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

CHAPTER 13

The next morning Cami awoke as the sun poured into the skylight over her bed, still dressed in the jeans and sweater and sneakers she’d put on after returning home the night before.

The boots would have been impractical if she’d had to slip out her bedroom window and make her way along the roof to where she could drop to the ground more safely.

The knowledge, or the feeling, someone had been following her had spooked her. She was on edge, restless, and that Saturday morning she was just plain pissed.

That was not Marshal Roberts playing with her head, no matter what Rafer believed.

As she poured another cup of the fragrant brew, the sound of the cell ringing had her quickly reaching for it and checking the caller ID. She prayed it was Rafer.

She’d actually swallowed her pride and called him the night before, but it had gone instantly to voicemail, an indication the phone was either turned off, or in a dead zone.

A frown pulled at her as she activated the call and brought the phone to her ear.

“Good afternoon, Jack?” she greeted him, a question in her voice.

“Hey, Cami, I’m pulling onto your street,” Jack Townsend answered back. “Do you have a few minutes to talk? I have something I want to tell you.”

“Sure. I’ll be waiting at the door.”

Disconnecting, she moved through the house to the door and opened it as Jack’s tow truck pulled into the driveway. She couldn’t imagine why he was at her house that early, or what he could want. She hadn’t taken her car in since he’d returned it after the blizzard, more than a month ago. Well, actually, she thought, closer to two months.

He wasn’t alone, though; his wife, Jeannie, was with him. The petite blond lifted her hand in a wave as she practically jumped from the truck and joined her husband as he came around the front, glaring at her.

“I keep telling her I’ll help her out,” he groused as they reach the front porch. “But Short Stuff insists on jumping. One of these days she’s going to break a leg.”

Jeannie punched him in the shoulder lightly with her fist as she laughed back at him. The love between them was apparent, though. It was actually so apparent that the gossipmongers loved attempting to cast suspicion on it.

“Come on in,” Cami invited, still confused at the visit. “There’s fresh coffee and store bought cinnamon rolls.”

Cami led the way into the kitchen after closing and locking the door securely behind them.

She admitted she had become paranoid in the past weeks. The phone calls might have stopped, but that feeling of being watched had her wary. Perhaps her caller had grown tired of calling and decided to act.

She couldn’t tell if the caller knew about the last night Rafe had been at the house or not. The suspense was making her as nervous as hell, though.

“I thought it best to stop in and talk to you, versus the phone,” Jack stated as she poured the coffee and set cups in front of both Jack and his wife at the kitchen table. “Some conversations you simply don’t trust to normal channels of communication.”

The last comment had her tensing.

“Jack’s paranoid,” Jeannie admitted. “We’ve received a few calls warning him about consorting with Callahans.” She rolled her eyes. “I swear, you’d think we were involved in political intrigue or something. Or perhaps a return to the Middle Ages? Tell me, Cami, are the Callahans traitors perhaps? Did they steal national secrets? Attempt to assassinate the president?”

Consorting with Callahans. “No,” Cami said softly, her gaze meeting Jack’s. “But I’ve been getting similar phone calls.”

Cami quickly related news of the calls she had been receiving to Jack and watched the couple exchange a worried look. She omitted the visit by Marshal Roberts, but over the weeks she had been surprised that no one else had mentioned it. Whoever had seen Rafe’s grandfather here evidently wasn’t telling anyone else.

“Hell.” Jack plowed his fingers through his dark hair as he sat back in the chair slowly. “Did you tell the sheriff?”

Cami shook her head.

“I’d suggest it,” Jack warned her. “I called Archer first thing, not that we’ve been able to trace the calls; they don’t last long enough. But at least I have a paper trail if I have to cap someone’s ass for messing with what’s mine.” He shot his wife a quick look, the possessiveness and concern touching.

“The thing is,” he continued, “I was worried enough I called Dad and Taggert. Dad acted so damned strange that Jeannie and I went to Denver over the weekend to talk to him. They had some very interesting information. Some things I had forgotten over the years and a few things I didn’t know about.”

As Jack continued talking, with Jeannie injecting information where she remembered a few things, Cami began remembering things she had forgotten as a girl as well.

The Corbins’ attempts to take Crowe Mountain just after Crowe’s parents’ deaths were well known. What Cami hadn’t heard was the Corbins’ attempts to destroy the Ramsey ranch after Clyde Ramsey, Rafe’s uncle, had taken all three boys in.

Corbin hadn’t managed to destroy the property, but he had managed to affect it financially for several years.

Then there had been the acts of vandalism, cattle missing or poisoned, equipment sabotaged, and several pastures salted.

As the Corbins were targeting Crowe, Logan’s grandparents, Saul and Tandy, had gone after Logan’s inheritance: the two-story house in town that was listed as one of the first houses built in the county, as well as a cash inheritance that at the time had come to more than a million dollars.

Crowe’s trust fund was larger, the inherited account coming from the trust his mother had inherited from her grandparents as well as the property and cash her parents had added to it. She had died only days after coming into the inheritance and within hours of signing the will that made her only son her beneficiary.

Then there were the bits of information that seemed more sinister. The night the three couples had been killed, the sheriff had closed the accident site completely off. Only the coroner and a young attorney Wayne Sorenson had been allowed onto the site for hours.

Even Clyde Ramsey, Marshal Roberts’s brother-in-law, had been barred from the site. In those early-morning hours he received a call from a ranch hand in the area who suspected Clyde’s niece and her husband had been in the accident along with the Raffertys’ daughter and son-in-law, and in the Corbins’ case, their daughter and son-in-law as well as the newborn infant daughter — the only child her parents had taken with them to Denver that day while supposedly visiting friends.

It had been learned later that it hadn’t been friends they were visiting. Rather, it had been a lawyer and a well-known resort developer. The sons of JR and Eileen Callahan, the first Callahans to have considered turning their property into a resort, had passed that dream on to their sons.

Nothing had been mentioned about the sons passing the legacy on to their sons. Or why the daughters of the barons who had married the Callahan sons would have considered something their families would have found so heinous.

The bodies had been burned beyond recognition, and only DNA had confirmed the identities of the dead. The coroner had quickly identified the three couples and the infant before the burials had been hastily arranged.

That was when the campaign to ostracize the cousins began, Jack told Cami, though it had been there even before the parents’ deaths. So much so that the three couples were looking at selling Crowe Mountain and the Rafferty house in town and gathering together the inheritances of the three women and buying a ranch farther west. There had even been talk that Clyde Ramsey had discussed selling his property as well and following them.

Kimberly Anna Corbin Callahan had been so enraged with her parents and brother that she had told several people that despite her brother’s affection for her daughter, she would never allow any of them around her. Anna was done with her parents as well as the brother she had once idolized. She had even had them removed as secondary beneficiaries on her will. The papers had actually been signed with an attorney in Denver that day. Clyde had been named as that beneficiary barring any children Crowe or her daughter might have had.

Her daughter hadn’t had a chance to see her first birthday, let alone reach maturity and the chance to conceive. She had barely been three months old at her death.

Then there had been the confrontation at the funerals. With only one funeral home, the three couples had been there together. Shockingly, the wives had been placed in another room and separated from their husbands. At first. Until Clyde had threatened to sue the funeral home, the director, and the families involved. Then, when Crowe and Logan had attempted to go in to attend their parents’ funerals, their way had been blocked by their grandfathers and, in Crowe’s case, by his uncle as well.

The entire county had attended those funerals and had seen the families’ treatment of the cousins. Most of the county worked the Corbin and Rafferty ranches or in some other way benefited from their business. They hadn’t been able to afford backing the boys and hurting their own finances or positions.

The result had been the steady unearned condemnation of an entire community toward three young, grief-stricken boys.

Clyde Ramsey had done the best he could by taking not just his own nephew in but also the others and raising them himself. His own grief at losing his treasured niece, and his inability to understand the hatred directed at their children had nearly destroyed him.

Clyde had suffered from the decision, though. Ranch hands quit on him, accidents happened around the ranch, and he was constantly warned to leave the county. But stubbornness had been set in his bones and he had refused to go, even as he advised the boys to fight against them. That this was their parents’ home, they owned part of it, and they should never forget that fact.

As Cami fixed more coffee, Jack broached another subject she hadn’t expected.

“Did you know about the phone calls Jaymi got before she was killed?” he asked gently.

Cami remained silent for long moments, finished the coffee, then turned back with the pot to refill the cups. She needed time to gather the strength to talk about Jaymi. No one mentioned her anymore, and Cami found it hurt more with each passing year.

She gave a brief nod as she sat down again. “I was here when she got a few of them. They were similar to the ones I’m receiving, except Jaymi figured out who her caller was a few nights before Thomas Jones—” She couldn’t say it. She had relived that part of the past too much in the last few weeks the way it was. “I know that voice, too though,” she said fiercely. “I know it; I just haven’t been able to place it.”

She described the voice. The regret. The hint of tears.

Jack nodded. “I remember that though Jaymi didn’t say anything about realizing who the caller was, she left the social early that night, and she appeared angry.”

“She was angry when she came back to the apartment too.” Cami swallowed tightly. “When she answered the call that night she went to the bedroom. I’m not sure, but I think I heard her say something about her knowing why her caller hated ‘him’ so bad. Though I don’t know who the ‘him’ was, and she wouldn’t tell me. I always suspected it was Rafe they were discussing.”

Jack and Jeannie exchanged a frown, though Cami didn’t see a sense of recognition in their gazes either.

When Jack turned back to her, he leaned forward intently, his gaze somber. “Dad was managing the garage then. But do you remember the accident Jaymi had about a month before she was killed?”

Cami nodded warily. “She nearly went over one of the mountain cliffs that day.”

It had terrified her, and Cami knew Jaymi had been shaken by it. Her brakes had failed on one of the long mountain roads. Though it hadn’t been the one the Callahans, their parents, or Clyde Ramsey had gone over.

“I’d rather you didn’t mention this to anyone who doesn’t need to know. The sheriff knows, but Dad swears her brake lines had been messed with,” Jack told Cami as he rubbed at his jaw in frustration. “He remembers it as clear as day, and there’s not a lot Dad remembers real clear these days. But he remembers Jaymi, because he swears that when he saw those brake lines after he towed the car in he told Mother Jaymi would be dead before the summer was out. He knew someone had tried to kill her and the sheriff, Archer’s father, didn’t seem interested in believing him when he went to talk to him. The lines were clean-cut, not frayed. Someone sabotaged those lines and they hadn’t meant for her to survive her drive back from Aspen.”

Cami’s chest tightened. She could feel the fear rising inside her at the knowledge that someone had tried to kill her sister before Thomas Jones had taken her.

That affirmation that she wasn’t just paranoid, that there was definitely more going on than Rafer wanted to admit to, actually terrified her.

Jack’s eyes were somber, filled with regret. But Cami knew she wasn’t able to hide that fear or the shock in her own gaze. “Jaymi never said anything about the break lines being cut. Just that the brakes must have been bad.”

She should have remembered that. She should have questioned it herself.

“Because she didn’t know,” Jack admitted, his voice hoarse as his expression twisted painfully. “Dad didn’t tell her, and trust me, Cami, neither myself nor my brother knew either. Dad says he received several anonymous phone calls that week warning him that it would be a shame if something happened to his wife and sons because he didn’t know how to keep his mouth shut about things that didn’t concern him. So he warned Jaymi, several times, to be careful. And he lived in fear of another accident.”

It wasn’t Jack’s fault. She couldn’t blame him. She wouldn’t. But she could feel the rage that no one had warned Jaymi, and the knowledge that the threat against her sister had existed months before her death was heart-rending.

Cami shook her head as she fought back her tears. To know Jaymi’s life was in danger even before she became the target of a serial killer, and hadn’t known it, terrified Cami and broke her heart at once.

Even worse, to know that someone Jaymi had trusted, someone she had called a friend, hadn’t given her a clearer warning tore at the foundations of friendship that Cami had always believed in.

But no matter who had wanted to kill her or who hadn’t warned her, still, it had been a serial killer who had stolen Jaymi’s chance to live. And that part confused her more each time she learned something new.

If Jack’s father had warned her, though, maybe Jaymi would have been more careful. At least for a few more days. A few more hours. Long enough that Cami was certain she could have convinced Jaymi to tell her who the caller was. Perhaps long enough that Thomas Jones could have been caught before he killed his last victim. Long enough that maybe Jaymi would have trusted Rafer enough to tell him the truth.

A warning of danger and a few more days could have made a difference between Jaymi living and dying.

“It was Thomas Jones that killed her, Jack, not a mechanical failure that your father didn’t warn her of,” Cami finally whispered, more for his benefit than because she believed it. Because she knew in her heart that Jaymi had been so confident, so determined, that she would have never listened.

Or perhaps she had simply been that determined to join her husband in whatever afterlife he inhabited, no matter the cost.

“Let’s say the coincidence is too fortuitous to suit me, just as it was for my father. Jaymi’s death is why he left Sweetrock and it’s why he’s continually begging me and Jeannie to move to Denver with him and Taggert. He says there’s something evil in this county, Cami, and I wonder if he’s not right,” Jack stated, his voice rough, his gaze filled with misery. “And remember, the FBI profile on those murders said there were two or more men working together. If that’s true, then Jones had a partner, if not two.”

“And serial killers don’t just stop killing,” she told Jack even as a chill raced up her spine and his declaration that there was an evil in Corbin County echoed in her head. “But I will be careful, Jack. I’m not Jaymi. I promise you, I won’t ignore the bastard when I realize who he is, nor will I keep my mouth shut about his identity.”

Because she had been warned now. Warned that whoever was watching her, calling her, had targeted her sister for the same reason. Because of Rafer. Because they were terrified the Callahans would develop ties to the county that would keep them there, no matter the cost.

They should have already realized that ties or no ties, the Callahan cousins weren’t going anywhere.

“Does Rafe know any of this?” Cami asked.

Jack shook his head. “I tried to call him a few times this morning as we drove back from Denver, but the call went to voice mail.” Just as hers had. Now she was beginning to worry about Rafer and his cousins.

“I’m assuming he’s out of town, because the ranch looked deserted when we drove by.”

“I tried to call as well,” she whispered. “He didn’t answer my call, either.”

Jeannie chose that moment to lean forward, her gaze dark with pain.

“Cami, the thing is, whatever’s going on has been going on for years,” Jeannie said then. “They need to just leave; they’ll never have any peace as long as they’re in Corbin County, nor will anyone who’s loyal to them.” She flashed her husband a speaking look as she made the last comment.

Cami knew that wasn’t about to happen. The Callahans, were back to stay. Their inheritance had demanded they stay, and in receiving it, if she had heard the rumors correctly, they had to stay at least five more years before they could leave.

“And they’ll never have any pride if they give in that easily and run,” Cami sighed, a part of her understanding why Rafe and his cousins refused to sell out and leave. “Their roots are here, Jeannie. They’re not going to destroy that last tie to their parents.”

It wasn’t her place to mention the inheritance or the terms of it. That was Rafer and his cousins’ business. And anyone who made the effort to read the court records in detail.

“Have you told the sheriff about all of this?” Cami asked the couple then.

Jack shook his head. “Phone calls, yes, the rest no. I think you should tell Rafe first, Cami. Tell him and then trust him and his cousins to take care of the rest of it.”

She pushed her fingers through her hair as she tried to think of another alternative. Going to Rafer with this right now would only end up in the inability to keep her hands off him. She would end up in his bed so fast it would make both their heads spin. Besides, he hadn’t believed her when she had tried to tell him her suspicions once before.

“Do you think Archer can be trusted?” she asked Jack then, remembering that Archer’s father had been the one who had ignored the signs that someone had targeted Jaymi.

Jack sighed heavily. “I’d trust him with my life, but I wouldn’t trust anyone with Jeannie’s, so I can’t answer that question for you, Cami. If you’re going to continue seeing Rafe, then you have to tell him what’s going on.”

“I’m not seeing him,” she objected as she leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms over her breasts defensively. “Just ask him, he’ll tell you.” She was, in his words, his occasional fuck, right? “I just want to know what’s going on and why the grandparents hate him and his cousins so much.”

“And someone doesn’t want you to know why,” Jack reminded her. “You be careful, and you watch your back. It hurt to lose your sister, Cami, but she left us in spirit the day she learned her Tye was dead. Losing you, Cami, would break too many hearts, because you’ve always been a part of the community, and a part of your friends, Cami.”

Cami stared back at them for a second before lowering her arms to the table and giving them a bitter smile. “No, Jack, everyone loved Jaymi. They tolerate me.”

“Jaymi was distant,” Jack sighed. “She was just counting the days until she could be with her Tye again. Even moving from Sweetrock didn’t interest her, despite your dad’s insistence. Everyone knew that was his plan. He wanted her to be where there were more opportunities for her. Where her friendship with the Callahans wouldn’t affect her so much.”

Everyone knew but Cami. Why didn’t it surprise her to know that her father had plans to leave Sweetrock and hadn’t even thought to tell her about it?

“What had they been waiting on?” she asked, wondering why Jaymi hadn’t told her. “They could have left at any time.”

“They were waiting for you to get out of high school from what Jaymi said,” Jack related. “Your parents didn’t want you to have to deal with changing schools.”

No, her parents hadn’t wanted her to be with them, period, she guessed. If they had, they would have told her their plans rather than remaining silent.

Even her mother.

God, that hurt. Even Cami’s mother had remained silent about the move. Had they been that determined to escape her?

At least she knew Jaymi hadn’t intended to leave. Tye was buried closer to Sweetrock than to Aspen. She would have never left him.

“We have to go.” Jack glanced at his wife before they rose from the table. “I’m sorry, Cami; I know what Dad did was wrong—”

“It wasn’t you, Jack.” She shook her head at the apology as she rose from her own seat. “And thank you for coming to tell me what you had learned.”

He gave a sharp nod before glancing at his wife and wrapping his arm around her. “You know, Dad might be right. Maybe it is time we leave Corbin County. The lock certain families have on this place sickens my gut, and to learn how they use their influence only makes me ashamed to be a part of this place.”

“I can’t blame you for feeling that way,” she said as she faced them, knowing that wasn’t an option she was willing to choose yet.

Once everyone who disagreed with those families was gone, who would be left to teach the children differently?

She couldn’t help but consider the kids she taught. Third graders were sharp as hell; they saw so much more than people realized and were so much more influenced that it was frightening.

As Jack and his wife left, Cami glanced around the kitchen and breathed out heavily.

Tonight was the Spring Fling Social, the first night of the year’s social activities. For all its undercurrents of intrigue, Corbin County and its residents had made inroads to protect their children that she hadn’t heard of in other towns.

The weekend social gathering that was held in the town square during clear weather had begun unofficially the night before. The crowd that had gathered had been part of the volunteers stringing lights and decorating for the first weekend to celebrate spring. And if the weather didn’t cooperate, then they gathered in the large community center.

Every Saturday night beginning in April with the Spring Fling Social, one of the dressier, more formal events held, the socials kicked off. Cami doubted there was a single family that didn’t attend, and very few children that didn’t spend the entire weekend at the community center.

The town square would be lit up like Christmas, the businesses surrounding it closed early, except the town’s single bar, located in the town square which would remain open through most of the night and well past the last call.

The socials were open to all, but they were heavily monitored and the alcohol strictly watched. Through the years, the event had had its ups and downs, but the dedication of the city council and the parents involved with the project kept it going.

The Spring Fling Social itself was highly anticipated. The winter months closed down the socials to allow for skiing activities and the influx of tourism for the skiing season in the surrounding counties. Several outlying ranches in those surrounding counties had turned into resorts with a focus on winter activities, making participation in the socials much lower during the skiing months. April saw the winter activities tapering off, though. The snow began to slack and finally melt. Frozen streams and icy rivers melted and began to run with an abundance of fish and wildlife as the trees began to green and their tiny buds made their debut.

And for the third year in a row, Cami didn’t have a date. She could have had one. If Rafe had returned her phone call, she might have had one.

She had her dress, her shoes, and all her accessories, and she was driving herself to the social, unless she wanted to walk it the second night in a row. Of course, driving meant finding a parking spot which would be impossible. Vehicles were already backing up along her street. On the other hand, finding company to walk home with wouldn’t be a problem.

It would be decidedly harder for anyone to follow her, and not be noticed than it was the night before.

For a moment, she wondered if Rafe would have attended if she had asked him or even if she had simply left him a message.

What did he look like in dress black or a tux? Would he have danced with her? Would the women at the social watch her with envy and longing as Rafer danced with her, as they had the night before?

And why the hell had he left so abruptly come to think of it? This spring was definitely beginning rather oddly, and Cami wasn’t entirely certain she was comfortable with it.

On second thought, hell, no, she wasn’t comfortable with it.

And yes, she thought, Rafer would have danced with her again. He would have held her close as she laid her head against his shoulder, swaying to the music and counting the time until they could leave and find a bed.

She shook her head quickly, trying to chase away the images running through her mind and the needs that rose inside her from those images.

Three weeks. Too damned long.

As she headed to the shower she couldn’t stop the visions of sexual satiation from dancing through her head. Long, hot kisses, the sight of his lips at her breasts, covering a hard, sensitive nipple, his cheeks hollowing as he sucked at the hardened tip, flicking it with the tip of his tongue.

The feel of those lips kissing their way down her torso, running over her belly, moving between her thighs. The feel of his tongue fucking her.

She wanted to moan in need. She was on the verge of screaming in frustration and making a decision she knew she would end up regretting.

Of course, he hadn’t even tried to follow her home, otherwise he would have caught sight of her shadow the night before. If he’d had satisfying that hunger in mind, then he wouldn’t have left her for a second.

She had told him to stay away from her; he was only doing what she had demanded. But even then she had been honest with herself, albeit silently.

She didn’t want him out of her life. She wanted to change the past. She wanted to make things different. She wanted to be able to go to that damned social and dance in his arms before coming home to sleep in them.

She wanted everything she had dreamed of having, everything she had fantasized about having. She wanted Rafe until she was ready to cry with the frustration building inside her.

And Rafe was the one thing she couldn’t have. The one man denied herself. The only man who could destroy her soul.

She wished it was only shame that held her from him. Shame would have been so very easy for her to conquer. The pleasure she found in his arms had shame beat all to hell. The ecstasy that surged bright and hot through her body as her release swept over her would have had such an edge on shame that it wouldn’t have stood a chance.

No matter how much she wished differently though, it wasn’t shame.

And she couldn’t even say in all honesty that it had anything to do with the fact that the county refused to accept the Callahans. She knew it didn’t.

The county had changed a lot in the twenty years since the Callahan cousins’ parents had died. The school board wasn’t from the same deeply rooted families that it had once been. Their ties to the community were new, their influence by the Corbins not the same as it had been with past board members despite Marshal Roberts’s presence there.

The principal at the school where Cami worked lived in Aspen rather than Corbin County or Sweetrock. The mayor had been in the military for years before returning to the county and had run his election on the fact that such political cronyism would come to an end.

Not that she expected it to happen, but it wasn’t as pervasive as it had been when Cami had been a teenager.

Corbin County was changing, and it had been changing for several years. But for all the changes that had occurred, it was still mired in the past and the wealth of the barons.

The barons were old now, though. Each man was nearing his seventies, and though they might yet have several years left in them, still their strength was waning, and with it, their power.

And they knew it.

She had seen it in Marshal Roberts’s eyes, that knowledge that he wasn’t the man he had been thirty-two years ago, and Corbin County wasn’t the county it was thirty-two years ago either.

If they had killed Rafer’s grandparents, parents, and uncle, and if they had been behind the deaths that had swept the county twenty-two years ago, then it wouldn’t happen as easily now. The mayor hadn’t been just a part of the military; he had been rather high-ranking as well. Such tactics, despite his ability to adopt them, didn’t seem to be his style.

They were still dangerous, though, and she believed that was part of the message Marshal Roberts had tried to get across to her that night.

Their power was waning, but it was by no means gone. They would still make very formidable enemies.