by Lora Leigh
“The wounds are consistent with the Slasher’s.” John sighed heavily. “And it looks like she’s been raped.”
Yes, she had been raped.
Heavy, dark bruises marred the skin of her inner and outer thighs, as well as her small breasts. Her eyes were open, staring out in unseeing horror and pain. A knife had cut into her body in far too many places to count them all in the dark. The most telling cut, though, was the puncture wound to her side and the one across her throat. The Slasher’s trademark wounds.
Blood marred her body.
She hadn’t even been cleaned before she had been deposited in this clearing.
“Rafer Callahan’s place, the old Ramsey Ranch, is just over the rise.” Caine nodded in the general direction.
“Callahans didn’t do this, John.” Archer wiped his hand wearily over his face before rising to his feet. “Call Nash in. See if he can justify that high-ass salary he demanded.”
Callum Nash, Corbin County’s new crime scene investigator, had been hired specifically for crimes such as the Slasher’s.
“Sheriff, Katy Winslow isn’t on the list of past Callahan girlfriends,” John stated quietly, turning to face him. “Hell, Crowe’s the only one not involved with someone right now. He would have told us if he had signed up with someone new, and he makes a point not to talk to any of the women in town.”
“Yeah, I know.” Archer was well aware of that fact, just as he was aware that Crowe deliberately ensured there was no way the Slasher could target another woman because of him.
“Has she been seen flirting with the other two? Talking to them?” Archer asked.
John was a regular at the Tavern and Bar. It was there that most of the gossip and rumormongering began or eventually filtered through.
“As far as I know, Katy doesn’t talk to many men at all. She’s been dating the bartender there since she was in high school.” Confusion filled the deputy’s voice. “Why kill her if she’s not associating with the Callahans?”
“Fuck if I know.” Archer sighed. “Call in Nash and Chayna. Let’s see what we can find, and start praying that bastard hasn’t found a reason totally unrelated to the Callahans to start killing again.”
Turning, Archer stomped back to his Tahoe, rage festering in his gut at the thought of the Slasher striking again.
The Slasher’s attention had seemed to focus on Rafer and Logan’s fiancées, who were now under the protection of Ivan Resnova. There had been some incidents, but he hadn’t managed to seriously hurt either woman. But why had he targeted Katy Winslow? It didn’t make sense. Sliding into the driver’s seat, Archer slammed the door before grabbing his cell phone from the passenger seat and dialing Crowe.
“Sheriff?” Callahan answered on the first ring.
“Crowe, how well do you know Katy Winslow?”
A dead silence came over the line for several seconds.
“I only know who she is, and where she works.” Crowe’s voice was hollow, emotionless. “I’ve never spoken to her. Not to say hello, excuse me, or good-bye.” He paused before breathing out wearily. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”
“It looks like one of the Slasher’s kills,” Archer confirmed his suspicion, his teeth clenching. “When I catch him, Crowe, and I will, I’m not promising I’ll save him for prison.”
Katy was a good kid. She and her boyfriend had been saving up for an apartment together. She was always smiling, always filled with laughter.
And now, she was dead.
“You’ll have to beat me to him,” Crowe informed him, his voice so icy cold it would have sent a chill up a lesser man’s spine. “Are you at the site now?”
Archer gave him the location before disconnecting the call, knowing Callum would have a fit over the interference, but also knowing the Callahans well enough to know that by not telling them he would have been risking the threat of them attempting to investigate or draw the Slasher out on their own.
Leaning back in his seat and closing his eyes, he deliberately brought Anna’s face to mind. He let himself remember the touch of her, the taste of her, the warmth that surrounded him as he touched her.
She was his weak spot.
For far too many years Anna Corbin had been the woman he ached for the most, and the one he knew he couldn’t have.
At twenty-four, she was sweet as candy, as temperamental as a volcano, and just as hot. And she was his.
He’d been claiming her since the evening he’d realized, to his soul, to the base of his hardening dick, that she was a woman.
Six years.
For six years he’d done everything he could, fought every battle, cursed himself, fought his desires, and ached for her.
She’d haunted his fantasies, invaded his dreams, and tonight, of all nights, had filled his senses with a pleasure he knew he wouldn’t be able to hold himself back from.
He’d told her to be certain what she wanted, because he knew once he got her in his bed, escaping it might not be easy for her if that was what she eventually decided she wanted. He was too hungry for her.
Fuck that, he was too damned horny for her.
The lust that raged through him where Anna was concerned was one that no other woman could assuage. If another could, then he would have ensured it was taken care of before now.
Before he touched her.
Before he tasted her.
Before he allowed himself to become addicted to the feel of her close to his chest, in his arms, and somehow awakening hungers he’d never known he had.
Archer could feel the fact that Anna was home to stay tightening in every bone and muscle of his body. She was a woman now, and he recognized that steely confidence he had seen in her eyes. She was a woman who knew what she wanted. He’d take her into his bed, but he would not let her into his heart—at least no more than she had managed already. Damn it, a man had to draw the line somewhere if he wanted to preserve his own sanity. In the meantime, he was going to ignore the voice in his head telling him that it was already too late.
CHAPTER 2
Two weeks later
“I’m not going back to college.”
Anna tried to ignore the four sets of shocked gazes that stared back at her as she stepped into the kitchen and walked to the coffeepot.
She’d made her declaration, and now she was going to make her stand.
“I didn’t hear you right,” her father replied coolly. “I could have sworn I just heard you say you were throwing away thousands of dollars already paid, on tuition alone, to one of the finest colleges in the state of California.”
“Not to mention one of the most secluded, out-of-the-way colleges on the face of the planet,” she retorted. “One I first begged you not to send me to, and have since demanded to be able to leave for another.”
“And that doesn’t count the apartment, furnishing it, clothing and food allowances—”
“Oh yeah, and that’s so much money in that dried-up little corner of the world,” she snorted. “Especially considering your so-called apartment is one owned by the school itself.”
She would have given her father’s argument much more respect if it weren’t for the fact that the college she was attending, as exclusive and high-priced as it was, was little more than a home for wayward children who gave little respect to the fact that their parents only wanted a future for them.
It was all but a prison.
And why was she there?
She hadn’t figured that one out yet.
She was three years through a four-year program, and she still couldn’t make sense of her family’s choice for that college.
What she had done, though, was cram those four years into three, and had the degree she had been sent there to attain in business management and consulting.
“Not to mention the fact that Jacques Dermonde’s offer of a position at his company in France is dependent on the completion of those courses,” he continued.
“And it also doesn’t take into account the
fact that I hated France when we visited it, and no consideration is given to the fact that I’ve said countless times that I refuse to work there. Especially for a man who forced his daughter into marriage with a man twice her age, and considers women no more than children who have to be controlled and fondled as he pleases.”
And what had ever made her parents believe she would allow herself to be controlled by anyone, besides themselves? And only then because of her love for them.
Pouring a mug of coffee she turned back to her family and felt her stomach clench in dread and trepidation.
This wasn’t the reaction she had expected.
There was no warmth, amusement, or even resignation in their gazes. For a moment, before she could turn her head away, Anna was even certain she’d seen rising fear building in her mother’s eyes.
“Lisa.” Her gran’mama, Genoa Corbin, addressed Anna’s mother as she rose slowly to her feet, reaching for the cane that sat by her chair. “You and I should let John and her father handle this.”
Lisa rose to her feet and Anna noticed her mother’s hands shaking.
“Yes, run away, Momma. This is, of course, the Middle Ages rather than the twenty-first century and I’m certain none of your business,” Anna retorted painfully.
“Have some respect for your mother, Anna,” her grandfather snapped, slapping her emotions with the brutal chastisement. “I raised you better than that.”
“Did you, Grandfather?” Straightening her shoulders and lifting her chin in determination, she faced him squarely. She hadn’t called him Gran’pop for several years now, for a reason. “You raised me to stand up for myself until I was nine, then you shipped me off and never did more than let me know which exotic location we’d be vacationing in during my breaks, despite my pleas that I be allowed to come home, just for a little while.”
“And here you are! Just look how you’ve repaid me for that,” he accused her, his tone forbidding and bleak.
“Anna,” her father snapped. “Stop acting like a spoiled brat. You will return to school today.”
“No, Father, I won’t. I’ve had the dean’s letters to the ranch collected before they ever left the school for the past three years. You’ve only been sent what I wanted you to see. I graduated before showing up here last week. I won’t be going back. If you and Grandfather won’t let me work with you here on the ranch, then I’ll find a job in town.”
“No one will hire you,” her father promised her.
It wasn’t just anger that made her father’s voice hoarse, vibrating with a rough, dark emotion. It was indeed fear, just as it had been in her mother’s eyes.
“They already have,” she stated quietly, clasping her hands in front of her. “I’ve been hired as assistant to Mikhail Resnova at the Sweetrock offices of Brute Force.”
She could have cut the tension in the room with a butter knife as pure terror seemed to flash in her father’s eyes.
Brute Force was her cousins’ business. Rafer, Logan, and Crowe Callahan were equal partners along with Ivan and Mikhail Resnova in the security venture.
“What are you scared of, Dad?” Forcing the question past her lips was one of the hardest things she had ever done. And she wouldn’t have asked if it weren’t for the fact that she knew he was frightened of something.
“Of your determination to ruin your life and your future,” he stated, his voice still hoarse. “I can’t believe you pulled this, Anna.”
But there was more. She knew there was more. She could see it in his eyes. Just as she could see the fear and desperation in his expression.
Anna shook her head. “Working on the family ranch, or for my cousins in town, is not the destruction of my life or my future,” she informed them. “And neither will any other dream I have. Dreams I deserve, Dad. I don’t deserve to be locked up in a college for wayward children, nor have I deserved to be separated from my family since I was nine years old.”
She’d hated that. She still couldn’t forget it. Nothing could ever hurt her as much as being taken from her family had broken her heart.
She’d been jerked from the home and the family she loved, and placed in private schools. She had called home when her fear of the dark had overwhelmed her, and they had refused to come get her.
She had cried, she had begged, she had demanded, and still they had refused.
“I’m tired of begging,” she told them when neither man spoke. “I’m not going back, and I refuse to beg further. I haven’t been a part of this family since I was nine years old, and I refuse to give you the courtesy of having any say in my future any longer. I’m staying in Corbin County, whether you like it or not.”
“No, you will not.” It was her grandfather who rose to his feet. “Fine, you’ve graduated without telling us, but that doesn’t mean you’ll work for anyone in this County or in the state of Colorado without my permission. You can take the job in France or you can leave with nothing but the clothes on your back and see how easy it is to feed yourself with nothing more than that. And don’t expect that no-account cousin of yours to do anything but laugh in your face. Because, by God, he hates us all.”
And if it had been only anger in his gaze, something other than that flash of terror that filled his eyes, then she could have hated him. She could have allowed the years of desertions, the dark, lonely nights and even more desolate days to feed the anger growing inside her.
She had no friends but one. She hadn’t had family to depend upon. She’d just been alone in one private school after another, with each move, each year until she swore she couldn’t bear another.
If she had seen disinterest or just anger in her family’s eyes, in their faces, then she could have hated them as she wanted to.
That wasn’t what she saw, but it wasn’t enough to hold back her own anger.
“Disowning another grandchild, are you, Grandfather?” She gave a facsimile of a mocking laugh, but nothing could cover the pain spilling from her. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
“If that’s what I have to do,” he snarled.
“Dad!” Her father’s tone was a shocked warning as he spoke to his own father.
“She’s been pushing for this for years,” her grandfather snapped. “She’s been begging for it. Always fighting over the fact that we preferred to meet her for a nice vacation rather than having her come here. Always running her mouth about her lack of family. Her lack of consideration in everything we gave her—”
“What did you give me?” she cried out painfully. “An education? Clothes? That’s all you gave me.”
“And just exactly what did you think we owed you?” he growled back.
“You owed me a family,” Anna yelled with overwhelming fury, so filled with pain and anger she was shaking now. “You owed me the same love and devotion you gave me before I turned nine. That was exactly what you owed me. That, or to tell me what the hell I did to make you hate me so much.”
The tears fell then. They filled her eyes, blurred her vision, and ran until she wondered if she would ever be able to stop them.
“Why?” she sobbed desperately. “Why do you hate me?”
“God, Anna, we don’t hate you.” Her father came out of his chair in a burst of anger so ferocious even Anna stepped back. “Why can’t you just accept that we’re doing our best to protect you?”
She shuddered, shaking with her sobs as she faced him.
“Because I don’t need to be protected from living. I need a life, Dad,” she cried, the pain building, burning inside her until she was terrified it would consume her. “Is that so hard to understand?”
“Then get out there and get you a life.” Her grandfather waved his arm to the door. “But don’t expect it to be easy. I promise you, no one in Corbin County will dare help you. Especially Crowe Callahan.”
“Like no one helped him, Rafer, and Logan?” she sneered back at him. “I always thought he must have done something so vile, so unforgivable, to have been denied your love. But
that’s not the truth, is it, John Corbin? What they say in town, that you punish him because you can’t punish his mother for leaving and allowing herself to die in that car accident all those years ago, is true.”
His face spasmed with pain. An agony unlike any she had ever seen filled his face.
“And if she had done as I asked, then she would be alive now,” he stated, his voice hoarse as another sob shook her body. “I won’t make that same mistake with you, Anna. You can start packing for France, or you can be cut out of our lives just as easy as David Callahan’s little brat was.”
Pain filled his voice and struck at her heart, but it was too late to back down. She had made her stand, just as her grandfather had now done.
“Is this how you feel as well, Dad?” she asked bitterly. “Would you cut me out of your life so easily?”
His jaw tightened as he refused to speak.
As far as Anna was concerned, that was answer enough.
“I’ll get my things and leave.”
“No you won’t.” The fury in her grandfather’s voice made her pause. “You haven’t bought a damned thing you call your own. Everything you have someone else has bought for you. You can leave this house the same way you came into it, with nothing. You should be thankful I let you have the clothes on your back,” he reminded her. “That’s all you leave with and you can count yourself lucky that I’m allowing you that much.”
Her chest tightened, her heart constricting until she was certain she would die from the agony tearing through her.
This was her grandfather.
She’d loved him all her life.
He’d spoiled her when she was a child, swore he would protect and love her, then he had sent her away, swearing it was for her own good.
He’d lied to her, cheated her out of a childhood, and now, he was attempting to cheat her out of the rest of her life.
“Daddy?” she asked. “Are you going to let him do this?”
Not even her purse? Or the car they had bought her for her sixteenth birthday?
The one she had so rarely gotten to drive?