Midnight Sins

by Lora Leigh

  “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 y
ou 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.