by Lora Leigh
Archer continued to wait.
“We argued over the alleged altercation,” he growled. “She wants to show them mercy. I want to boil them in pig fat, peel the hide from their flesh, then de-bone them like fucking chickens.”
Archer groaned.
“Geez, Crowe, tell us how you really feel.” Anna’s disgusted exclamation had him shaking his head at her.
“Did that argument include the information that this isn’t the first alleged altercation,” Archer mocked.
“It did,” he agreed. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Crowe.” Anna moved behind Archer’s shoulder, her expression concerned. “Listen, you are not going to make her press charges.”
“As much as I love you, baby sister, butt out,” he growled.
“Then let me say it.” Archer sighed, his raptor gaze piercing as he stared back at Crowe. “Listen to her, Crowe. Let her talk to them, let her get this out of her system. Those boys might have scared her this time, but there’s more behind this than you know…”
“Yeah, they had bad lives. They were beaten and deserted,” he snapped. “So join the fucking club. The rest of us don’t get drunk and threaten to rape and cut out the heart of an innocent person.”
The hell she was going to drop those charges.
“I’ll be there this evening around six to pick her up,” Archer stated, his voice suddenly hard, alerting Crowe to the fact that he wouldn’t be swayed easily. “And I will be bringing her to the jail to talk to them, and I will heed her wishes unless a damned good reason to do otherwise comes up.”
Crowe narrowed his eyes on his friend. “You’re speaking to me, Archer, as though I’m not a reasonable man,” he drawled, knowing he was getting ready to be damn unreasonable.
“No, I’m talking to you like a man who has no idea of the depths of mercy and compassion his lover possesses,” Archer stated coolly. “I do. I’ve worked with her, Crowe. I’ve worked with the people she helped and the people she took more than one fucking beating for, and I’ll be damned if I’ll see her sacrifices wasted because you’re unaware of the nature of the people you’re dealing with or the men she’s protected, agreeably, for far too long. Come to the jail with her, let her talk to them. Then talk to her yourself.”
Gritting his teeth, Crowe held back the snarl that threatened to erupt. “I’m sick and tired of being told how I don’t know people—”
“Not people, Crowe,” Archer sighed. “The people of Corbin County. It’s different here and you know it. The very fact that the socials are still so successful should tell you that. I’ll see you this evening.”
The call ended before Crowe could tell the man to go to hell. Or question him about the beatings Amelia had yet to tell him about.
An oversight he intended to correct. Quickly.
Letting himself back into the control room, he had no more than begun reading the diagnostics on the video and audio systems when the system itself sounded an alert.
Unauthorized attempted access, main gate. Alert, unauthorized attempted access, main gate. The computer’s mechanical voice repeated the warning as both Cameron and Crowe moved quickly to the monitor displaying the front gate.
“Holy Mother of God,” Cameron hissed through his teeth. “Is that who I think it is?”
Reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose, Crowe let a grimace tighten his face before breathing out his own curse.
“Yeah, it’s him,” he snapped.
“Do I let him in?” Cameron asked doubtfully. “He’s gonna be as pissed and mean as a rattler in August.”
“That’s his normal disposition,” Crowe sighed as he stared at the glare the attempted intruder was directing at the screen.
Fuck you, Crowe, John Caine mouthed at the camera. Let me the fuck in. Now.
“Let him the fuck in,” Crowe breathed out. “I’ll go downstairs and see if I can distract him long enough to get him back out the door.”
“Yeah, good luck,” Cameron muttered. “Didn’t someone tell me old Sorenson’s main suite was his now?”
Crowe slammed the control room door on the question and stomped down the hall to the curved staircase and the brother he wished he could send packing for just a little while longer.
CHAPTER 16
Sweetrock’s spring-summer social season always began on the last weekend of April. The opening event, the Corbin County Winter Ball, was an event every young girl, teen, and female adult looked forward to all winter. It was considered more exciting than the senior prom because everyone could attend. Old, young, and in between, everyone had the chance to dress up and dance the night away.
Beneath the walkways of the dance square, pipes had been laid decades ago that carried heated air and kept the bricks free of snow and ice.
Nothing short of a blizzard or ice storm ever stopped an event during the social season. And not even that stopped the Winter Ball.
One of the most important phases of planning the ball was ensuring that every woman, teenager, and preteen girl who wanted a gown for the highly popular event was able to acquire one.
Donations of gowns and cash to the fund that sponsored it were always given diligent attention. Sponsors often attended yard sales, estate sales, and buyouts in search of gowns to add to the collection.
Volunteers helped with alterations, while accessories were gathered and made available by the same means.
Each gown had to be returned in the same shape it went out, with the exception of any normal cleaning requirements. Other rules governed the gown transactions as well. For the most part, those rules were adhered to. After all, most parents and adult recipients had no desire to have their name printed in the local paper, listed on the courthouse wall, or announced over local radio as owing the Social Planning Fund anything, whether it be a dress or the required volunteer hours.
This was the reason the socials were so successful, with such a high rate of resident participation and donations, in an age when few small-town yearly traditions were surviving.
The upcoming Winter Ball was the first of the events that Amelia had worked toward for seven years. The theme was Fantasy Winter Wonderland, and each grotto would be decorated accordingly. One had winged fairies, figures volunteers were still working on, that would seem to flutter above the ground in welcome. Another was decorated as Pegasus’s stall; a large white horse figure had been completed the year before. There was a grotto with a large looking-glass screen that projected the image of a magical advisor.
Gargoyles filled another grotto. Three-foot elves held a tea party in yet another.
Volunteers would be costumed with tiny wings and pointed ears and would play the Old World–style hosts.
For Amelia, knowing that the plans she’d initiated were progressing—even though someone else now carried the title of coordinator—was bittersweet. That Anna had demanded the position only to inform the committee she would of course find a reliable co-coordinator was incredibly amusing.
There were only six months to the Winter Ball and only eleven months to the Fairy Ball. Dozens upon dozens of wings were waiting in auxiliary storage, and still more were being made or fitted. Some guests were making or purchasing their own, and still others had volunteered to serve as non-fairy hosts.
Standing in front of one of the twelve grotto easels, studying the design layout she’d created, Amelia leaned close and carefully sketched in the winged foal that a group of high school design students had created for an end-of-semester project.
They had contacted Anna that morning to inform her of the creation, which had been completed the week Wayne had been identified as the Slasher, to add to the county’s social fairy ball weekend. It had proven Ruth Anne’s declaration that participation would suffer for the ill will held toward Amelia thanks to Wayne Sorenson and Amory Wyatt. And it had reminded Amelia that no sacrifice she had made in the past would change that.
She couldn’t even blame town residents for their fear. Wayne ha
d shed blood for generations. He had murdered his victims unhindered and unsuspected no matter the law enforcement agencies or private investigation firms hired to track down the Slasher’s identity.
“What the hell is going on here?”
Amelia’s eyes widened as she jerked back from the drawing and swung around to meet the furious gaze of the man everyone believed was her brother. If she could have chosen someone to be her brother, she had to admit, John would have been on the short list of possible choices.
Staring into his stormy gray eyes as three of Crowe’s bodyguards flanked him in the foyer, she shrugged as though weary of battling the reality of her position any longer.
“Ask Crowe,” she suggested with a tight smile, still less than pleased with the fact that Crowe had not supported her concerning the Carter brothers. “They’re his flunkies, not mine.”
Poor Rory Malone. Amelia hid her amusement as he directed a chastising glare her way. He really didn’t deserve that, but he was one of the black-clad shoulders she couldn’t see over whenever she wanted to leave the house. And he was also one of the men pounding on the Carter brothers the day before.
“Amelia, I told you, I don’t hire flunkies,” Crowe growled as he entered the room from the dining room.
He wore snug, low-slung jeans and a black shirt, the sleeves of which were rolled to just below his elbows, the tail tucked into the belted band of his pants. The dark colors called attention to his hard abs and powerful thighs.
He’d exchanged the boots from yesterday for a pair of more traditional cowboy boots, though he’d opted against a Stetson.
She only smiled. A tight, mirthless curve of her lips that held not so much as an ounce of amusement. She ignored his glare, just as she had been ignoring it all day.
“Call off the damned flunkies, Crowe,” John snapped. “I do live here with my sister when I’m in town whether you like it or not.”
Crowe grunted at that, though he did give the security personnel a tight nod to dismiss them.
Amelia shook her head as Rory turned and left the room. “As long as you remember that’s the relationship,” Crowe drawled.
Anger flashed in John’s gaze.
“Screw you,” he muttered, the anger hardening his tone as Crowe leaned against Amelia’s mother’s antique wood cabinet, his arms crossed over the broad width of his chest.
Crowe only chuckled at the suggestion as Amelia turned back to the colored drawing she’d been working on.
“How long will you be in town this time?” Crowe asked him.
“Until I leave.” Lazy disregard filled John’s expression. “Do you mind if I talk to my sister for a few minutes or is she under some damned house arrest I wasn’t aware of?”
Crowe straightened slowly. “Since when do you have a problem with your sister’s protection, John?”
The latent warning in his tone had Amelia turning back to the two men with a frown.
“Since I walked into this house to a tension thick enough to cut with a knife and the knowledge that you’re playing into this fucking county’s attempts to ostracize her by keeping her locked in here.”
Crowe turned back to her mockingly. “Have I locked you in, Amelia?”
She took her time tucking her pencil behind her ear before breathing out heavily. “I’m allowed out of the house as long as the living wall of muscle you hired is shuffling in place around me.”
John’s stormy gaze narrowed. “Meaning?”
Amelia rolled her eyes. “You know, six of his flunkies surrounding me, shoulder-to-shoulder, and taking every step I take? A living wall.”
Crowe slid a long, lazy look her way. The amber gleam in his gaze held a promise of retribution.
She would have been worried where that look was concerned, but it wasn’t as though he would actually hurt her. At least not physically.
“Big mistake, Crowe.” John shook his head as a rumble of laughter vibrated in his chest. “But the original question stands. Can I talk to my sister alone?”
Crowe shrugged. “Just do yourself a favor and don’t let her talk you into letting her leave the house without protection the way she managed yesterday and again this morning.” Crowe shook his head at her. “And how she had the gall to lie to a friend like Rory, I haven’t figured out yet.”
“Are your tightie whities still in a twist over that?” She acted surprised. “Really, Crowe, I just wanted to check the mail.”
Crowe turned to John. “Rory assumed she meant the mailbox at the end of the driveway, not the post office in town. She’d managed two of the six blocks before the rest of us caught up with her. And that was after assuming she would never do anything so stupid again after several drunks caught sight of her yesterday when she slipped out of the house and made it to town. They were dragging her into the town square after deciding she made a handy tool to punish Wayne for his crimes.”
Amelia sniffed indelicately. “I told you, Crowe, that wasn’t a serious threat.”
“Threatening to take turns raping you before they sliced your heart out is definitely what I call a damned serious threat. Dammit, you just told me last night you understood that you shouldn’t have left the house alone.” He turned on her incredulously. “For God’s sake, Amelia.”
“He uses that phrase far too often.” Crossing her arms over her breasts and cocking her hip challengingly, she chanced a glance at John. “It was the Carter brothers. And until he allows me to go to the jail where he had them thrown and discuss this with them, then yes, he and I are at odds and all bets are off when it comes to obeying his trifling little dictates.”
“For God’s sake,” he muttered again.
“Uh huh,” John agreed as he caught her look before turning to Crowe. “She’s not going to listen to you where those three are concerned. Give it up.”
The exasperation in his tone had a smug smile tugging at Amelia’s lips, all but enraging him. Watching her, Crowe couldn’t believe the rebelliousness and sheer determination she possessed.
“You’d make a mule question your damned stubbornness,” he bit out, gritting his teeth.
“They’re bozos and they were just drunk,” she reminded him. “Last year they threatened to sell me to white slavers after raping me. Crowe, I told you, they can’t be taken seriously.”
The look on Crowe’s face wasn’t comforting in the least. It was downright dangerous. John watched the argument with far too much curiosity.
“Amelia, do you really think I’m going to continue to allow that?” Crowe asked, his voice strangely gentle considering the savage gleam in his eyes.
“Why bother.” Pulling the pencil from behind her ear and tossing it carelessly to her desk, she shot him a furious look. “It’s not as though you’ll even be here to make it stick if you do try to stop it. So why not just stop with the damned threats already.”
Amelia was tired of dealing with this.
She’d thought, after the past night and the hunger she’d felt in him, the emotions she could have sworn she saw in his gaze as he took her, that he would soften at least marginally. But he’d refused to even discuss the Carter brothers with her, or allow her to call Archer after he hadn’t answered her email.
“Dammit, Amelia, since when have you even given me a chance to take care of anything today?” he accused her, his voice a hard rasp now. “I’ve been so fucking busy chasing the damned glitches on that computer I haven’t had time to do anything else.”
“All I needed was a yes or a no,” she reminded him furiously.
“All you need is a damned spanking for being so fucking stubborn.”
She saw it in his face then. He had no intention of taking her to the jail. No intention of allowing her to see the three brothers.
Swallowing tightly she squared her shoulders, blinking back the tears of betrayal and turning to John, resolving to herself that if Crowe could cut her out of a decision so crucial to her own peace of mind, then she could at least give the appearance of cutting
him out of her heart.
“How long will you be home?” she asked, ignoring the rasp of pain in her voice. “I know the house seems a little full at the moment, but the security agency that stepped in and took control of my life is rather large.”
“Amelia,” Crowe growled dangerously.
She didn’t so much as flick him a glance. “And I’d fix dinner, but there are a lot of mouths to feed and currently, no cook. I’m not exactly safe around the stove.”
“Sounds like another pizza night,” John offered with somber gentleness.
“Pizza it is.” She nodded. “Though as with all things, you have to check with the warden before ordering. He tends to be a very cautious man. Let me know what he says.”
Turning on her heel she moved back to the desk, picked up her pencil, and turned back to the drawing.
* * *
Crowe felt like punching something. He had a feeling if he hit the wall, though, all he’d gain from it would be sore knuckles.
“Might as well give in,” John sighed. “When it comes to those three, from what I understand, even Wayne gave up protesting.”
“Because he knew they’d kill her eventually,” Crowe grunted.
“If that’s what I thought, then I would have already taken care of it.” John shrugged, his voice lowering. “Or called you. I understand you take care of dirty little projects like that free of charge, without so much as a request.”
Of course, the bastard worked with Ryan Calvert so he no doubt knew of Stoner Wright’s demise.
Crowe stared back at him icily, daring him to go farther, well aware that despite the lowering of his tone, Amelia could hear every word her brother uttered.
“What are you after, John?” Crowe said.
“The truth.” John shrugged. “Just the truth. Rather like these tabloids I’d say.”
From the pack at his feet, John bent and pulled a handful of newspapers from inside before tossing them to the floor. Uppermost and center was a picture of Amelia at the news conference she’d given, Crowe standing behind her.