Sweet Heart (The Hearts of Sawyers Bend #2) - Ivy Layne Page 0,29
much of a difference between him and the Sawyer family in general. Do you think—” I stopped, not sure I wanted to put my thoughts into words.
“What?” Griffen prompted.
“Any chance Vanessa has anything to do with it?”
Griffen let out a long sigh and stacked his now-empty plates, pushing the tray to the corner of his desk. “I don't want to think she does. She's not my favorite person, but hiring someone to kill me seems a little extreme. Still, I don't think I can exclude her. Same for Ophelia and Bryce. I don’t see them committing murder, but the issues going on at The Inn? That's just the kind of petty bullshit I could see Bryce thinking up. Or maybe I just still hate him from when we were teenagers.”
“He hasn't gotten much better, from what I can see.”
“The investigator at Sinclair Security keeps hitting dead ends, too,” Griffen said, shoving his hair off his forehead in frustration.
“They put their best guy on it, and he couldn't find anything that didn't point straight to Ford as Dad’s killer. And he dug deep. Then I had them put their best forensic accountant on tracing the missing artwork. She's been more successful. She's found some sales, some records of where the money went. But she hasn’t uncovered the whole picture. Whatever Dad was up to, it wasn't straightforward.”
“Nothing with Dad ever was,” I said.
“True. He was always up to something.” Griffen picked up Hope’s list. “Okay, some of this is going to be a little harder without Hope, but let's dig into some ongoing business. Cole Haywood will be here at four. We should try to make some headway before then.”
That name rang in my ears as I pulled out my own laptop and moved to the chair Hope had occupied beside Griffen.
Cole Haywood was our brother Ford's defense attorney. He'd been pushing for Ford to plead guilty to our father’s murder and take the deal the prosecutor was offering. Cole didn't care that Ford was innocent, that if he took that deal he'd spend years in prison for a crime he hadn't committed.
All Cole cared about was winning.
No, that wasn't fair. Cole had reminded us repeatedly that pleading innocent and being found guilty could mean the death penalty. It was possible the Sawyer name would protect Ford from a murder conviction. It was just as possible it would make him more of a target. According to Cole, the prosecutor was a pit bull and a crusader.
She was the last person who'd be swayed by wealth and power. Griffen had pushed Cole to put her off, to give us more time to find some evidence to exonerate Ford. And we'd looked. Sinclair Security's investigator had looked. Griffen had looked. West had looked. Cole had been searching for evidence since the beginning. No one had found a thing.
If Cole was coming here, I could only assume we were out of time.
The afternoon passed far too quickly. Before I knew it, Griffen's phone rang with an alert from the front gate. Cole Haywood was here. I didn't know him well. Prentice had worked with him some, I think.
They'd known each other through business, though I wasn't quite sure how. Cole was a criminal defense attorney. As far as I knew Prentice had never been prosecuted for anything, but I wouldn't have put it past him to hide something like that from the rest of us.
Cole paused in the doorway, taking in Griffen and me sitting side by side, the papers and laptops spread across the desk. “I won’t take much of your time,” he said, his voice heavy. Tired.
I’d first met Cole years before when he’d been newly married. His wife had been gorgeous, not a surprise since he was a good-looking guy. Kind of like Bryce, Cole was almost too good-looking with his designer suit and chiseled jaw. At least, he had been back then. I hadn’t seen Cole smile since his wife had died in childbirth, taking their son with her.
His face had taken on hard lines, grief wearing grooves in the sides of his mouth and his forehead. He was leaner these days, the polish of social charm worn away by pain, leaving him with a dangerous edge.
He didn’t bother to sit, though he did close the office door behind him. The words I’d dreaded filled the room. “We’re out of time. The prosecutor is done delaying. Either Ford cuts a deal, or we go to trial.”