Deadly Sins

by Lora Leigh

There was obviously more to it.

  She knew there was.

  The tension in the room was enough that even the puppy lifted her head with a bemused expression.

  “Well, now you know,” Skye informed Archer with blatant hostility.

  “I’m taking the word of a woman who obviously has a sexual interest in the suspect,” the detective stated coldly.

  “Oh, but I assure you, you will take my word for it.” Skye dropped any pretense whatsoever of being the innocent, offended neighbor.

  She was about to completely blow her cover, and likely piss Logan off for the next decade.

  But she was tired of this particular little game.

  She’d spent nine years training and serving as a highly regarded undercover agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. These three men might be completely unaware of her background, but that didn’t mean she didn’t know how to use it.

  Detective Staton sneered back at her. “I don’t know who the hell you think you are, Ms. O’Brien, but I don’t have to take your word for jack shit.” He gripped the butt of his weapon at his side as he turned to Logan. “Let’s go, Callahan.”

  “Now hold on, Staton,” the sheriff injected.

  “No, Sheriff, you hold on,” the detective snapped furiously. “This has been a comedy of errors since we walked through this damned door. A woman is dead, her body found in your county, naked, tortured, raped, and her goddamned throat sliced. I’d be a fool to take her word for anything.” His finger stabbed in Skye’s direction insultingly.

  Her brow arched. “I suggest you contact your local FBI office, Detective Staton. While you’re doing that, I’ll make a call to the Director of the FBI in DC, then I’ll contact his wife, Lena, who considers me more or less a part of the family. I’ll even shed a few tears when I tell her how rude you’re being to me. Tell me, how do you think that’s going to go over?”

  Logan stared at her, careful to keep his expression completely blank, to show no outward emotion. Not anger, not suspicion, and certainly not the betrayal crawling up his back like invisible fingers of savage fury.

  He could feel it burning in his gut, racing through his senses, and for one insanely violent moment he was ready to put his fist through the wall.

  He should have just told Archer about the phone call to Saul Rafferty. Hell, he wished he had just told Archer and that bastard detective about the inside video footage, time-stamped and including audio.

  He could have gotten rid of the half-hour portion that showed him with his head and his fingers buried between the little betrayer’s legs. He could have told Archer why it was deleted and then refused to open the back door when she came knocking.

  “You need to leave now.” He opened the door politely. “Good-bye, Ms. O’Brien. And don’t worry about the pup; I’ll take care of it myself from now on.”

  Skye stared back at him silently now, all too aware of what she had just revealed and exactly how quickly the knowledge would spread through town once each authority had filled out his paperwork.

  She was smart enough to know, though, that very, very soon she was going to have to tell Logan anyway. Tell him that as a matter of fact she had been with the Federal Bureau of Investigation since she was twenty-two years old.

  But she didn’t have to tell him the whole story right now. Not yet. Her heart might not survive the rejection from the man who was slowly stealing her heart.

  “Leave now.” His voice lowered, throbbing with warning, with danger.

  “I’m sorry.” She finally found her voice as she fought the sudden realization of what her silence may have cost her. “I was going to tell you—”

  “Now.”

  She had to forcibly still the trembling of her lips and fight back the sudden fear.

  The fear that she might have lost him before she ever had him.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Slamming back into the house, Skye jerked the cell phone from the case at her hip and quickly hit a secured number.

  “Damn. I think Detective Staton taught me some new cuss words,” her contact commented, his tone so low she could barely hear him.

  “No doubt,” she murmured. “Meet me somewhere. I want to see the crime scene.”

  Silence met the demand.

  “Don’t even bother coming up with excuses. I don’t have a lot of time before Staton has the director on my ass and I need to get this done.”

  “You don’t want this,” he denied quietly. “Let it go, Skye. You have enough nightmares.”

  Unfortunately, they’d covered each other’s asses enough that he would be well aware of her past, her loss, and her nightmares.

  “I know where it is. I’ll go alone.”

  She was gathering up her weapons, latex gloves, paper covers for her boots, and the bag she carried her evidence kit in.

  “There’s nothing there, dammit,” he hissed. “Don’t you think I would have fucking found it? Just like I found the denim and the glove.”

  “And did you tell anyone it was planted?” she snorted.

  “Why do you think Archer was able to bargain for a chance to question Logan rather than being ordered to arrest him outright?” she was questioned fiercely. “For God’s sake, Skye, you can’t do this. You’re not ready for it.”

  The sharp, hard facsimile of a laugh she emitted held a bitter vein of pain and anger. “Don’t bet on it. I have my gear and I’m rolling. You can meet me out there and give me validation if needed, or I can keep doing this myself. I’ve been on my own before. Haven’t I?”

  It was a reminder.

  Yes, she had been on her own, and she’d nearly paid dearly for it because the partner she’d had at the time had refused to listen to her.

  Thankfully, this agent hadn’t been her partner at the time.

  “Fuck,” he cursed brutally.

  “I’ll meet you at the exit to the property. I want all the crime scene photos and the evidence log. And I know you can get it for me,” she informed him. “I’ve always covered your back when you’ve needed me, John. Even when neither of us knew you needed me. Are you going to leave me out in the cold?”

  He wouldn’t.

  She disconnected the call before grabbing the laptop case she’d packed everything into and moving quickly from the house.

  She rarely drove the older model sedan she’d requisitioned on her last assignment. The agency had given her the use of it as long as she kept the cover, and until the final appeal was made in that conviction, she’d be able to use the cover. She hadn’t had to testify, which ensured the background created for her remained unsullied.

  Driving from town, she resisted the urge to allow free the pain tightening her stomach. It wouldn’t be the first time someone she cared for had walked away from her. In her line of work, either she walked away, or they did.

  She’d never cried before. The drive gave her a chance to think. A chance to figure out what she was going to do where Logan, the Callahans, and her reason for being in Corbin County were concerned.

  At the moment, Corbin County was an interesting little place, not just to Skye but to the FBI in general.

  Twelve years before, the bureau had been called to the county to profile and investigate the deaths by the Sweetrock Slasher—a rapist that kidnapped his victims, tied a perfect red bow around their would-be lovers’ pillows, and several days later left his victims’ naked bodies in areas the Callahan cousins were known to frequent.

  It had been evident, even at the time, to the profiler that someone was trying to frame the Callahan cousins.

  The profiler guessed there were two or more killers from small differences in a few of the ribbons tied around the pillows and the angles of the knives into the bodies. But, and this had never been told to local authorities, the profilers had never believed the Slasher was one or all of the Callahans. The bureau had kept that information as “eyes only.” Just as they had kept the reasons for their profile under the same directive.

  The fact tha
t there was a conspiracy to frame three young men had concerned the FBI, just as the evidence they’d uncovered of a political conspiracy had concerned them.

  Evidence they had never been able to substantiate until the past year.

  The fact that the killings had stopped in Corbin County after the Callahans went to the military had only strengthened that profile.

  Now the Slasher had struck again. Skye was expecting a call anytime. Once the agents assigned to the investigation in Corbin County on other matters learned she had given Logan his alibi, hell, that she was in town, period, they would call the director and have her pulled from the area immediately

  Thankfully, “medical leave” would go a long way to getting her a little leeway, but not much. The director could, and she knew he would, pull her out, though. That leeway would only give her a few days if she were very lucky.

  And God help her when her foster father, the governor of Colorado, learned what she was doing. He would hit the roof and probably come to Corbin County to pull her out himself.

  The drive to the turn-off to the area Marietta Tyme’s body had been dumped was perhaps thirty minutes from town, and only a matter of miles from Crowe Mountain.

  Whoever was committing these crimes definitely had a hard-on for the Callahans.

  John was waiting for her.

  Leaning against the deputy SUV, a glare on his face, the dunn-colored cowboy hat pulled low over his eyes, giving him a dark, dangerous look.

  “I don’t like this,” he told her as she slid into the passenger seat of the SUV after parking and locking her own car. “Fucking Archer will have my head for this. You know that, right?”

  “I know you’re going to piss me off if you keep protesting,” she told him in exasperation. “Give it up, John. I’m here. This is the first solid lead we’ve had in years. The girl who went missing last year was never found, even though proof that Lowry had her was found in his basement. Come on, John. There has to be something, somewhere, that was missed.”

  “Nothing was missed.” His fist suddenly slammed into the dash of the SUV he drove with violent precision.

  Skye didn’t bother to flinch, though she rocked with the force of the SUV slamming to a stop as he turned in his seat to glare at her.

  “I processed the motherfucking scene myself,” he snarled, his expression twisting in lines of fury. “The son of a bitch disinfected her, Skye. Inside and fucking out. Do you get that? Everything was disinfected but that damned glove and piece of denim we found.”

  “And that didn’t trip anyone’s radar but yours?” she asked, shocked.

  “Archer’s.” Grabbing his hat from his head, he tossed it to the dash before raking his fingers through his hair viciously. “Definitely the agent in charge. But Staton was chomping at the bit. I’ve never seen a man so determined to crucify a man with such a history of attempted framings behind him. He was a madman.”

  “Did anyone check into his background?” she asked as he slammed the vehicle back into drive and threw gravel and dirt as he hit the gas.

  “We have a background report on him due in by the end of the day,” he growled, glancing at her as he drove along the bank of the swift-running creek. “But if we were going on evidence alone, without your alibi, he’d be in handcuffs and behind bars.”

  Skye breathed in roughly.

  “Everything is clean. The tarp, the sand around the body. There were no tire tracks, no prints, no blood. The scene was so damned clean it sent a chill up my spine. The body was so clean—”

  He didn’t go on.

  “Everything but the denim and the glove,” she finished.

  “Yeah, that was about it.” He brought the SUV to a smoother stop several yards from the crime-scene tape that stretched from tree to tree in a half-acre radius.

  He didn’t say another word as he handed her the file he’d brought along. It would hold pictures, a complete computer-generated 3D layout of the scene, as well as satellite images if possible.

  Moving from the SUV, she quickly covered her shoes, pulled on gloves, but didn’t bother to pull the evidence kit from the case.

  She knew John. If there was any evidence out there, then it was left after he’d vacated the scene.

  She was aware of him hanging back as she stepped behind the tape and moved to the marker still labeled as the location of the body.

  Pulling the picture free as she bent her knees and rested on her haunches, Skye stared at the faint outline of a body in the sand.

  Then she laid the picture over it and dropped her head. To hide her tears. To hide the sudden jerk of a sob that tore through her and sliced through her soul.

  It wasn’t Marietta Tyme she saw. It was the pictures she’d managed to pull of Amy’s death. The sight of her foster sister sprawled out on the forest floor, her eyes wide and unfocused, the evidence of her pain forever frozen in the mask of death she’d carried.

  “I’m sorry,” she suddenly whispered as she covered her lips with her hand. “I’m so sorry.”

  Whether she was talking to Marietta or Amy, she still wasn’t certain.

  What she knew was that this crime scene, other than the location, had been nearly identical to the details of her sisters.

  “How long did she lay out here?” she asked the other agent.

  “Not long, Skye,” he promised her. “Overnight, I imagine. No one saw anything though, so I can’t say for sure. There are too many variables we won’t know until her killer is found.”

  He moved away again and Skye realized her face was damp once again with her tears.

  God, this made twice. Her emotions were so ragged right now she had no idea how to repair them once again.

  “Six dead twelve years before. One missing and presumed dead six weeks ago. Cami Flannigan attacked twice and nearly killed both times,” she murmured.

  “Multiple murderers controlled by one puppet master,” John finished.

  “All bows tied within acceptable parameters of the one before it. All bodies disinfected before being dumped. Twelve years ago, the rapes were committed in the forest, the missing girl and now Marietta, each without a primary crime scene. All fourteen, linked to the Callahan men because they slept with them or were presumed to have slept with them.”

  “To drive them out of town?” John mused. “The men, that is.”

  She shook her head. “That’s how it appears, isn’t it?”

  “Making it immediately suspect,” he grunted.

  “There’s something deeper going on here,” she murmured.

  “Sheriff Tobias has been investigating it since Logan Callahan and his cousins returned to town,” John told her. “I’d just been hired as deputy when they showed up. Days before their arrival, their uncle was killed in the weirdest damned tractor accident that a country boy could imagine. It’s been downhill for them from there.”

  She spread out several more of the pictures, each taken from various directions around the victim’s body.

  “He enjoyed what he was doing,” she said softly as she noted the slicing marks in Marietta’s pale flesh. “He cut her throat last.”

  “Coroner believes she was brain dead at that point,” John stated. “The report came in just before you called me.”

  Turning her head, she glanced back at him before returning her gaze to the pictures once again.

  This woman had shared the same fate as Amy. She demanded justice in the same way.

  “Suspects besides Logan?” she asked.

  “You’re kidding, right?” he grunted.

  Yeah. Right. No one wanted to look past Logan.

  “Who knows I’m here now?” She glanced back at him and saw the mockery on his face. “Everyone. Staton was calling the director in DC as I left. I think I even heard the director scream in rage. Sounded like your name, too.”

  No doubt it was.

  Flipping through the file, Skye couldn’t help but grin as she reached the back copy. A full copy of all the information inside.
<
br />   Yeah, John knew she would take it. That didn’t mean she could let him see her do it.

  Sliding the file beneath her t-shirt, she picked the pictures from the sand, ensured no grains remained, then returned them to the folder.

  She had to quickly wipe the tears from her face.

  Men in the Bureau, as well as other agencies, still had problems with their feminine counterparts shedding tears for the dead or dying.

  They saw it as weakness rather than the pain of the knowledge of what the victims had suffered.

  Few female agents allowed themselves to cry. Few male agents acknowledged their need to do it occasionally.

  The tears would come again, though, Skye was running on borrowed time there and she knew it.

  She’d just lost a man she hadn’t meant to care for. She’d seen it in his eyes. Seen it in his expression.

  If he could, he’d ensure she never became a part of his life.

  Or a part of his heart.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Crossing the street to the town square, on foot, after parking the car back at the house more than an hour earlier, Skye headed to the tavern at the far end of the street.

  Thankfully, “medical leave” would go a long way. The director couldn’t force her into the operation. At least, not yet.

  The Sweetrock Tavern was the only bar in town—or in Corbin County for that matter—with a liquor license. To say that the Barons, the three largest ranch owners, ran the county and the town was an understatement.

  The owner of the Sweetrock Tavern, Amos “Chando” Wright, was John Corbin’s half brother’s son. When Chando’s mother had died in childbirth with his father working as the ranch manager, Regina Corbin had taken the infant in and raised him herself. As Chando had matured, a rift had seemed to grow between them, though no one seemed to know why.

  Corbin, along with Saul Rafferty and Marshal Roberts, retained a loyalty to Chando, though, that their grandsons had never known. Using one loophole after another, they kept any other applications for a liquor license from being approved.

  Skye knew it was a situation that was currently being looked into by the FBI under their white-collar crime division.