"Midnight Sins" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leigh Lora)

CHAPTER 9

Cami’s chest was tight, her throat felt raw and scratchy. Her eyes ached, and it was all she could do to breathe without whimpering. The pain seemed to go all the way to the depths of her soul, and refused to return to that dark corner she had managed to push it to years ago.

What was wrong with her?

She stared straight ahead, determined to ignore Archer and the questions she could feel silently directed to her.

She hadn’t been aware anyone had paid attention to the few dates she and Archer had had, or why anyone would have cared. Especially, why had Rafer cared enough to have dug up that information?

Focusing her attention on her surroundings rather than the emotions tempting her to come closer and peer in, Cami stared at the dash and center console of the sheriff’s vehicle.

The backseat was enclosed from the front and the back cargo area with black steel bars and bullet-resistant glass — a laptop, radio, rearview and navigation screen, cell-phone holder, wireless radio, and several other electronic gadgets she wasn’t certain the purpose for. She was in the middle of electronics paradise and she really didn’t give a damn. All she wanted to do was demand he turn around and take her back to Rafe.

And that was the most foolish thing she could do. She had been there too long already and had done nothing but add another scar to her heart.

Staring through the window beside her head, she watched as they turned from Rafer’s driveway and passed her little aging sedan as it sat with its front tires buried in the snow that filled the ditch.

She couldn’t believe she had actually found the strength to walk away from Rafer, because everything inside her had been demanding she stay. Just as she couldn’t believe she had actually managed to walk past her uncle without throwing herself in his arms and sobbing as she had done as a child.

He had been defending her all her life, she thought, and she wondered if sometimes he didn’t grow tired of the constant battles he and her father had gotten into since she was a child.

She didn’t want him to have to defend her against her father’s friends as well, such as Archer had been forced to do here.

She couldn’t believe what she had heard from him. She had always thought he was so soft-spoken and kind. To learn he wasn’t affected her far more deeply than she liked.

This was the same uncle who had defended her when her father wished she were dead rather than Jaymi, at Jaymi’s funeral. The uncle Cami had always thought she could depend upon to care for her, no matter what choices she might make in life.

“You okay, Cami?” Archer asked, his voice gentle as she continued to stare into the snow-buried landscape they passed.

The gentleness in his voice had her throat tightening further, had emotions threatening to swamp her. He’d been one of Jaymi and Tye’s best friends as well, and over the years had become one of hers.

“You know,” he said when she didn’t answer, “if there’s something I need to know about, then now might be the best time to tell me, sweetheart.”

She knew what he was asking, and the fact that he felt the need had the emotion tightening her throat instantly easing as frustration tightened her jaw instead. “He didn’t rape me, nor did he attempt to murder me, if that’s what you’re asking,” she informed Archer, as she turned and directed the full measure of anger churning in her on him instead.

“Well now, I didn’t think he had been, but it’s my job to ask.”

“I was unaware that investigating stupid questions and obviously slanderous accusations was part of your job description.”

“Normally it’s not,” he assured her. “But sometimes with some people it’s better to deal with it and get it over with before moving on.”

The Callahan cousins were accused often of all manner of crimes, he had once told her.

“At least they have one friend,” she sighed. “I was beginning to wonder.”

“I’m not the only one, Cami, but as you’ve probably learned by now, it doesn’t do any good to argue with those who aren’t their friends.”

Of course it didn’t. They were the fathers, the mothers, the aunts and uncles who had first followed the dictates the barons had first given where the cousins were concerned.

“Yeah, Jaymi learned that one,” she sighed. She remembered those days far too clearly sometimes.

“Your sister was a fine woman, but she was more a rebel than anyone wanted to admit after her death. But, even more, she lived her life as she felt best, as she wanted to. That’s really all you can do as well Cami. If Rafe is what you want, then that’s what you should have. Don’t let this town’s pettiness affect that. And you and Rafe have plenty of us friends willing to stand by you if the barons decide there are other ways to make their grandsons’ lives miserable.”

She could hear a mild chastisement in his voice and she didn’t understand where it had come from or what made him believe there was anything between her and Rafe that would warrant it.

“We’re not lovers, Archer.” She turned, glancing at his profile before staring through the windshield to avoid his gaze. As lies went, even she wasn’t certain of the lie in that one.

“I never said you were. But, if I were you, I’d remember it was no one’s business if you were. You’re an adult, not a child to be ordered about.”

Neither did she need anyone attempting to push her closer in Rafer’s direction. She was going to feel like a bone between a gang of dogs very soon.

She suddenly remembered her sister Jaymi making a similar comment the summer she had died, while she and Rafer had been living together, or rather, sleeping together.

“Do you ever see the ignorance in this war against them?” she said as she turned to him. “I’ve never understood why his family disowned him, or why everyone made the decisions to either follow suit, or secretly befriend them.”

Archer grimaced. “If you figure that one out, then why don’t you let me know about it?”

“Do you have any idea why?” she asked.

Archer breathed out harshly. “You know, Cami, I’ve known those boys all my life. My father knew all their parents and worked for their grandparents, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard why they disowned them. It might be interesting to know, though.”

She hoped he had better luck than she had in finding out because so far she didn’t have a clue. Even her sister hadn’t been able to explain to Cami or to herself, why it had happened.

She knew the Callahan brothers Rafe, Logan, and Crowe’s fathers had married three heiresses who had already been engaged to three men their fathers had chosen for them. Once those three women had met the Callahan brothers, their hearts had been lost forever, though.

Still, that wasn’t reason enough to try to frame their only children more than twenty years later for the vicious rapes, torture, and murders of the six young women who had died twelve years ago. Nor was it reason enough to hate three children, as those young men had been hated in their youth.

“Why do it?” she murmured, almost to herself.

“Do what?” Archer was obviously paying close attention to everything she was saying.

“Why hate the sons so viciously for whatever their fathers had done?”

And that was what her sister had suspected was behind the animosity directed toward the cousins. Whoever had targeted the cousins’ fathers had immediately turned their attention to the cousins once their parents had died.

“Did you know Jaymi and her boss were both threatened when she was seeing Rafe, just before she died?”

Cami turned to look at Archer, watching as he threw her a dark frown.

“No one mentioned that, even Rafe, and we’ve seen each other and discussed Jaymi’s death a time or two since the charges were dropped.”

“She was trying to keep Rafe from knowing about the harassment she was dealing with,” she told him. “But she began getting calls after he would leave at night, or the next morning. Threats, filthy accusations. The Gillespies pulled the babysitting job she had watching their granddaughter, and someone called Dad and warned him that she would be ‘punished’ if she didn’t sever the relationship.”

Archer’s gaze flicked back to her as he slowed down, obviously trying to make the drive longer as he grew more curious.

“Did she know who it was?”

Cami shook her head. “She never knew who was calling her. But she finally did break things off when her boss came to the apartment to talk to her the night before the last social she attended with me, Rafer, and his cousins. He was warned that if Jaymi didn’t stop seeing Rafe and he didn’t fire her, then they would burn down the pharmacy. He was so scared he was shaking.”

“The man that killed Jaymi was linked to the other women’s deaths as well,” Archer mused. “Only a few of them had a connection to Rafe and his cousins.”

“I’m not saying it wasn’t him,” she told Archer. “I don’t know anything more than that. Two weeks after the pharmacy owner came to the house, Jaymi was dead and her killer was dead.”

Archer was silent for long moments. “My dad was sheriff then,” he said. “I asked him about it. He said there were no ties between the cousins and the killer at all. Nothing tied the six women together, and he couldn’t remember seeing the Callahan cousins with any of the women that summer except Jaymi.”

“And everyone wanted so desperately to believe they had killed Jaymi,” Cami said softly. “Archer, didn’t your father ever question any of this?” Archer gave a tight shake of his head. “I argued with him over that at the time. Not that it helped.”

“None of it ties together, no matter how I try to find a way to understand it.” And she needed to understand it.

Archer grunted. “And that’s exactly how their lawyer managed to get the charges dropped,” he reminded her. “The fact that the DNA that came back proved that Thomas Jones was the man Crowe stabbed that night managed to clear them.”

“Yet they’re still treated worse than rapists and murderers who admit to their crimes,” she pointed out. “I thought it would get better for them, but in the past twelve years it seems to have only grown worse.”

“It’s easy to blame them,” Archer suggested. “Thomas Jones is dead, and they’re alive.”

Could it possibly be that simple?

It wasn’t enough to satisfy her though, just as she knew she had an ulterior motive. She wanted Rafe. She wanted back in his bed, she wanted to know why she couldn’t forget him, why she ached for him, and that wasn’t going to happen if she wanted to live and work in Sweetrock.

“Thanks for the ride home, Archer,” she said dropping the subject and hoping she had given him enough for him to investigate it as he drew closer to where she lived in her two-story little ranch.

“I’ll call Jack’s Towing before heading back up the mountain,” Archer told her. “He can bring your car in sometime today.”

She nodded slowly. “That’s fine; thank you again.”

She wasn’t going to need it today anyway.

Archer sighed as he turned the car down Main Street and drove closer to the dark, probably cold, and definitely lonely house she had bought from her parents.

It was all she could do to keep from begging him to take her back to Rafer’s. To beg Rafer to hold her just a little while longer. But the fear was like a padlock, locking the words and the ability to reach out to Rafer in such a way deep inside her.

“I don’t know what’s going on.” She rubbed her temple with her fingers, finally glancing at Archer again as she breathed out a hard sigh. “Why did he have to come back, Archer? Why did he have to change everything?”

“He’s not changing anything for you without your help,” Archer said gently. “And from what you just said about Jaymi, you be damned careful. It might be a good idea to be a little cautious for a while.” Archer knew about the nights they had spent together, though he didn’t know about the child she had lost.

A sardonic smile twisted her lips. Hadn’t that been the same advice she had given her sister twelve years before?

“I’ll be sure to do that,” Cami promised as she slid out of the sheriff’s vehicle and closed the door before heading to the house.

She turned and waved good-bye as she stepped into the silent house.

Yes. It was cold. Lonely.

Closing and locking the door behind her, she turned the thermostat up, hoping to alleviate the chill inside her as well as the one that filled her home. She hadn’t really been warm in years, until Rafer had held her again. Now the lack of that warmth was damned painful.

The cell phone rang out its strident ringtone to alert her she had a call. Caller ID was clearly blocked, and until now she didn’t think she’d ever received a blocked call.

“Hello,” she answered cautiously.

The voice, despite its gentle sadness, held a sinister, malicious edge.

“You better hope you spent your time with Rafer Callahan wisely. You should have chosen someone else to dirty yourself with if you needed a hard fuck,” the voice warned her somberly. “If it happens again, you could meet the same end as your sister. Wouldn’t that be a shame, Ms. Flannigan? Wouldn’t it hurt your family, your friends, to find your body broken and discarded for fucking that bastard?”

Who the hell would call and say something so cruel? She and Jaymi had been close, much closer than most sisters with such an age difference between them.

But she remembered the calls Jaymi had received while sleeping with Rafe, and she had once told Cami that the caller’s voice had sounded tearful and filled with regret.

“I’m always careful,” Cami told him quietly, confidently. “And I don’t do bullies. Or cowards.” She disconnected the call quickly, then ignored the next several as she moved back to the kitchen and laid the device on the table. She stood back by the counter and simply watched it as though it were a snake, coiled and hissing as “blocked number” showed on the caller ID again.

As a third-grade teacher for the only elementary school in the county, she ended up meeting most people, whether they were parents or not, more than once. She recognized that voice, even as carefully disguised as it had been.

Still, she would remember whose voice it was, and when she did, unlike her sister, Cami would raise hell and make damned sure he paid for attempting to terrorize her, let alone threatening her.

She knew Jaymi had finally realized who had been calling her. The week before she had died she had attended one of the county-sponsored street dances in the town square, and when she had returned to the apartment she had been more than upset. She had been furious. She hadn’t said she had known, but Cami had known her sister and she had known when the phone rang that night and the look on Jaymi’s face when the caller ID had come up “blocked.” Jaymi had taken the phone to the bedroom, but as she walked into the other room Cami could have sworn she heard Jaymi say, Now I know why you hate him so bad. But Jaymi had refused to tell Cami who it was or what was going on. The next week, Jaymi had been killed.

Cami drew in a hard, deep breath.

What was she going to do now? she wondered. The implications of the phone calls were frightening.

The phone rang again.

Eyes narrowed, she stalked back to the table, checked the number, and saw the “blocked” signal again. Pushing the call button, she brought it quickly to her ear. She would be damned if she was going to live in fear. “Fuck off, nutcase,” she snapped.

There was silence for a moment. Long enough for Cami to realize it wasn’t the unknown, threatening voice of moments before.

“I just wanted to make certain you got home okay,” Rafe’s voice came over the line carefully.

Cami’s teeth snapped together. “Here’s a piece of advice, Rafer Callahan. Unblock your number when you call; otherwise, I won’t be answering.”

She was not going to worry about missed calls and whether or not it was Rafe.

“You know, you’re the only person that calls me Rafer,” he growled, something in his tone warning her he was more angry than simply irritated. She didn’t think it was because she was calling him by his full given name.

“Learn to live with it,” she muttered as she began moving through the house, closing curtains and checking locks again.

The normal nightly ritual suddenly had a new, sinister meaning, and she didn’t like it. Because it didn’t matter she had already checked them once, she needed to check them again.

“Your cousin Martin took out close to a thousand feet of new fence on his way in and out,” Rafe informed her. “I’m suing.”

Yes, Eisner was her third cousin on her mother’s side and Crowe’s very, very distant cousin on his mother’s side.

“And you’re telling me why? I’m not his lawyer; that’s his cousin Doug Atchinson. Give him a call.” She had no sense of guilt because she rarely remembered Martin was related to her. Besides he should have known better.

“You’re being awful accommodating all of a sudden.” Suspicion laced Rafe’s voice, and she could almost see him staring back at her. She could almost see herself drowning in those bottomless sapphire-blue eyes.

“So are you,” she fired back. “How the hell am I supposed to pretend we haven’t been occasional fucks if you start calling to check up on me?”

She needed to get over the past few days, the heated passion and the feel of his flesh against hers. She needed to let her body readjust to not having him inside her. To not having him pumping hard and deep and stretching her pussy with that delicious pleasure-pain she could have so easily become addicted to. She might have already become addicted, because she was dying for him. She needed her fix.

“What happened?” Suspicion laced his voice. “Was someone at the house when you got there? Has someone called?”

She tensed. How had he known she was feeling spooked?

“If there were, and they had, then I know how to use my Smith and Wesson to deal with it,” she promised him as that craving for him began to pound through her blood veins. “And just to set you straight, Rafer, you happened. You’re like some kind of damned catalyst or something, because every time you invade my damned space you completely fuck my life up. Stay on your own side of the county and let me deal with mine.”

She disconnected the call. But she held the phone between her breasts, her eyes closed, her breathing rough, as she fought to hold back her tears and to contain her anger. She couldn’t let this happen to her again. She could not allow herself to sink into that well of physical and emotional hunger as she had the last time.

She wanted to stomp her feet on the floor like a child and rage against fate, life and the unfairness of aching for a man she couldn’t have. Because having him meant losing herself in him and she couldn’t allow that to happen again, if she wanted to live in her hometown.

Other women could have affairs with married men, cheat on their husbands, or have more than one lover at the same time. She, on the other hand, couldn’t even have the man she dreamed about the most. The one who kept her heart racing and her pussy so wet she was going to have to change panties. She couldn’t do it because she didn’t have the emotional distance to survive if anything happened to him.

A sigh fell from her lips as she closed her eyes briefly. Other women knew how to love and still retain their souls. She didn’t know how to do that, it seemed. As for her panties, she realized she didn’t have to worry about changing them because she had forgotten to put them back on after they had dried hanging over Rafer’s shower.

“You’re the only one who calls me Rafer.” The remembered sound of the husky quality of his voice had her heart rate increasing, had it pounding fiercely. The sexual implications in the deep rasp of his voice had a burning, soul-deep response tearing through her system.

Yes, she was the only one who called him Rafer.

Even Jaymi had been amused by the habit Cami had of calling him by his full name.

It was more intimate. No one else called him Rafer, just her. It was a part of him that was only hers, because he refused to allow anyone else to use the name. And Cami allowed no other man to touch her.

Her experience at being a lover was confined to the few nights she had spent with Rafe over the past six years. so infrequent had been the times they had come together. She had been a virgin that first night, and she might as well have been a virgin the night she knocked on his front door.

The phone rang again.

Lifting it from between her breasts, she couldn’t help but smile despite the trembling of her lips and the tears that filled her eyes.

Rafer Samuel Callahan. The caller ID displayed his name clearly.

With fingers that shook more than her lips did she added the contact to the cell phone’s address book the minute the ringing stopped. She was determined not to answer, not to hear his voice again, not to weaken and beg him to hold her again.

She was going to hear it enough in her dreams, and the torment of it would drive her insane for months.

Or longer.

He was living closer now, she thought. It wasn’t as though he were half a world away and inaccessible. He was here, in Corbin County. And he wanted her.

She could go to him. She could take what she wanted if she could just be strong enough to forget her own past mistakes. That was the problem. It wasn’t shame or fear of the county’s condemnation. It was her own condemnation she had to worry about. And she should have proven that beyond a shadow of a doubt before she left the ranch.

Her family would turn their backs on her once they learned of that kiss or at least her father would. But he had turned his back on her years before. Her mother was dying, and if she learned of it, then she wouldn’t exactly die hating her younger child. Her mother was able to process very little information now. Alzheimer’s and a stroke had all but erased the loving, gentle mother Margaret Flannigan had tried to be whenever her husband wasn’t around. She was the only person whose opinion Cami really cared about anyway, and her mother barely even recognized her anymore.

If Cami could only figure out why everyone hated Rafer and his cousins. She could show her father the injustice of what they had suffered — no, that wouldn’t happen. There was no compassion left in her father after Jaymi’s death.

Cami gave her head a hard shake. No, he wouldn’t care because it would only be an excuse. What she hadn’t considered while allowing Martin Eisner to see her kissing Rafer was the fact he would tell Mark Flannigan as soon as possible. When he did, Mark would use the excuse to ensure he never allowed Cami to see her mother again.

* * *

“Something’s wrong,” Rafe said quietly as he, Logan, and Crowe sat in the black SUV he had driven into town to check up on Cami and make certain she had gotten home. He hadn’t been able to shake that foreboding or his need for her.

It was probably that returning hunger continuing to spark the warning he needed to check on her.

“No one’s in there,” Logan said from the seat as Cami closed the heavy curtains covering her bedroom window. “You can see straight through that house until she closes the curtains. Besides she’s acting too calm.”

It was the truth. The two-story home was open and inviting, and clearly visible through the pristine, sparkling windows.

Who had windows that clean? It was damned scary. And as he said, Cami appeared too calm and comfortable to be frightened of anything.

“I didn’t say someone was in there; I said something is wrong,” he reminded his cousin. “There’s a difference, Crowe.”

“Let it go, Rafe,” Crowe stated softly. “Let’s head back to the ranch and see about installing the last of those cameras before we head up the mountain tomorrow to take care of mine. Logan’s is next and I’d like to have this finished and tied into the DVR on the master control before we head to that lawyers’ meeting in Colorado Springs next week.”

They had been installing the cameras at night, when it would be harder for anyone to watch what they were doing or to pinpoint the hiding places they had chosen for the electronics.

Rafe blew out a rough breath as he slid the vehicle into gear and pulled out onto the street. He should have gone to the door, but he knew that pushing Cami wasn’t going to get him what he wanted. Besides, he wanted her to come to him for a change. Just once. Just a single instance where she accepted her need for him and made the first move. A move other than allowing her car to slide into a ditch at the entrance of his property.

He needed her, too — willingly, deliberately, without any excuses — to reach out for him. He wanted her to admit it to herself. Because he’d be damned if he would allow her to hide from it much longer. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to allow her to return to a few stolen nights here and there because they couldn’t fight the need any longer.

He had grown damned tired of having his lovers hide their relationship with him twelve years before. He’d had enough of it with Jaymi and the lovers he’d had before her in Sweetrock. And these stolen nights with Cami had eaten at him, because he was certain she had slipped out at dawn out of shame.

He’d be damned if he’d let himself be treated like a dirty little secret by Cami.

“Are we sure we want to go through with all this?” Logan asked lazily from his seat in the back. “You know if we go through with these plans it’s going to cause a hell of a battle with the barons.”

Rafer couldn’t help but grin at the comment. How many times had some of the larger resorts attempted to come in and buy the land around Crowe’s mountain? The deep white water that branched off from the Colorado River and ran through streams and tributaries until it began flowing through the deep boulder-strewn ravines through the mountains was perfect for white water rafting.

The mountain itself with its natural breaks and paths was perfect for skiing. The land was filled with wildlife and could easily support any hunting activities required.

That had been their parents’ dream. The three couples had spent years planning for the day the wives came into their trusts at their thirtieth birthday. It was then Crowe’s Mountain and the adjoining Breaker Valley and Rafferty River Run area would have become Callahan Holdings. From there Crowe Mountain Resort would have been born.

Just the thought of the pure rage the barons would have was enough to almost bring a grin to Rafe’s lips. Damn, the explosion would be heard in China when they learned that the grandsons they had disowned would carry out their parents’ dreams.

“Now’s the time to back out if you don’t want to be a part of it, Logan,” Crowe warned him.

Logan snorted mockingly. “Are you dreaming, cuz? I just think we all need to be aware of what’s going to happen when we file the papers. Because the shit is going to hit the fan.” The anticipation in Logan’s voice was contagious. That or just the sheer pleasure at the thought of yet another triumph against their grandparents.

The first had been the court battle for the land that Crowe’s mother’s trust left to him. The final appeal the barons had made would be heard in a month before the state supreme court. And Rafe had no doubt he and his cousins would win that one, too.

Breaker Valley, the land Rafer’s mother had held, was now fully his. That land had once been the Callahan Ranch, and had belonged to his grandparents. Just as Crowe Mountain and part of the land called Rafferty River Run had. Crowe stated, “We’re not going to have an easy time doing this, even after the property is out of the courts. I’d like to keep things as simple as possible.”

And as quiet as possible to ensure the barons didn’t guess what was coming.

“She’ll mess your head up, I can already see it coming.”

“And you need to get fucked.” Rafe snorted as he slid his cousin a hard look. “That’s not happening, so you may as well simply shut the hell up about it and let it go Crowe.”

“She’s going to get your ass killed,” Crowe griped, his disapproval obvious.

“And you’re going to get your ass kicked if you don’t shut the hell up,” Rafe growled as he headed the vehicle out of town. “I don’t need the lectures and I sure as hell don’t need your advice where Cami’s concerned.”

“No, you need to stay away from her,” Crowe repeated between furiously clenched teeth. “Both of you need to remember exactly how dangerous it is to fuck with Corbin County women.”

Rafe ignored him. Crowe enjoyed playing the big brother, and he enjoyed trying to order Rafe and Logan around. Not that they ever let Crowe get away with it.

Especially now.

Rafe wasn’t staying away from Cami.

She’d admitted to being his occasional fuck, and he was going to make damned sure the occasions became real frequent from here on out. Once he managed to convince her to make that first move, then she was his. Totally. Completely.

He had no intentions of allowing Cami off the hook or out of his bed for long. If Crowe thought he could convince him otherwise, then he might need to think again.