Midnight Sins (5 page)

And if her mother had loved this other man so

much, why had she taken Mark Flannigan back and

allowed him to treat their daughter so dismally?

It was a question she intended to ask him the

minute she arrived at the house in the morning. She

would make a special trip before work just to throw

her knowledge into his face and demand custody of

Cami from both her parents.

She’d had enough. She wasn’t about to allow

Cami to be treated so cruelly, or endangered while ill

again. Re-entering the security code, Jaymi opened the

back door to the pharmacy, eased out, and turned

back to lock the three locks on the door and reset the

code. The door was almost closed, the keys ready to

shove into the lock.

There was no warning.

There was nothing to alert her.

One minute she was filled with righteous

indignation over the treatment her sister had received

for as long as she could remember, and the next

second, everything was black.

* * *

The lone dark figure, black mask pulled over his face,

his eyes filled with sorrow, looked up to the camera

that was almost hidden above the door.

He knew what would be seen later. Rich,

sapphire blue eyes.

Picking Jaymi up in his arms, he turned away

and laid her carefully in the backseat of the stolen

pickup before tying her hands snugly behind her back.

Her ankles were secured with another length of rope

and gray tape placed over her lips.

He stared down at her, just for a second, before

reaching out and pushing her hair back from her face.

He’d tried to warn her, he really had.

She’d pushed too far, though. When she had

begun calling his phone, he knew she suspected. He

should have known she would catch on quickly, she

was really smarter than the others. Smarter, and with

the clear advantage of having known him most of her

life.

With a last pang of regret he closed the door to

the back of the king crew cab pickup before moving

to the driver’s side and getting into the vehicle.

He stayed on the back streets, easing through

them and making his way to the end of town before

pulling the mask off and driving the speed limit the

rest of the way.

He didn’t have far to go. There was a small

gravel and dirt road that led to where he’d told the

other man to meet him. Once there, he would turn her

over to the killer whose lust for blood made him

exceptionally easy to use and to control.

The man wasn’t good for much else but killing.

He’d fried his brain with too many drugs years before,

and existed on autopilot until he scored the next fix.

Give the man a fix and he obeyed every command

given and didn’t remember a second of it the next

morning.

For the first time since the killing had begun, he

knew he wouldn’t be participating. He usually took that

first taste of them, raping them while they still had

some fight to them. But he couldn’t, not with Jaymi.

He couldn’t hurt her himself.

He couldn’t stay and watch her be hurt.

He’d have to trust the drugs to have done the

work this time as efficiently as they had the past five

times.

Jaymi would be the last nail in the Callahans’

coffin. Once her body was found along with another,

more significant piece of evidence, the Callahans

wouldn’t be able to excuse their way out of murder.

There was no way to save her. There would be

no way to save the Callahans. And the truth of the

events that began this tale twelve years ago would

continue to rest in peace along with the bodies of the

grandparents that had set the events in motion.

He’d killed them. He’d been forced to kill their

sons and their sons wives that snowy day as they

returned from Denver. He hadn’t wanted to, but he’d

had no choice. What they had been doing, and what

they had found in that safe deposit box no one had

known JR and Eileen Callahan had rented, could have

destroyed them all.

Him included.

He couldn’t let it happen. He couldn’t let them

destroy everything he had killed the cousins’ parents

for.

And it could have ended there.

It should have ended there.

And it would have, if only Jaymi hadn’t realized

who was calling. And if he wasn’t certain she would

figure out he was killing as well.

All for the greater good, of course, he told himself

as he had been telling himself since that first life had

been taken. It was all for the greater good.

But this time, with this woman, he knew the lies

were catching up with him.

It wasn’t for the greater good.

It wasn’t for his own good.

It was for the good of a man that only gave the

orders and refused to bloody his hands.

It was for the good of a family that would throw

him to the wolves if it meant saving their own asses.

And he had no intentions of taking that fall.

At least, not alone.

CHAPTER 2

Rafe sat in the jail cell, silent, staring unblinking at the

stone wall across from him, trying to ignore the blood

that stained his clothes nearly two days after Jaymi’s

death. The sheriff refused to allow them to change

clothes or shower. Swabs had been taken for DNA.

But despite the tech’s request for the clothes, it had

been refused. Sheriff Tobias commented that he

needed to wear Jaymi’s blood a while longer to

realize what he had done to her.

He could hear his recruiting officer in the sheriff’s

office yelling. Ryan Calvert had a strong, booming

voice. It carried through the jail and caught attention,

but for Rafe, Logan, and Crowe there was very little

that could penetrate their shock, even now.

“I know I killed him.” Crowe repeated again. “I put

that knife straight inside his kidney. It was a kill blow.”

At twenty-two Crowe shouldn’t even know how to

make a kill blow with a hunting knife.

But he had. Unfortunately, the blow had come too

late.

They had come too late.

Rafe was yanked back, hours before, to the

memory of Jaymi’s screams echoing through the

forest, jerking the cousins awake as they camped at

the side of the lake and sending them crashing

through the forest to find her.

They had followed the glow of a fire higher up

Crowe Mountain. Followed her screams which were

agonized and enraged. They had rushed into the

clearing as her attacker’s knife plunged into her side.

Crowe hadn’t been able to save her.

After the black-garbed figure had jumped from

her, his pants still pushed below his hips his round

eyes filled with fear as he ran. Crowe had crashed

after him, tackling him to the ground as Rafe ran for

Jaymi. He’d been aware of Crowe struggling with

Jaymi’s attacker. Crowe’s knife had gleamed in the

moonlight before a high-pitched scream had sounded

and the assailant had managed to grip a stone and

slam Crowe in the head with it, before escaping.

The knowledge of her death shadowing her grayblue

eyes, Jaymi’s last thoughts were of her sister.

She was sick. “Take care of Cami,” Jaymi begged,

crying. As he held her, as her blood soaked into his

clothes and Logan made the desperate 911 call.

“Please, Rafe, swear it.” The harder she had

sobbed, the faster her blood had flowed from her

body.

“I swear, Jaymi,” he vowed hoarsely knowing she

was struggling to hang on. “I swear I’ll always watch

out for her.”

There was no saving her.

Rafe had applied pressure on the wound. He

held her. He screamed at her and demanded she live.

And still, she had reached up with one hand shaking,

touched his cheek and whispered, “She loves you,

Rafe. She’ll always love you so much, just as I love my

Tye. Give her a chance when she grows up.” Tears

had washed her face as he rocked her, his own

cheeks damp as he realized he was losing her

forever. “Promise me. Take care of Cami.” Then

Jaymi had looked over his shoulder and smiled

before whispering, “Rafe, it’s Tye.” Her lips had

trembled as such joy flooded her face, her dying gaze.

“He’s finally come for me, Rafe. Tye finally came for

me—”

And she had died. With the greatest joy that Rafe

had seen on her face since the day she had married

her precious Tye, he watched Jaymi slip from life as

he screamed out her name.

But the sheriff hadn’t believed the men.

The sheriff and his deputies had arrived ahead of

the state police. Immediately he and his cousins had

been handcuffed and arrested as Jaymi’s murderers.

And now they were trying to pin the five other murders

that had occurred that summer on Rafe and his

cousins.

The black-masked serial killer had been caught

on surveillance taking Jaymi outside the pharmacy the

night before. Her sister, Cami, had reported Jaymi’s

disappearance hours later when Jaymi didn’t return to

the apartment with the medicine she had gone for.

That morning when the pharmacist went to unlock

the back door he had found the medicine, Jaymi’s

key, and the door unlocked.

When he had pulled up the camera footage for

the sheriff, they had seen the abduction, which had

been taped just hours before Logan made that

desperate 911 call. She had been taken at the same

time witnesses had seen him and his cousins getting

gas in town several blocks away.

Ryan Calvert, the recruiting officer who had taken

an unusual interest in him and his cousins, had

managed to get a copy of that security footage before

the sheriff had gotten to it. Gunnery Sergeant Calvert

hadn’t rushed to the jail to bail them out, or to hire the

nearest lawyer. The minute he’d heard the report over

his radio and remembered seeing the Callahan

cousins in town as he drove to his hotel, he rushed to

the combined truck stop/gas station and restaurant

and made nice with the manager, Missy Derringer.

Thankfully, Missy was a friend. Perhaps not a

friend that publicly claimed the Callahans, but a friend

nonetheless. They did have a few, sometimes.

Being the owner’s daughter had helped. She’d

quickly copied the security footage before her father

could order otherwise and gladly gave it to the

brooding Marine demanding it.

It hadn’t helped.

They were still sitting there in a damn jail cell two

days later wondering how the hell it had happened.