Deadly Sins

by Lora Leigh

  “I’m working on the root of the problem,” he told them then. “I have several men in the area keeping an eye on other concerns I’ve had. I’ve had them begin looking into this. Once I learn what is going on, I will of course ensure that you get that report.”

  “And what makes you think you can learn more than we have so far?” Logan asked, his gaze narrowing.

  “Because I have sources you do not, as well as favors owed in circles I am certain you are even unaware exist,” Ivan informed him.

  Logan’s lips quirked. “Point taken.”

  Skye, like Cami, simply sipped her coffee and watched the byplay.

  “Very well then.” Ivan turned to Rafer. “I have refused to accept Skye’s IOU for this,” he informed him. “I instead will require one from you.”

  “That wasn’t the deal.” Logan came out of his seat then. “Rafe has nothing you want, Resnova. If you want an IOU, then I’ll give it to you.”

  “It is not your woman I am protecting,” Ivan informed him as Skye glared at him now. “This will come from your cousin, and your cousin alone.”

  “No.” Cami attempted to rise, winced, and sat back down. “No, I won’t let him.”

  “Then you will die,” Ivan said gently.

  “Stop this, Ivan.” Skye spoke softly, firmly. “Don’t turn this into a pissing match. Don’t make an enemy of me.”

  Ivan turned back to her slowly, clearly more than a little shocked. “You would do this?” he asked her. “When our history is much greater than that here? You would disavow it because I refuse to trade your life for hers?”

  “That’s not the case. You said you owe me. You’re doing this for me, not Rafer and not Cami. For me.”

  “For him.” He nodded his dark head to Rafer. “It is his responsibility.”

  “And one I’ll accept,” Rafer snapped.

  “Like hell.” Skye marched toward Ivan furiously. “These men owe you nothing. You owe me. So let’s not play games here. If anything happens to Cami because of your arrogance and determination to draw the Callahan men into one of your future schemes, I would hate you,” she promised him. “But even more, I’d ensure Amara knew exactly what you had done. You’ve raised her much different than you were raised. Her illusions of you would be shattered.”

  He stared back at Skye silently for long seconds. “You would use Amara in such a way?” He seemed sincerely disappointed in her.

  “I love him, Ivan.” She spoke clearly, her tone even and firm, without a hint of the fear suddenly surging through her. “I would use any weapon I could find. And if anything happened to him because you refused to protect Cami, then yes, I would use Amara against you.”

  “I made the offer to allow you to accompany her,” he pointed out, his tone dark, his gaze icy. “To protect you as well. Should you come along, then I would honor the IOU I gave you in exchange.”

  She shook her head again. “I’m not wounded. I’m trained for this, as you well know. And I won’t let you manipulate me that easily to get Amara to come home.”

  His eyes became impossibly colder.

  “His daughter refuses to come home because of the marriage he’s attempting to arrange between her and his head of security,” Skye informed the others as she crossed her arms over her breasts and stared back at Ivan mockingly. “Amara’s currently in college, studying to be a lawyer.”

  “A prosecutor.” He spat the word out as though it left a bitter taste in his mouth. “And she threatens me often with it.”

  “I won’t be the tool you use to get her home. And it wouldn’t work anyway.”

  “It would.” The sulk that suddenly shaped his lips was worthy of any two-year-old boy. “She loves you.”

  “She loves the career she wants more,” Skye informed Ivan. “Now stop acting like a damned spoiled brat. You can take the IOU you owe me and stop trying to piss Logan and his cousins off just to see how hard they hit. Trust me. I’ve read their dossiers. They hit damned hard.”

  “I too have read them,” Ivan snarled back at her.

  “But I read the ones you don’t have the contacts to acquire yet,” she told him smugly. “Doesn’t that suck? I might, might, be kind and feel extremely generous to you at a later date though, should you need to see a file in that particular ‘eyes only’ department.”

  That gleam in his eye was the same any kid would get at the thought of Christmas.

  “Very well.” He rubbed his hands together, leaned forward, and, using his utmost charm and engaging smile, began to outline the plan he’d already had formed.

  Skye kept the triumph from her expression, knowing it would incite Ivan to be bad again. But God, she wished he were her brother. Or her father.

  Somewhere in her life she wished she’d had a protector like him as she grew up.

  *

  “Are we all in agreement then?” he asked an hour later as the four men were huddled over the file Ivan had brought in with him that outlined not just his plans but also the security on his Colorado ranch and the two contacts whose identities he’d revealed.

  “Agreed.” Logan, Crowe, and Rafer all nodded before turning to shake Ivan’s hand.

  The air of male camaraderie was enough to turn a woman’s stomach. Glancing at Cami, Skye watched her grimace and roll her eyes and knew she was thinking the same thing.

  “Well then, Ms. Flannigan, shall we escort you to your carriage?” Ivan’s grin was wicked as he glanced at Rafer. “As your fiancée has been wounded as well, I of course get the supreme pleasure of bearing your weight.”

  Cami’s expression as she glanced between Ivan and Rafer was, frankly, close to fear.

  As they’d talked, Rafer had torn his jeans, removed his boot, and wrapped his leg as Ivan had instructed him. The bandages had been stained with food coloring to imitate blood, and the appearance that he was now out of commission and unable to help his cousins, would be solid.

  “Skye, you should have been my sister.” Ivan turned to her suddenly, his expression somber. “Though, had you been my sister, I would have of course done more to protect you than those who were charged with the job. And you would have not had reason to run and hide in such a place to escape a job your heart was never truly a part of.”

  And how had he seen that when she herself hadn’t known it until this moment?

  “I would have liked you for a brother, Ivan,” she told him as she accepted his hug, this time without Logan glaring at Ivan as though he were ready to cut his head off.

  Minutes later, his bodyguards were called in. Two supported Logan’s weight as another carried Cami to the middle SUV.

  At the sight of Cami, her shirt ripped and the bandage showing behind her shoulder, and Rafer being supported by the two mountainous men and helped to the SUV, both Sheriff Tobias and his deputy, John Caine, along with the mayor and Wayne Sorenson, started toward him in concern.

  Three of Ivan’s men intercepted them, arms crossed.

  “Get the fuck out of my way before I arrest you,” Sheriff Tobias snarled, and he was more than serious.

  When Ivan walked to the bodyguard, Rafer and Cami were safely in the vehicle and Rafer’s “wounded” leg hidden by the closed door.

  “What the fuck happened, Rafe?” Archer snarled.

  “Someone came after Cami,” Rafer told him quietly. “I had her stashed in Boulder with three bodyguards from a security firm I hired. One sold me out, Archer. He called John Corbin and within two hours an assassin hit the safe house she was in.”

  Archer seemed to pale. “Are you sure of that? Do you have proof?”

  “Mr. Resnova here has the guard’s cell phone and the text as proof. He’ll be turning it over to the FBI as soon as we have it duplicated.”

  Archer looked as though he had been hit by a brick. Passing his hand over his face, he shook his head and swallowed tightly. “Damn, I was hoping—”

  Hoping Crowe’s grandfather, or any of their grandfathers for that matter, wasn’t involved.

>   “Yeah, so were we,” Rafer admitted.

  “If you are finished threatening us, Sheriff, my jet is waiting at the Carstanza airfield in Aspen. We must be going,” Ivan said.

  Aspen wasn’t exactly where the plane had been left. Actually, it was in the opposite direction.

  Archer nodded before moving back. “You take care. Of both of you.” He nodded to Rafer and Cami before turning and stalking back to the car.

  Watching Archer, Skye was careful not to glance at the deputy leaning casually against his official car, the frown on his face as he watched the vehicles pull out a sure sign that no one from the bureau would have wanted Resnova involved.

  She’d have to figure out exactly how to cover that one, she thought. Considering the bureau was well aware of her past with him, there really wasn’t much she could do.

  Making certain she avoided Caine’s gaze, feeling it on her, knowing, just as she had known for days now, that he and his partner wanted to talk to her, Skye turned back to Logan.

  He was watching her carefully, his gaze narrowed on her.

  “Everything okay?” she asked as she moved close to him and felt his arm curl around her waist.

  “Everything’s fine,” he promised. “Let’s get back into the house; we have our own plans to make.”

  Plans that didn’t include Archer or Deputy Caine.

  Logan didn’t glance back, but he wasn’t a stupid man. He’d seen Caine attempt to get her attention, and his suspicion that Caine was likely to be an agent was too strong to ignore.

  The escalation of violence against them also seemed to be drawing in more hands to help than Logan had ever expected.

  No, it wasn’t the escalating violence, he admitted. It was his Skye.

  She had drawn the townspeople to her first, then drew him to her. Now, it seemed, she was determined to draw them all together.

  “I’m ready to sleep,” she sighed as they entered the house.

  “Crowe will keep the world out, baby,” Logan promised as he led her to her bedroom suite. “You can sleep all you like now.”

  Because he had no doubt, once she awoke, the battle would only heat up more than ever.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “There are monsters in the dark, baby girl. Always remember that monsters love the dark. Don’t sleep. Don’t drop your guard. Don’t ever let another know where you close your eyes. The monsters will always search for you. The monsters will always watch for you. Monsters are beautiful and their nice eyes are caring and their smiles are bright. Their teeth are jagged and their souls are black and they want nothing more than to destroy my bright and wonderful little girl.

  Her mother’s voice was a whisper in her ear, penetrating the serenity Skye had found in the darkness of sleep. Penetrating the warmth of Logan’s embrace and bringing a frightened whimper to her lips.

  Because she knew what came with the warning. She knew what lived in the darkness, what would seek her out if she dared to sleep—

  But it hadn’t been dark when she had gone to sleep.

  “The monsters will love you, Skye. They will feed you and they will warm you. They will care for you and they will clothe you. They will hold you when you cry, and laugh when you laugh. And when you close your eyes, they’ll rip your heart from your chest. You can’t love anyone, Skye. Because the monsters are everyone. Only Mommy and Daddy love you. Only Mommy and Daddy are not monsters. You can only love Mommy and Daddy—”

  She hadn’t remembered the order. She’d forgotten how her mother used to have the doctor put her to sleep and in that cold, white, sterile little room. And while she slept, her mother had whispered the words to her, and showed her with words and the horrific images that filled her young, sleeping mind, what the monsters were like.

  But she remembered now—

  Moving through the darkness, she wasn’t a little girl any longer, though. She wasn’t a child desperate to please her parents or to ensure that the monsters never found any of them.

  “The monsters will kill Mommy and Daddy if you trust them, baby girl—”

  And they had.

  The monsters had come for them while Skye had slept, too young, her body too immature to keep up with the demands of remaining awake as darkness covered the ocean-front home they had lived in that summer.

  Skye had lived in a lot of homes in her young life.

  In a lot of countries.

  And she was no longer a little girl to be scared of the dark, she told herself.

  Yet it wasn’t the darkness of reality she feared. It was the darkness that wrapped around her as she slept, that weighed heavily on her mind, and once again danger visited in the form of monsters.

  Because her mother was right. Monsters loved to hide in the darkness. That way people never saw their true faces, never saw the evil that was so much a part of them.

  She moved through the darkness, pushing aside barely discernible shrubs, pushing past shadowed bodies and moving toward the light she could see growing ahead.

  She had to reach the light—

  As she moved around something lying in front of her, Skye came to stop, a broken, muffled cry passing the hand that covered her lips.

  Looking down at her feet, she saw what she had stepped in, what had stopped her. Her bare feet were immersed in the sticky, wet, scarlet-red puddle of warm blood.

  Crouching on her heels, she pulled a pair of latex gloves from her pocket and drew them on slowly before pushing the body to its back and staring into the dark, recriminating eyes of the first victim she had tried to save.

  Blond hair was red from the blood that soaked it. Blue eyes stared back at her in painful blame.

  “Why didn’t you help me?” The look seemed to scream. “Why didn’t you save me?”

  “I was too late,” she whispered.

  “You were too slow,” the victim cried out in frustration. “You forgot about the monsters.”

  She had concentrated on the suspects she’d been given by her team commander rather than remembering her mother’s words and focusing on the shy, scholarly old man who lived beside the girl. The one who swore he hadn’t heard her screams.

  “Hearing’s not what it used to be.” He would tug at his ear and gaze back in apology.

  “You can’t trust the monsters, Skye, you can only trust Mommy and Daddy,” her mother whispered at her ear again.

  Turning, Skye looked desperately for her mother, wondering why she refused to allow Skye to see her in her nightmares.

  “Just love Mommy and Daddy, baby girl. Just Mommy and Daddy,” her mother’s voice became a hard, brutal snap.

  “Trust me, Skye.” Standing before her was her daddy’s brother, Uncle Liam. With his bright, bright green eyes, his card tricks, and his laughter.

  He winked at her and blew her a kiss.

  Skye felt the smile that trembled on her lips though she knew what was coming.

  “You can trust me, baby girl.” Uncle Liam held out his hand to her as he turned to her father. “Tell her, Douglas, she can trust Uncle Liam.”

  Her father smiled gently and said the code words. “Skye baby, you can trust Uncle Liam with Daddy’s life. Yes?”

  That yes had to be in there. It was there. And it was her daddy with his smile and his warm arms holding her close.

  But suddenly, he wasn’t holding her close any longer. And Uncle Liam was a monster as he stood beside her parents’ broken bodies, bathing in their blood.

  “No. No,” she whimpered, her arms wrapping around her stomach. Had it been her fault? Had she been the reason her parents had died?

  “Love no one, Skye,” her mother was screaming at her, though her lips didn’t move. Her corpse only bled. “Love no one. I warned you not to trust the monsters, Skye. Never. If you love, then you love a monster. Or you love an innocent that a monster will kill. Because monsters will always follow you.”

  And suddenly, it wasn’t her parents’ blood dripping on the floor. It wasn’t a victim’s broken body
lying in the dirt.

  It wasn’t Skye dying as she had always dreamed before.

  It was Logan.

  Suspended above the ground, his emerald-green eyes sightless, his arms hanging toward the ground as Skye began screaming.

  Someone had to hear her screaming.

  She went to her knees, only to feel his blood, warm and wet. She covered her face with her hands, but his blood was there, too.

  She was screaming, screaming, begging him to wake up, begging him to live—

  “I said fucking wake up!”

  Her eyes jerked open as her body was suddenly hauled upright, a grip on her upper arms shaking her ruthlessly, forcing her from the nightmare.

  Logan’s face was white, his expression savage with whatever fury was building inside him as Skye stared up at him.

  Her face was wet. Her hands were shaking.

  She could feel the perspiration dripping down her body and the panic that still thundered through her senses.

  “I’m sorry.” her voice was hoarse, a sure sign that the nightmare had been a bad one.

  “What the fuck was that, baby?” Smoothing her hair back from her face, his hands shaking, Logan stared down at her, his face still retaining a bit of a pale cast.

  “Nightmare.” A nervous laugh was all she could force past the tightness in her throat. “Just a really bad nightmare.”

  She wanted out of the bed. She wanted to get away from the sweat-dampened sheets and the reminder that sometimes she wasn’t even safe to sleep in the daylight.

  It was a sure sign that her senses were picking up something that her brain hadn’t yet processed. Something that it would return to in a much more deadly, dangerous form if she didn’t figure it out.

  “Just a nightmare? Baby, that was nothing so simple as a nightmare.”

  She shook her head. “I need to shower.”

  She needed to get the feel of blood, thick and wet, sliding down her body, out of her senses.

  Logan released her as she moved to the edge of the bed, forcing herself to stand up and not reveal the unsteadiness of her legs.

  “How often do they happen?”

  “The nightmares?” She breathed in roughly and headed to the closet for clothes.