Chapter 31 #2
So, this was all about business? I couldn’t get my head around that.
Killing because his wife had betrayed him—not really okay, but I understood.
Ruining people’s lives to make more money.
Didn’t they already have enough? I was a businesswoman.
I understood the need to make a profit, to keep the doors open.
I got wanting to have nice things, but I wasn’t going to kill anybody for them .
I wouldn’t kidnap and murder anyone either. Obviously, Cole Haywood was working with a completely different value system—one that included dumping people down wells to solve problems. I twisted my wrists against the binding, but whatever he’d tied me with held as if it were iron shackles.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
We turned off the gravel road onto a narrower path that wasn’t much more than a wide hiking trail.
The car bounced and dipped over the rough terrain, and we drove deeper and deeper into the woods.
No one was going to find me back here. Even if there was some way they could track me, we were deep enough in the mountains that there might not be any way to pick up a signal.
Cell phones worked better close to town. We were nowhere, just as Cole had said.
The silence was creeping me out. I was almost jolted off the seat as Cole drove over a log.
His sedan wouldn’t be much good to him after this.
He didn’t seem to care, which was almost as unnerving as the silence.
After another hard bounce, I braced my legs to stay in place and tried to figure out what to do with the little time I had left.
I had to keep Cole talking. If I was going to die for Cole Haywood’s fucked up revenge fantasy, I needed to know why.
And I couldn’t take another second of the quiet.
Once he shoved me in that well, I’d have all the quiet I could stand.
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to fight the hopelessness.
I couldn’t give in to fear. I still had more questions.
“Why did you wait so long to kill Prentice?” I asked as conversationally as I could manage. Caro had died a few years before Prentice was murdered. Why not kill him then? “And why try to kill Griffen?”
Ignoring my question about Prentice, he said, “Griffen was exiled for betraying his father. Why should he get to slide back in and take the reins just because Prentice was gone? He would undo everything we’d worked for and poke his nose into things that were none of his business.
It seemed easier to get rid of him.” He let out a sigh.
“I underestimated how good his training had been. I did my best. Well, maybe not my best, but I gave it a good effort. He refused to go down easily. So, I moved on.”
“To Royal?” I pressed. “And the Inn? And Vanessa?”
“Vanessa also had a smart mouth. And sharp eyes. She figured it out before any of you even got close. Tried to blackmail me.” He let out a gust of laughter.
“What a fucking moron. She could be so smart and so stupid. She thought those tits and long legs would cloud my mind. But I was married to Caro. When you’ve had the most beautiful woman in the world, a cheap imitation like Vanessa is nothing. ” He paused, considering.
“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.
I could barely see a trail through the trees. I followed it, putting one foot in front of the other, eyes scanning the terrain. I was not going to peacefully walk to my death. I’d rather he shot me. But I needed to wait for the right moment.
Moments slipped away, the invisible clock in my head ticking, ticking, ticking as my feet ate up the distance between me and the well up ahead.
We followed the trail, twisting around a cluster of old-growth trees, and to my right, the ground fell away from the trail into a steep ravine. I saw my opening.
It would be dangerous, but I’d take the woods and the steep incline over the psychopath with the gun any day.
Wishing my hands were free so I could protect my head, I took a last step forward on the trail and threw myself to the side, expecting to go over the edge, bracing for the bone-jarring impact.
Instead, a hand closed over the back of my shirt, yanking me back onto the trail.
“Don’t try that again, or I’ll shoot you in the kneecap and drag you.”
I didn’t like the sound of that any more than I liked the idea of dying at the bottom of a well. What now? I didn’t know. I put one foot in front of the other, the muzzle of Cole’s gun jammed in my back, trying to figure out a way out of this.
I ran out of time. A few more minutes of walking on the narrow deer path, and it opened into a square clearing, smaller than the one where we’d left the car. On one side, a line of stone extended, meeting another in a crumbling corner. Once upon a time, there had been a house here. Which meant…
“Over there.” Cole shoved me with the gun, aiming me at the far corner of the clearing, where trees had begun to encroach on what had been the small side yard of the house.
I heard the hollow thunk of my foot on wood before I saw the well.
Fuck. I really was out of time. I scanned the woods behind Cole, hoping for some sign of rescue.
There was only the sun on the pine needles and bare branches, the ground speckled red and yellow with fallen leaves.
His hand closed over my wrists. With a sharp jerk, they were free.
I caught the flash of the knife blade in the sun as I turned.
“Take off the cover,” Cole ordered, sliding the knife back in it’ s sheath and giving me a shove in the back. He raised the gun and aimed it at me.
I shook my head. I knew what happened after I took off the cover. A gunshot, if I were lucky. And if not, those elegant, long-fingered hands wrapped around my neck. No, thank you.
“Take off the cover, Avery, or I’ll shoot you,” he said, his tone chilly with annoyance. He had the upper hand here. I was wasting his time. But it was all the time I had left. I was going to waste as many seconds as I could.
“I’m not—” I began.
A shot rang out, so much louder than I would have thought, slamming into my ears just as fire burned across my upper arm. My opposite hand flew up, fingers coming away red.
“You shot me!” I shouted, too surprised to think about the wisdom of yelling at the man with the gun.
“I told you I would,” he said, the chill now holding faint amusement. “Now take off the cover or I’ll shoot you in the kneecap. That hurts a lot more. And I’ll still make you take the cover off that well.”
I was too much of a coward to push him a second time.
Shooting my arm was bad enough. The burn of it made me a little dizzy.
I did not want to know what a bullet in the knee would feel like.
Slowly, I dropped to my knees and reached for the edge of the well cover, my injured arm protesting in deep spikes of agony.
It was awkward, working my fingers under the edge, the weight of the cover pinching the tips as I heaved it up, almost overbalancing and tipping forward into the depths.
I managed to get it mostly off when I rose to my feet again, glaring at Cole Haywood over the dark circle in the earth between us.
“What now?” I asked, looking from the hole in the ground to Cole.
He flicked the safety on his gun and shoved it in his back pocket, taking a step to the side, closer to me. “Now, we finish this.”
He raised his hands and moved.
I couldn’t think. If I thought about what I was going to do, I’d lose my nerve. But if this was it, if I was going to die, it wasn’t going to be at those hands.
I looked from Cole to the depths of the well, took a step forward, and dropped into the dark.