Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 93002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 465(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 465(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
I took after my father, arrogance my failing. I was too proud to admit it was killing me, having Forrest this close. I could have changed my mind and asked my brothers to fire him. They would have done it gladly. I could have asked West, our police chief, to run Forrest out of town. West was notoriously by the book, but he might have done it for me if I’d asked.
But I wouldn’t ask, couldn’t ask. Everyone I loved had seen me at my worst; the whole goddamn town had seen me at my worst. Over and over. Now, I was clawing my way to my best, and I wasn’t going to let a single person see my broken, bleeding heart. Especially not Forrest Powell.
I waited for him to come back with the statue, my heart speeding up in my chest. I needed to see it. I needed to know.
I hadn’t thought about the statue at first. The shock of Forrest’s lies had clouded everything. It had been hard enough just getting out of bed in the morning. I didn’t have any room for wondering about the statue that had brought Forrest to me in the first place.
Later, after the worst of it became bearable, the statue began to invade my dreams. A rock crystal bust of Emperor Vitellius on a white marble base embellished with bronze medallions, the whole thing was only six inches tall. As a piece of art, it wasn’t particularly valuable. More than that, the bust of Emperor Vitellius was straight-up ugly. The rock crystal carving was mostly transparent, giving him a ghostly look that wasn’t enough to hide the petulant, whiny expression on his face.
As a child, Vitellius had reminded me of my father, Prentice. So much so that after my father had stolen the bust, I’d imagined he took it because the Vitellius reminded him of himself. Forrest’s father had a kind smile, unlike Prentice. Back then, I hadn’t known that my father hadn’t just stolen the statue from Forrest’s father, he’d taken his company as well. And Alan, distraught at the loss of everything he’d worked for, had taken his own life.
As a child, I’d only known that the Vitellius fascinated me. It was ugly. Graceless. But something about it had tugged at my mind. The Vitellius statue had secrets. I’d hide behind the thick velvet drapes in my father’s office to poke and prod at the statue, asking it in whispers to tell me its secrets. It hadn’t.
Until one day, when the Vitellius had whispered back.
I didn’t tell anyone what I’d learned—I knew what a secret was. And then the statue had disappeared. And, in the way of children, I’d forgotten about it. Until it had turned up a year ago, the linchpin of my failed romance.
Forrest had come to Sawyers Bend to find the statue and steal it back. He’d come to get revenge on the Sawyers for ruining his father’s life. In the end, he hadn’t done either. It hadn’t taken Forrest long to figure out that my siblings and I were nothing like our father. And Forrest had ended up buying the little statue at auction, erasing the need to steal it back from my father. The Vitellius was his again.
I’d been the fallout.
Now, Forrest returned, setting the statue of Vitellius on the table in front of me, followed by a spiral-bound notebook open to a blank page. He placed a pen and a small magnifying glass beside it. “Are you going to tell me what you’re doing here?” he asked.
I ignored him, picking up the Vitellius and turning it over so I could get a better look at the bottom of the marble base. I still couldn’t see it, though Forrest had told us it was there. Picking up the small magnifying glass and turning on my phone’s flashlight, I leaned in, squinting, willing my eyes to focus.
There they were: numbers and letters in a long string, engraved by laser. Neat, precise, and so tiny I’d never seen them before. The few people who knew about the string of numbers and letters thought it was an account number, but no one had been able to find the source of the account. According to Forrest, it was supposed to be stuffed full of cash. The promise of all that cash was the reason my father had stolen the Vitellius in the first place. And that cash was the reason I’d knocked on Forrest’s door after all this time.
It was Forrest’s money, but he couldn’t find it without me. It wasn’t an account number engraved on the bottom of the statue. It was a code. And I was the only one who knew how to break it.
Or at least I hoped that was the case. I could be completely off base. It wasn’t like I was an expert, more like a closet math geek who had always loved the lore of secret codes. In high school, they’d fascinated me. By the time I was old enough to do something useful with that fascination, I’d been neck deep in rebellion, wasting my time drinking and chasing boys, my budding intellectual curiosity extinguished.