mystery woman Quinn thought the necklace had belonged to. No one currently at Heartstone Manor knew much about Prentice’s movements right before he’d died. But there was one person who knew everything I needed to know: Ford. He was the one who’d dealt with the man from Quinn’s past. He’d know if there was any way that man was back, or if he’d been involved with Prentice in the past few years.
I already knew without asking that Quinn wouldn’t want me to question Ford about any of this. The one time I’d suggested it, she’d pushed back hard. She was fiercely protective of her older brother. She didn’t want him to know she’d been in danger and didn’t want me bothering him. She’d said he was under enough stress as it was.
I didn’t give a shit about Ford Sawyer’s stress levels. I was worried about Quinn’s safety. If there was a connection between her attacker back then and the man who was after her now, I needed to know.
I didn”t want to poke at her, didn”t want to aggravate what I knew was a raw and tender wound, but I had to know. As I’d told her the day I prodded her into telling me the truth, I couldn’t keep her safe if I didn”t know.
Almost three weeks after her business was broken into, I tried again. We were lying on the couch in front of the fire, facing each other, Leo sprawled on Quinn’s stomach, purring as Quinn rubbed his ears.
“Quinn,” I prompted, “we’re running into too many dead ends with this guy. I need to look into everything, even when it seems unrelated.”
It was like she could see straight into my brain. She knew immediately what I was getting at. Her jaw lifted, her eyes narrowed, and she said, “Ford took care of it. He said the man wouldn’t be a problem, and he hasn’t been.”
“And you never asked for more detail than that?” I pushed.
She shook her head, our eye contact breaking, her eyes cutting away, focusing on Leo in her lap as she stroked and rubbed. “He told me not to ask,” she said. Then, her chin jutting up again, she looked back at me. “Leave Ford out of this. There isn’t anything he can do to help.”
“He can help by telling me what he knows,” I said as gently as I could. I thought I understood Quinn’s loyalty to her brother, but it was making my investigation complicated.
“Hawk, someone tried to kill him in there,” she said, her blue eyes bright with pain. “He needs to keep his attention on staying safe, not whatever’s going on with me. I don’t want him distracted.”
I nodded but didn’t say anything. I wasn’t going to lie to Quinn. Not outright. But I wasn’t going to let this go. I couldn’t, not when her safety was at stake. I penciled a new to-do item on my list for the next day: visit the state prison and ask Ford Sawyer a few questions.
The next morning, we woke early. Quinn and Sterling had plans to spend the day putting the final touches on their cleanup at the guide business in preparation for reopening the following week. I had Kane and two other guys on watch while they worked. I left her on the front porch with a kiss and told her I”d be back in a few hours.
I”d never met Ford Sawyer in person, and I wasn’t sure what to expect. Everyone said when they were younger, Ford and Griffen were like twins, different only in their hair color. I’d seen pictures around the Manor that backed this up, but the man sitting at the table across from me held only echoes of Griffen in his face. The sea-green eyes and sharp cheekbones were familiar, but that was it. For a second, I felt a pang of sympathy. He’d done some shitty things, but he didn’t deserve to be in prison for a murder I was almost positive he didn’t commit.
I understood why Ford had forbidden Quinn from coming to see him. I knew without asking that this man was not the brother she remembered. Ford’s hair was short and dark, his face too thin. Where Griffen radiated energy, Ford was faded, and almost frail, although no less a Sawyer. That said, despite his gaunt face, the shiny shackles on his wrists, and the orange prison jumpsuit, he gave the impression he was in charge of the room and not the prison guard in the corner.
Ford sat across from me at the table in the empty visitors” room, hands folded, expression reserved.
“Hawk Bristol,” he said with a slow nod, as if he’d called this meeting and not me. “My brother”s head of security.” He raised an eyebrow. “Everything all right at the Manor?”
“Everyone”s in one piece,” I said, matching his tone. “But Quinn was attacked three weeks ago.”
Ford nodded. “I heard about that. I was informed that you”re on the case and that she couldn’t be in safer hands.”
“Who?” I asked. “Griffen?”
Ford shook his head. “Haywood. My lawyer.”
That made sense. In the fall, the DA who’d pushed Ford into his guilty plea had left the job, replaced by a new DA who Haywood thought might be open to new evidence, if they could find any. Since then, I knew Haywood had been going over every detail of the case, hoping to shake something loose.
“He making any headway?” I asked.
Ford’s head angled to the side, and he studied me in a way that suddenly reminded me of Griffen, sharp and assessing. Finally, he said, “His investigator found the camera.”
My eyebrows shot up in surprise. “The missing doorbell camera from across the street?”
Ford nodded in confirmation. “The judge is reviewing the footage,” he said, his tone so neutral he might have been talking about someone else’s case and not the chance that he could be out of prison in a matter of days. I wondered immediately if he’d told anyone else. I wouldn’t have, in his position. I’d wait until it was a sure thing.
“Does Griffen know?” I asked.
Ford shrugged a shoulder. “Not unless Haywood told him. Nothing is solid yet. Cole said the time stamp and the footage are what we were looking for, but one thing I’ve learned since this started is that there aren’t any guarantees. Even if that camera proves I was at the inn when Prentice was shot, it doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll be out of here any time soon. Or that I won’t get killed before the judge makes his decision.”
I nodded, knowing Ford was right. Even if the camera had the footage they needed, there was no guarantee the judge would accept it as new evidence, or that whoever was pulling the strings to make sure Ford took the fall for Prentice’s murder would allow this new evidence to stand. “Where did the investigator find it?”
“A pawn shop by the airport.”
“Had it been there the whole time?” I asked.
Ford shook his head. “It showed up a few months ago.”
Prentice had been dead for over a year. The camera had been stolen the day of his murder. So where had it been between the day it was stolen and when it turned up at the pawn shop? And why was the memory card with the footage still inside?
“You’d think whoever stole the camera in the first place would have deleted the footage that gives you an alibi,” I said and saw that Ford was already there.
“You’d think,” he agreed, dryly. “And the judge isn’t a fool. He’s taking his time deciding if this new evidence is as clean as it looks.”
I understood why Ford wasn’t jumping for joy at this new development, and why he hadn’t said anything to Griffen or the rest of his family. Getting his plea overturned was still a long shot, even with camera footage showing he was home at the time of the murder.
According to my own investigations, back then Ford had been living in a suite at the inn. While there were cameras all over the property, Ford’s suite had been built for his grandfather and had a private entrance that wasn’t covered by the inn’s security. Great for his privacy once he started living there. Not so great for proving his innocence in his father”s murder.
But there was a small bungalow opposite the private parking area Ford used, and that bungalow had a video doorbell. The doorbell had happened to catch Ford”s car, as well as the side door he used to enter and exit the inn. It would have been perfect to support Ford’s alibi, except it had been stolen the day Prentice was murdered. Tough luck for Ford.
I sat back, crossing my arms over my chest, thinking. “What did Haywood say was on the camera?”
Ford leaned in, bracing his forearms on the metal table. “Me coming back to the inn that morning, driving too fast into the parking lot. The time stamp was two hours earlier than the witness who saw me speeding away from the Manor, but it lines up with the statement I gave when I was arrested. The doorbell camera also caught a delivery truck that shows up on the inn’s cameras, corroborating the doorbell’s time stamp and proving that the witness’s estimated time was off. Then it shows me going into the inn and not leaving again for the rest of the day.”
I turned that information over in my head. It was the perfect alibi, stolen on the day of the murder, and now it conveniently turned up in a pawn shop a few weeks after someone tried to assassinate Ford in prison. I didn’t trust convenience when it came to most things, but especially not murder. “I wonder if whoever tried to have you killed in here wants you let out so they have an easier target.”
A slight smile twisted Ford’s mouth as he sat back, propping his ankle on his knee, the chains rattling as he moved. “The thought had occurred to me. This place isn’t the Ritz, but the guards are decent. It’s not as easy as you’d think to get away with shit. If someone wants me out of the picture, I’d be a much easier target out there than I am in here.”
I nodded in agreement. Ford wasn’t a part of his father’s will or its conditions. Prentice had cut him off completely. If he got out, he could go anywhere and do anything he wanted. He’d have his freedom but at a cost. Unlike Griffen, Ford didn’t have the skills to watch his back. Once he was out, he’d be a sitting duck. Unless he came home. Assuming Griffen would let him.