Give in to Me (Heart of Stone #3)(16)
Author: K.M. Scott

I slid out of bed and made my way to the living room, lured by Joseph Edwards’ notebook like sailors to the sirens’ calling. Tonight was one of those nights I couldn’t fight the need to read those words once again, filling myself with a loathing for my family and by extension, myself.

My eyes glided over the pages, taking in the words I knew as well as my name. The details never changed, as much as I wished they would. Was it madness to hope that just once that tablet wouldn’t contain the horrible truth of who I came from?

I told myself that I continued to read through every page to find that one detail I’d missed so I’d finally know what Karl was looking for, but that wasn’t the entire truth. I read these notes written by a man my father had murdered because I couldn’t help myself. It was like some kind of penance I felt I needed to pay. Somehow, if I read them just one more time, I’d be able to reconcile who I was with who my father and brother were.

So far, it hadn’t turned out that way.

As always, I reached the end of Joseph Edwards’ notes on my father and brother’s crimes and felt revulsion at every word. My usual next move was to skim over what remained of the notebook and throw it off to the side, discarding it as if it was the reason my life had gone to fucking hell. My first instinct was to do exactly that tonight, but I stopped myself and forced my eyes to focus on the remaining pages in his tablet.

It’s not that I hadn’t read them before. Separated from the notes about Amanda and Albert Cashen and my family by just one page, there was information about some drug I suspected Edwards had researched concerning another suicide—some drug for heart disease I’d never heard of. It appeared, from what he’d found, that it had received FDA approval but had become a killer drug for those that needed it most. His notes on this only took up a page and ended with the letters TR and a question mark.

I had no idea what that could mean, but as far as I knew, it had nothing to do with the ugliness between the Stone and Cashen families. The next page read like some kind of foreign crossword puzzle, full of clues I couldn’t decipher. Edwards had written a series of words repeatedly, the order never changing.

-Cordovex—death?—TR—October

Again, TR. Who or what was TR? Had they committed suicide? Had my family been implicated in their death? TS would make sense because it could refer to Taylor, but TR just sat there on the page meaning nothing to me. Was TR supposed to indicate a name? Someone’s initials? Thursday? I had no idea.

A knock on the front door yanked me out of my thoughts, and I cautiously walked over to look through the peep hole to see Daryl standing on the other side. I opened the door, and he pushed past me before I had a chance to welcome him into my temporary home.

“Shit’s getting interesting, to say the least, my friend,” he said ominously as he plopped down into the chair across from my seat on the couch. “Karl obviously knew about the LA house since it’s been turned over three times already.”

I sat back down and considered what Daryl had just said. “Not a coincidence since that house hasn’t been touched since my father died. What the fuck is he looking for?”

Daryl shook his head, all the while stroking his beard that seemed to grow bushier every time I saw him. “I don’t know. I can’t decide if he’s looking for you or that tablet you have there.”

“There’s nothing in it. I’ve looked. Other than the ugly details about my family and the Cashen family, all Edwards seemed to be interested in was some prescription drug for heart disease. Seems it was anything but helpful for some people.”

“The girl Taylor was doing died. Any chance she didn’t hang herself but instead took the drug?”

I shrugged and shook my head. “No. It wouldn’t matter anyway, would it? The problem my father would want to cover up was that she killed herself because of Taylor, not the way she did it.”

Daryl silently agreed. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “We’re missing something here. I say we have to look at the obvious first. Your places are being ransacked for something, but what? Karl’s looking for evidence, and he wants that tablet enough to make the copies he got from Nina’s sister not good enough.”

Leaning forward, I rested my elbows on my thighs. “You’re missing the big question. We have no idea if Karl knows what’s in this notebook. Maybe he just thinks what Kim gave him wasn’t the entire book.”

Daryl stared at me with a look of confusion. “But why would he think that?”

“I don’t know. I can tell you that he doesn’t have everything. I don’t know why, but Kim didn’t have copies of the pages about the drug investigation her father was pursuing. When Karl showed me what he had, there was nothing about Cordovex or anything like it. He only has the pages about Amanda’s and her father’s deaths.”

Daryl leaned forward toward me, his eyes wide. “Then that’s it. Karl worries there’s more, and he knows what it’s about. What do we know about this Cordovex?”

“Nothing. I’ve never heard of it. All Edwards says over and over is that he associates it with death.”

“Let me see that notebook,” he said, reaching out his hand. “I want to see what he’s talking about with this Cordovex.”

I handed him Joseph Edwards’ notebook opened to the page where he had detailed the information he’d uncovered. Daryl’s brows knitted as he read it over before he flipped to the last page of the tablet. Running his finger down over the metal coils holding the pages together, he made that clucking nose with his tongue he often did when he was thinking.

Looking up at me, he held the notebook up in front of him. “There’s a page missing here. Did you tear any out?”

“No. That’s how I found it in Edwards’ safe deposit box.”

“What about Nina’s sister? Any chance she took out a page?”

I shook my head. “No. I saw the copies she had and none were about anything but Taylor and my father.”

“Damnit! Why did she give those goddamn copies to Karl in the first place?”

“Because I told her to.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t want her or her family to get hurt. I knew if Karl found out Joseph Edwards had kept any notes from his investigation of Stone Worldwide, he’d go after her and Nina. I could protect Nina, but not Kim. So I told her to give him everything he asked for. Then I got her and her family to safety as soon as Karl left. If I didn’t, they’d probably be dead right now.”