Midnight Sins (52 page)

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.

CHAPTER 16

Cami listened from her hospital bed, dry-eyed,

resigned, to the sound of her father’s high, shrill voice

on the other end of her aunt’s phone.

She’d warned Ella, Eddy’s wife, not to call. Cami

had warned Ella that Mark could be nasty and that

since moving to Aspen he had rarely wanted to speak

to his daughter, let alone see her. Unless he needed

her for some reason, as he had the month before, to

help get her mother settled in the nursing home.

That, or to pay her mother’s bills.

She stared up at the pristine white ceiling and

wondered why that searing pain was no longer there.

Once, it had broken her heart that he hadn’t cared,

that he refused to allow her mother to care.

But perhaps, even more painful was the fact that

her mother would opt to medicate rather than stand up

for the child who needed her.

“I’ll not have that damned Callahan trash dirtying

my home or endangering her mother. Poor Jaymi,

she’d be turning over in her grave to know the sister

she thought so much of was still fucking the man that

raped and murdered her.”

Cami flinched.

There was such hatred, such bitterness in his

voice. Did he truly hate her so desperately for not

being the child that died? For surviving when his

favorite hadn’t?

Parents weren’t supposed to acknowledge

favorites. If they preferred one child over the other, it

was supposed to be a carefully hidden secret.

Mark had no remorse at all showing his

preference for the child that died, and his belief that

the wrong child had died. That he believed Cami

didn’t deserve to live when Jaymi had been taken

away from him.

“Mark, you’re a bastard,” Ella snapped at that

point. “How Margaret ever managed to stay with you

all these years I don’t know.”

She flipped the phone closed.

Cami didn’t lift her head; she couldn’t. If she had

to look at the pity in her aunt’s gaze then she might not

be able to bear it.