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

CHAPTER 15

Cami forced herself to go home that night.

The streets, as she suspected, were far from empty, which would make it much easier for anyone to follow her.

She walked back to the house with friends she worked with who had parked farther down the street and gave her a reliable excuse for walking with someone. She didn’t have to ask anyone to walk with her, which would have required explanations.

But once she reach her home and stepped inside it, she almost wished she had stayed just a little longer at the outdoor party. Perhaps until daylight.

Because the house was too quiet.

It was too lonely.

The home she had grown up in, the one she had bought from her father when he and her mother made the decision to move to Aspen, seemed to close in on Cami. For the first time in her life she didn’t feel comfortable, warm, and protected, and she wondered that she ever had.

There had been something about her mother’s presence in it, Cami admitted. Her mother had made the difference. Before Cami’s parents had sold the house and moved to Aspen, it had been a warm, inviting home. Sometimes. If her father wasn’t there.

But still, it was the home she had been raised in. It was the home where she had gotten to know her older sister until Cami had turned eight and Jaymi had moved out.

And even then, Jaymi hadn’t forgotten about her. Jaymi had taken Cami to her new home regularly, and when her husband had been killed in the military it had been Cami who Jaymi had wanted to stay with her for a while.

And her father had never seemed to understand why Jaymi wanted Cami with her. He had never understood why her older sister seemed to love her. If her mother had felt the same way, Cami had never sensed it. But neither could she discount the suspicion. Because there was no way her father could have resented her and her mother not know it.

There were times Cami and Jaymi swore Margaret Flannigan had eyes in the back of her head, because they couldn’t seem to get anything past her when they were children. She would have known, despite the sedatives she took. Margaret would have seen that her husband cared nothing for his younger daughter.

So why hadn’t Margaret Flannery done something about it? Why hadn’t her mother left Mark Flannigan, or at least made the effort to let Cami know that she accepted her?

Was she so unlovable to the father she had adored as a child that loving her was impossible? She wondered as she stared around the house for long minutes. Was she truly so bad that as her father said, he had been forced to take her mother away to Aspen to alleviate Cami’s influence?

Or had he simply found the only way to punish her for not being the daughter who had died? Because taking her mother away from Cami truly was the only way he could have hurt her at that point.

She stood silently for a moment, staring around the shadowed house, feeling the loneliness that wrapped around her. That sense of suddenly having nothing to hold on to and no one to warm her. There were no parents, no siblings, where once there had at least been a sister and a mother.

Now there was simply no one but her aunt and uncle.

And Rafe.

When Cami allowed herself to have him.

Yet even he hadn’t come back to the house with her. He hadn’t followed her, and he wasn’t at her back door now.

He had given her a choice, and now he was sticking to it. She could call him. She could come to him. But he wasn’t going to allow her to excuse her choice with the excuse that he hadn’t given her a choice.

With a hard jerk of her head she forced that thought, that need, back. Moving through the house, she checked the locks on the doors, checked the windows, and double-checked the alarm.

She felt restless, on edge. As though a foreboding followed her, an instinctive warning to beware that she couldn’t seem to shake. The feeling had begun at the social, tingled around her on her way home, and now it had settled into her senses like a subtle scent she couldn’t shake and yet couldn’t identify.

She wished she hadn’t danced with Rafe. Wished she had asked him to follow her home. She wished he were there with her, and she should know by now the folly of wishing for things that weren’t meant to be hers.

Rafe hadn’t followed her home, though; he hadn’t spoken to her after he had left her back in that little grotto. And he hadn’t mentioned that claim on her.

Even though Cami knew he had made it.

Even though Rafe was very well aware of the fact that he had a claim on her and they both knew it it was a claim she couldn’t shake or deny.

And as his gaze had followed her throughout the night, she had felt that knowledge. Just as everyone else at the dance had. Even Emma had been reticent to say anything about it, or to tease Cami over it. And normally, Emma was the one to joke about anything.

She had felt his eyes on her nearly every second, especially if another man had dared to approach her.

As though Rafe’s warning had kept her from dancing with anyone else. That had nothing to do with her decision, because she realized he wouldn’t have really made a scene.

He would be madder than hell. He would hate every second of it. He would have most likely waylaid her in private again at first chance. But there wouldn’t have been a confrontation. Rafer Callahan had more pride than that.

The truth was, she hadn’t wanted to dance with anyone else. She hadn’t danced with another man, slept with another man, or engaged in a serious flirtation with another man since the first night she had slept with Rafer. Well, they hadn’t done much sleeping that night.

The most she had done in the past was to go out to dinner a few times with other men, hoping each time that there would be at least the faintest spark of attraction.

But there hadn’t been.

Breathing out roughly, she trailed her fingers over the banister of the stairs as she moved to the the master suite.

The room that somehow hadn’t had even the faintest mark of her parents on it when she had bought it.

She’d redecorated after buying the house from her parents anyway.

She almost smiled at the thought of that purchase. Her father had actually priced the house at the highest appraisal given, and that was the price she had had to pay for it. At twenty two, that hadn’t been easy.

Thankfully, tourism hadn’t really kicked off in Sweetrock yet, so housing prices weren’t as high as they could have been otherwise. And her uncle had co-signed

She had bought the house the week after she had lost their child.

She hadn’t been prepared for such loss, in more ways than one. When her period had been late, she had been certain — and she had been wrong.

Perhaps she had made her mistake in attempting to forget that night and every other time she had met him or deliberately run into him over the years until the miscarriage. It hadn’t been hard to learn where he would be or when until his uncle Clyde Ramsey had died.

After that, Cami hadn’t heard anything else about Rafer until his arrival in town more than three years later.

Reaching the second floor, she turned at the landing and took the several steps to the suite she’d completely redecorated. Merging the master bedroom with the guest room, she’d created a sanctuary within her home.

All of the rooms, in some ways, were an oasis, a sanctuary that fulfilled whatever varied mood she could have without reminding her of her father in any way.

But tonight, tonight her mood was unlike any she had had before.

It was interesting.

Stepping into her bedroom, she closed the door behind her, her hand still gripping the doorknob as she leaned back against the door. Staring up at the ceiling, she inhaled slowly, deeply, and blinked back the tears.

She didn’t want to be here alone—

A shadow moved in the corner of the room. Quick, fast, like a blur of darkness it barreled toward her.

“Oh God!” Terror washed through her at the sight, at the instinctive knowledge of what it was.

Dressed in black from head to toe, a dark hood pulled over his face, nothing showing but dark, malevolent eyes.

Screaming, Cami jerked open the door and raced out of it, thanking God she had taken off the high heels, as she tore down the stairs to the front door and the security alarm control.

She knew she didn’t have a chance of releasing the locks before her attacker caught her. She couldn’t chance the back door, where there was no alarm control.

She was just there. Her hand slapped it, her fingers reaching for the panic button, when a hard, violent blow was delivered to the side of her head.

Her cheek slammed into the wall. Bells seemed to clamor in her head as her stomach pitched sickeningly with the pain and dizziness that suddenly attacked her.

Vicious, hard fingers suddenly caught at her hair, jerking her back and throwing her into the stairs. As though in slow motion, she felt herself hurtling across the space, unable to stop the fall she knew was coming.

She caught herself against the banister as she stumbled back, hitting a step with her hip as her head cracked against the banister railing. For a second, dizziness washed over her as a wave of raw pain swept through her head again.

Another blow cracked the side of her face.

His fist?

The agony was like nothing she had ever known before. It resounded through her skull, sliced through her brain, and seemed to rip her senses from their moorings. She was trying to scream, but she didn’t know if she was. The wailing clash of sound in her head was so loud.

“You fucking whore!” Snarling, furious, the harsh male voice cracked around her a second before he jerked her up by the hair on her head.

Her hands pulled his wrists, her nails digging at them, searching for bare flesh as she fought to be free.

A second later he threw her against the door as she screamed again, her fingers curling into claws as she aimed for his face.

She was inches from his eyes when harsh hands grabbed her wrists, jerked them over her head, and ripped her gown down the front.

Bucking, her screams mixing with the piercing wail of the siren echoing through the head, Cami fought desperately to be free. Hard, cruel fingers wrapped around the mound of one breast, squeezing harshly as she felt the screaming pain of merciless fingers twisting her nipple.

“I’ll fuck you first, then cut your fucking throat like I should have cut your diseased sister’s.”

Low, vicious laughter sounded at Cami’s ear as she fought, kicking, screaming, until finally her knee struck its target and slammed into the vulnerable balls between his thighs as he moved to shift his weight.

The high, piercing cry tore from him. His suddenly lax grip gave her the chance she needed to throw herself away from him, reaching for the umbrella holder and jerking one of the folded instruments from the opening.

As a weapon it was pitiful, but her dazed mind could only comprehend the point, the curved handle, and the distance it would put between her and her attacker.

She whirled around in just enough time to see the front door jerking open and the black-clad figure disappearing as she heard the sounds of something crashing, yelling, cursing, and the pounding of feet running through her hall like a stampede of elephants.

“You bastard!” she sobbed, her legs collapsing, throwing her to the hardwood floor as she braced herself against the side of the steps. Cami felt her legs folding beneath her as the blows to her head, the terror, and the sudden, overwhelming relief stole her last bit of strength.

With one hand braced around the spindle of the banister, her fingers locked desperately around the smooth wooden support as she laid her head against her arm and screamed out in rage.

Tears filled her eyes, and one even escaped before she could battle it back. Breathing harshly and fighting back what could easily turn into desperate, agonizing cries, she whispered Rafe’s name.

Her dress was ruined. The silk underslip was still intact; her stockings were probably ruined. And if she had just told Rafer about that call during the afternoon, then she wouldn’t have been alone. And no one would have ever gotten the jump on Rafer as he had on her.

Oh God, where was Rafe?

She was cold and so scared. The entire world was spinning much too fast, and all she wanted to do was make the twisting, spinning motions cease before she began retching all over her pristine wooden floor.

“Cambria?” She heard Archer’s yell as he rushed through the opened front door.

She tried to lift her head as he came to a hard, shocked stop. It wobbled on her shoulders, though, causing her sight to careen wildly once again, dragging a moan from her lips. Instantly he was kneeling in front of her, his hands and his gaze going over her quickly.

“Are you okay?” He touched her forehead. The brief touch sent a wave of pain tearing through her, causing her to flinch and jerk her head back a second before she began gagging from the revolving room.

She could taste blood in her mouth. The taste of it added to the sickening, retching sensation gripping her stomach. If everything would just slow down. If it would just stop spinning for more than a second or two, then she could find her balance.

Dizziness rushed over her again, forcing her to put her head down, to swallow desperately and fight the sickness threatening to overwhelm her.

“Did you get him?” she finally gasped weakly when she could lift her head to try to focus on Archer. He looked like he was wavering, slithering from side to side like a cobra attempting to mesmerize her.

Rather than mesmerizing her, it only made her feel sicker, more confused.

Frowning, she knew something was wrong but was having a hell of a time concentrating on what. She knew she was ill, that the blows to her head hadn’t been a good thing.

“How many, Cami?” he was yelling at her, holding up his hand. Or something. He was holding something up in front of her face.

She tried to focus, blinking, almost whimpering at the disorientation and the pain surging through her head once again.

Oh God, she hated not being able to concentrate, unable to think or to rationalize.

“How many?” Archer yelled at her again.

How many?

“Two Archers,” she whispered, dazed as she laid her head against her arm once again, wondering why she kept seeing two of him when she knew there was only one. Archer didn’t even have a brother, let alone a twin.

“Archer, I don’t feel well,” she whispered, suddenly terribly frightened of the disorientation she couldn’t seem to shake.

“Ambulance is on its way, Cami.” His hands clasped her face, forcing her to tilt her head back as the room swam around her and pure agony raced through her temples, her eyes, shooting to the back of her neck.

She tried to swat at his hand, to scream, but all that came out was a weak whimper. “Rafer.”

“It’s Archer, Cami. Fuck, where is that ambulance?”

Who was he talking to? Please, not Martin Eisner. Martin would tell her uncle, and her uncle and Aunt Ella would rush over.

Ella would fuss over her.

Her mother used to fuss over her.

Uncle Eddy would threaten to kill the bastard, and he would mean it.

She needed Rafer.

“Archer.” She couldn’t hold her head up, could barely breathe enough to force out a single word: “Rafer.”

She could see the darkness edging in on her vision.

“Did Rafer do this, Cami?” Shock, fury, it all filled his voice.

Why was he so angry? Rafer had slipped into her bedroom. She had tried to tell him they couldn’t do this. They couldn’t slip around, and he didn’t listen to her any more than her own body did.

She could hear someone else beyond her vision, yelling about Rafer.

She tried to shake her head.

“Get Rafer,” she whispered. “Have to tell—”

She had to tell Rafer. She had to warn him.

“Cami, answer me, damn you!” Archer was yelling at her. Archer had never yelled at her. “Cami, did Rafer do this?”

She needed Rafer. There were too many voices screaming in her head. Or was that around her head?

The darkness was coming closer, closer. And she had to warn Rafer.

“Warn Rafer—,” she could barely whisper. It was a breath of a sound, the last of her energy before she faced nothingness.

Oh God, was this how Jaymi had felt when she died? Could Cami feel that complete absence of being before she left the world? She sobbed, crying out for the hell her sister must have endured and terrified of facing it herself. Of being unable to avoid it and unable to force herself away from it.

That dark, icy nothingness closed over her, like a freezing, merciless veil of ice. There was nothing comforting, nothing gentle, about it. It was terribly frightening, dragging her into it as she fought helplessly to retain consciousness, to warn Rafer.

Someone needed to warn Rafer.

* * *

Dawn was rolling over the mountains when Rafer finally gave up the battle to sleep, rose, showered, and dressed for the day. He was putting on coffee when Logan and Crowe made their way from their rooms, their distinctly irritated looks directed straight at him.

“I didn’t wake you,” he informed them both as he set out enough cups for the three of them.

“We didn’t say you had,” Logan growled, definitely testy. He never had cared much for early mornings.

“Then what are you doing awake?” Rafe poured the coffee.

“Hell if I know, probably because you’re awake,” Crowe grunted as he hitched the loose cotton pants he wore a little closer to his hips and scratched at his bare, scarred chest.

God, Rafe wished Crowe would wear a shirt. The sight of those scars on his chest and back was too much for Rafe to bear to look at. But saying anything to Crowe, pointing it out, or reminding him of it wasn’t always a good idea. Though how he could forget about it Rafe had never understood.

Logan plopped down in the seat across from Rafe, the gray running shorts he wore riding almost as low as Crowe’s pants as he yawned and scratched at the side of his rough jaw. The closely cropped beard, a shade or two darker than his hair, was never completely shaved free of his face. Unlike Crowe, Logan preferred to hide his scars.

The mementos they had from their teenage years sucked.

Rafer didn’t carry physical scars; he instead carried the mental scars. None of them had escaped unscathed from the hatred and merciless need for revenge that had been exacted on each of them in one form or another.

“We have two investors coming in day after tomorrow,” Crowe reminded them both as he sipped at the coffee. “Do you think we could get a cook out here or something?” He looked around the kitchen with a look of hope.

Poor Crowe, he’d gotten used to breakfast the short time he’d been in Boston with Ryan’s family.

Ryan Calvert, the lost Callahan brother, had been adopted by a family in Boston while his older brothers were in the military. He hadn’t found the family forced to give him up until well after his brothers’ deaths. But he’d been there in time to save the nephews he hadn’t known he’d had.

“I doubt it,” Rafe told Crowe, sipping at his coffee as he rose from the chair again and paced to the kitchen window.

“What the fuck are you looking for, Rafe?” Logan finally burst out. “You did that half the night, until we went to bed, and now you’re starting that shit again. Are you on speed or something?”

Hell if Rafe knew what was wrong with him.

He kept expecting … something. Someone.

Cami. And the thought of Cami had a chill tearing up his spine. Son of a bitch, he couldn’t figure out what the hell was wrong.

Rafe stared down the road again, his brows drawn into a frown as he tried to put together the pieces of what was making him so crazy.

Not that the nerve-wracking emotions made sense, but he’d learned a long time ago not to expect anything in Corbin County to actually make sense. Because it wasn’t going to happen.

And nothing concerning Cami ever made sense.

One thing was for sure, though; he had to see her. Just as fast as he could get there, he suddenly thought. Back door, front door, slipping through the basement window, it didn’t fucking matter. He should have gone last night. He should have turned around the second this feeling had hit him like a punch in the gut.

Hell, he should have never returned to the ranch last night. What he should have done was headed straight to her house, slipped in, crawled into that big bed beside her, and fucked her until they were both exhausted. Maybe then he could have slept. One thing was for damned certain, he wasn’t sleeping now. And he wouldn’t sleep until he got to her. Until he assured himself she was okay.

It was that thought. That feeling that suddenly had adrenaline surging through him and his body tensing to rush to dress and leave.

As he started to turn from the window he glimpsed a flash of black and orange amid the newly budding trees and paused until the vehicle came into view.

What the hell was going on? Why was Archer Tobias arriving in his official SUV. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be a good thing. It never had been before when the sheriff had shown up. Though, Rafe had to admit, Archer was a damned sight better sheriff than his father had ever even considered being.

“Sheriff’s here,” he told his cousins quietly as that feeling of panicked need, that urge to hurry and get to Cami intensified.

Immediately Logan and Crowe were up and moving.

They didn’t bother racing to their rooms to dress. They snagged the jeans, T-shirts, socks, boots, and jackets they kept in the boot room just for such times. Those times when they were too lazy to dress and could have regretted it.

By time Archer Tobias pulled into the drive and parked, they were dressed and ready for whatever the world, karma, or fate decided to throw at them. They were also waiting at the end of the drive for him.

The cameras were on and recording, audio was functioning, and everything set to record anything that might or might not affect the final outcome if Archer had arrived in any official capacity.

They were stepping through the gate as Archer stepped from the vehicle, his expression heavy enough that Rafe felt that first tight clench of his chest.

Moving from the vehicle, Archer faced the three of them, though his gaze was clearly focused on Rafe.

There was something in Archer’s eyes that had a small, shadowed corner of Rafer’s soul clenching in terror.

For the first time in his life, Rafe refused to allow the impulsive intuition he sometimes carried free.

“What are you doing here, Arch?” Rafe growled.

“I’m sorry about this, Rafe.” Archer shook his head as he breathed out wearily. “I need to know where you were last night after you left the dance.”

Rafe felt his jaw lock. Every damned time there was a robbery, an attempted rape, a stolen car, whatever, it seemed the sheriff headed to the ranch if they were in town.

First it had been Archer’s father, and now it was Archer. The fucking past kept repeating itself, and each time it did so, it just pissed Rafe the hell off more.

He was damned sick of it too.

“We came back here, Archer,” Crowe informed him when Rafe refused to answer.

“Did anyone see you?” Archer glanced above their heads to one of the few cameras that could possibly be detected. If a person was knowledgeable enough to know what to look for. “Do you have a time stamp on the recording the camera would have made?”

“I have a stamp,” Crowe said. Rafe felt his lip curling in disgust that Archer was even here for the Corbin bastards.

And hell yes, Rafe’s cameras were time-stamped. The cousins had learned early to protect themselves, and they’d learned to make damned sure to watch every step they made where this was concerned.

They didn’t take chances. They’d learned young to watch their backs against circumstantial evidence.

Archer tilted his hat back and propped his hands on his hips as he stared back at them. “I just asked, Crowe.” He turned back to Rafe.

“And I just answered you definitively,” Crowe informed him. “That way, there’s no misunderstanding.”

“I didn’t expect we would have a misunderstanding.” Archer’s gaze connected with Rafe’s. “Would anyone know how to mess with your system? How to make certain your arrival wasn’t recorded?”

Rafe glanced at his cousins as they shook their heads, their gazes sharpening on Archer’s now. “We don’t spread our business around, Arch,” Rafe told him. “But to answer your question, no, no one should know anything about the system or even that it exists.”

They had friends now, where they hadn’t had before, security specialists who had assisted in the installation and programming of a security and surveillance system that would be almost impossible to crack.

But the questions Archer was asking had that cold, tight fist to Rafe’s chest clenching again. He could feel it; something wasn’t right. Something had happened.

Something had happened that Archer was hesitating to tell him.

That meant something that could potentially force Rafe or all three Callahan cousins to lose the control they had kept such a firm grip on in the past months.

There were few things that could or would threaten that control.

For Rafe, there was only danger or harm to his cousins or to—

Rafe felt his body tense.

The truth was there in Archer’s eyes, in the somber cast of his expression. And there was only one connection they had that would put that look in the sheriff’s eyes.

“Ah God,” Rafe whispered, feeling as though he were choking, ready to gag from the implications of that look. “Fuck, is she okay?”

He could feel the world suddenly threatening to crash down on him. Not Cami. Ah God, please, please not his Cami.

Logan and Crowe jerked toward Rafe as Archer’s hands dropped from his waist, one hand on his weapon.

Cami. Sweet God in heaven. Ah God, something had happened to Cami.

“How did you know?”

“Answer me, damn you.” Rafe could himself begin to lose his control, fury building, burning.

Evidently Archer saw something in Rafe’s eyes, that killing rage Rafe could feel beginning to burn inside him. It convinced the sheriff to start explaining fast.

“She’s alive. Bruised, scared to damned death, and suffering a concussion, the doctor thinks, but she’s alive. She was still unconscious the last I saw her, but before she passed out she was asking for you,” he sighed.

“We’ll follow you and the sheriff, Rafe,” Crowe told him as he pulled his keys from his pocket, his attention focused on getting to Sweetrock, rather than the sheriff or any other questions he might have. “We’ll bring her back to the ranch.”

“Now, hold on,” Archer began to protest.

“Argue on the way to the hospital,” Rafe suggested as he strode to the sheriff’s vehicle. “I don’t have time for this; let’s roll out.”

He was jerking open the passenger side door and sliding into the passenger seat as he pushed aside a clipboard, a book of tickets, and several other packets that lay there.

“I didn’t invite you to ride with me,” Archer informed him, though he slid into the driver’s seat and put the vehicle in gear.

Behind them, Crowe and Logan threw dirt and gravel as Crown’s Denali tore from the drive and raced ahead of them.

“I’m going to give those bastards a ticket,” Archer muttered.

“Wait until we get to the hospital,” Rafe suggested. “But tell me what happened.”

Archer pulled out onto the main road and laid his foot to the gas to catch up with Crowe and Logan.

“She was attacked last night just after arriving home from the social,” Archer told him. “Her alarms went off, alerting her neighbors and calling nine-one-one. When I got there, she was leaning against the bottom of the staircase. It looks like he hit her in the head several times, and he has a hell of a fist if her head is anything to go by. She was displaying signs of a concussion, a severe one if my guess is right. Her dress was ripped down the front and she kept saying your name. It took me forever to figure out she was asking for you rather than accusing you. Just before she passed out, she said she had to ‘warn Rafer.’”

She was asking for him. She was trying to warn him, of something.

His pride had done this. If he had gone with her as he’d intended, followed her home, and slipped in the back door, then he would have been there for her. She wouldn’t have been hurt. He would have made certain of it. He would have never allowed some bastard to lay the first hand on her.

“You should have called me sooner.” His fists were clenched at his knees, the need for blood pounding through his veins. “Waiting wasn’t a good idea, Archer.”

The sheriff should have called immediately. They’d be discussing that when Archer wasn’t driving and Rafe wasn’t desperate to get to Cami.

“I’ve been a bit busy, Rafer,” Archer informed him mockingly. “There was a friend to get to the hospital for X-rays and MRI. There was a crime scene to process. All those sheriffy little things that take up so much damned time.”

“You could have saved close to thirty minutes by simply calling me.”

“I had to make sure you had the camera proof that you were here when she was attacked,” Archer stated. “I wasn’t certain and I had to be certain that the cameras on the outside of the house were cameras or really the birdhouses that were built around them. I’ll need your permission to have the security consultants copy the digital and send it to me.”

“Get a fucking warrant,” Rafe snapped. “Fuck the bastards that don’t want to believe what’s right in front of your eyes. Do you think I’d fucking hurt Cami, Archer? I thought we knew each other better than that.”

Archer’s hands tightened around the steering wheel, his knuckles turning white as his jaw clenched, the muscle there flexing rapidly before he spoke.

“Rafe, there was a yellow ribbon tied around her bed pillow,” Archer finally stated as he sliced a hard glare toward him. “I’m sure you know exactly what kind of response that news is going to raise when it gets out.”

Rafe froze.

A yellow ribbon around her pillow. It could only mean one thing and that simply wasn’t possible.

“He’s dead. Crowe killed him twelve years ago, Archer. Thomas Jones can’t be killing again.”

“Yeah, I know he’s supposed to be fucking dead,” Archer burst out furiously. “Son of a bitch, he’s a fucking nightmare for this town, Rafe. Do you think I wanted to see that goddamned ribbon and its perfect bow tied around the pillow on Cami’s bed? The one opposite the one she slept on. The one a lover or a husband would use.”

The yellow ribbon.

Thomas Jones had tied a yellow ribbon around a pillow of each of his victims’ bed pillows. Never the pillow they used. Always the pillow a lover would use.

Though all his victims hadn’t had lovers.

And only Jaymi’s pillow hadn’t had a ribbon tied around it.

There had been nothing that the FBI or local law enforcement could find to tie the women together or to explain why he had chosen the women he chose to kill twelve years before.

“We definitely have a problem,” Archer admitted. “More so than you know. Did she tell you about the phone calls she’s been getting? The ones threatening her if she’s sleeping with you?”

He was going to paddle her ass. As God was his witness, he was going to paddle that creamy little ass until it glowed. “She told me. I thought Marshal Roberts was fucking with her. He used to do that. All three of the barons used to do that, Archer.”

They would call suspected friends, lovers, associates, and threaten them anonymously.

Archer cursed under his breath. “Jack Townsend contacted me this morning as soon as he heard what happened. He talked to her yesterday. She told him she was getting phone calls similar to those her sister received before she was killed. Calls warning her to stay away from you or she would regret it.”

Rafe looked over at Archer slowly, mechanically. “Jaymi didn’t mention phone calls to me before she died. Cami was the only one who mentioned them.”

“To no one else either except Jack apparently.” Archer grimaced. “I checked. If Jack hadn’t told me about it this morning, then I wouldn’t have known. Evidently, though, Cami’s been getting them for a while now. At least since she was snowbound at the ranch with you. The calls have been warning her to stay away from you, and the caller is threatening to hurt her and you if she doesn’t keep you out of her bed. The same phone calls Jaymi was getting before she was killed.”

Murder raged through Rafe’s mind.

He couldn’t accept that Jaymi had been in danger simply because she had been sleeping with him months before the serial killer Thomas Jones targeted her.

“I hadn’t seen Jaymi for nearly two days before Jones killed her,” Rafe stated. “We’d talked on the phone a few times, but that was all.”

And she hadn’t seemed the least bit worried or concerned.

“And you and your cousin had no connection to the other women,” Archer asked as Rafe lied with the short shake of his head. “But here’s a connection between Jaymi’s and Cami’s attacks. Those phone calls.”

There was another woman who shared a connection to one of the Callahan cousins. One of the victims from twelve years back whom neither Archer nor any other law enforcement official was aware of.

Turning back to watch the road in front of them, Rafe remained silent.

Six women had died twelve years before. Each one had had a yellow ribbon tied around one of her pillows, except Jaymi. And Thomas Jones had raped, tortured, and stabbed each one of them to death during that bloody, horrendous summer that had nearly destroyed Rafe’s and his cousins’ lives.

For Jaymi, he, Logan, and Crowe had almost been there in time. They had almost heard her screams soon enough from their fishing spot to go racing for her.

Almost.

It didn’t count when it came to a knife and a young woman’s lifeblood.

Jaymi had taken her last breath in Rafe’s arms, and hours later he and his cousins had been sitting in a jail cell. They had been arrested for her and five others’ murders.

He would not allow that to happen to Cami now that he knew she was a target of what had to be a copycat killer. Someone determined to frame the Callahan cousins.

“She’ll be safe,” Rafe promised Archer. And he would make certain of it. Him, Logan, and Crowe. “Did you dust the house for prints?”

“Personally,” Archer told him. “I wasn’t trusting that to anyone else. I also called the FBI, Rafe. If Thomas had a partner, as the profile suggested twelve years ago, then he’s getting in the game again, and I want help on this.”

Rafe didn’t care who Archer called in as long as Cami was protected. The more the merrier as far as her safety was concerned.

“Look, Rafe, you know how this county is,” Archer began after a long moment’s silence.

“Yeah, everyone and his brother is going to be looking at us, believing the Callahan cousins did it. Because after all, there was no crime before we returned,” Rafe sneered.

He knew exactly how it worked.

“You’re being targeted, Rafe,” Archer snapped back at him. “The calls were a warning over you, and the attack was for the same reason, I believe. This isn’t something we can keep under our hats while we search for him. And it’s damned sure not because of whatever the hell you did in the military. This goes straight back to twelve years before.”

“I’m a fucking Marine, Archer; what the hell do you think I did?” he snarled. “For God’s sake, would you just pick up some speed here so I can get to her? Sometime this year would be exceptionally nice. You can question me later.”

If he didn’t get there soon, if he didn’t see for himself that Cami was safe and breathing on her own, then he was going to end up losing his sanity.

Rage was like an animal inside him, twisting and clawing in its desperation for freedom.

He shouldn’t have left her, he thought again. He should have heeded that warning itch at his back as he drove back to the ranch. The urge to turn back and slip into her house and into her bed had been nearly overwhelming.

He’d not ignore it again. Never again would he ignore that instinctive voice and blame it on his lust rather than that kernel of knowledge that something wasn’t just right. That his instincts had picked up something his conscious mind had missed.

Better yet, she was coming to the ranch, where he could make certain she was protected, ensure that no one ever got to her again, ever harmed her again.

“You were just a Marine, huh?” Archer snorted as Rafe flicked him a brooding look. “You know, Rafe, for ‘just a Marine’ your records are all but inaccessible.”

“And why would you want them to be accessible, Archer?” he asked smoothly.

“Let’s say there was a time or two the mayor was curious about your whereabouts,” Archer sighed. “I checked and all I could get was that you were a Marine. After that, forget it.”

The mayor was curious, his ass. Most likely, there was another crime they’d wanted to pin on Crowe and his cousins and they wanted to be certain where the cousins were.

“And you can forget it now,” Rafe assured the sheriff as he gripped the armrest of the door and all but tore it off in frustration. “Can’t you drive any faster?”

Rafe could have driven these mountain roads faster with a blindfold for a handicap.

“Rafe, I’m going to tell you now, you, Logan, and Crowe stay out of this,” Archer warned him as they neared the city limits and the hospital where Cami had been taken. “Take care of Cami and let me handle the rest.”

Yeah, that was what Archer’s father, Randal, had warned them of twelve years before, as the sheriff, when the first girl had been found in Corbin County at the base of Crowe Mountain.

Rafe, Logan, and Crowe had just so happened to have been in Denver with Ryan Calvert that week meeting several recruiting officers and staying on the military base there with Ryan’s family. If they hadn’t been, they would have been arrested then and they would have never been able to clear themselves.

Archer wasn’t stupid, though. The Callahan cousins weren’t little more than boys anymore. They were adult men, military trained, and they didn’t take orders worth shit from civilians.

It was one of their best traits, Crowe liked to say.

But even more, they knew how to protect themselves.

“Do you hear me, Rafe?” Archer snapped.

Rafe turned his head and stared back at Archer as determination flowed through him.

The determination to kill whoever had dared to touch Cami. Whoever had dared to bruise her, frighten her, or target her because of who her lover was.

Whoever did this would pay for it.

The bastard was a dead man walking; the Callahan cousins would see to it.