Midnight Sins (64 page)

voice, pitched low and filled with danger that had a

chill racing up Cami’s spine.

There were rumors he, along with Rafe and

Crowe, had trained as snipers in the Marines. That

they were three of the military’s sharpest, coldest

killers.

She could believe it. The lives they had lived

hadn’t exactly been easy in Corbin County. That dark

bitterness could have easily transferred into a rage

that would see Rafe going after more than one target.

“Let’s go,” Rafe said, his voice carefully low. “I

want to give Crowe time to meet the agent from our

security company in Aspen to pick up some

equipment we need.”

“And I want to make damned sure if she slips into

the house that I’m there to greet her.” There was

nothing welcoming in Crowe’s voice as he turned and

began leading the way to the SUV they had driven to

the ruined garage in.

“This is getting out of hand,” Cami protested as

the fear still crawled through her system like a

potentially killing virus. “What are they hoping to

accomplish? Why do you and your cousins’ presence

threaten them to the extent that they would go to these

lengths?”

“We remind them of the past,” Crowe stated

quietly. “And of a loss they don’t want to accept.”

“And you accept that?” she asked, more

surprised than she would have thought she would be.

“That’s not a good enough reason, Crowe, and it’s

gone far enough.”

“Evidently it hasn’t gone far enough,” Rafe

answered her, his voice cool. “They’re still pushing,

Cami, and I have no intentions of leaving this county

again. They’ll find out fast enough, they can’t run us off

now any more than they could do it twelve years ago.

The Callahans are home to stay.”

CHAPTER 22

Cami stood at the wide bay window of the breakfast

nook just off the kitchen and stared into the backyard

that night, her arms crossed over her breasts, her

fingers curved over the balls of her shoulders.

And she waited.

Darkness had finally rolled in. That pure pitch

dark that only came when winter was putting up its

final battle before acceding to the coming spring

warmth.

The back porch light was turned off. The house

lights were out and Rafe, Logan, and Crowe were

sitting at the breakfast table, their voices low, barely

discernible amid the static pouring from the AM radio

sitting in the center of the table.

Static, Rafe had explained, would cover their

voices if they had somehow missed the bug that

might have been placed within the house. Or not.

Either way, he explained, it was insurance.

Her lips thinned. Insurance. Insurance against

their conversation being overheard as they discussed

the past and the possible reason why?

Why did the Corbins, the Raffertys, and the

Robertses want the Callahans out of town so

desperately?

Why did the citizens of Corbin County follow

three families who had turned on their own

grandchildren? Even more important, at the time they

were the only grandchildren those families had.

Clyde Ramsey, Rafe’s uncle, had taken all three

boys in. He had called each of them his boy and

would stand in any man’s face, or woman’s for that

matter, red faced, his gray eyes bulging, his heavy

nose twitching, as he defended each of “his boys”

against the dictates of crazy old men—Saul Rafferty

and James Corbin—who thought they had to attack

children for the fact that their daughters had had

minds of their own and hearts of their own.

Clyde had been known to say often that he hadn’t

approved of his sister’s choice of husband, but by

God, his wife’s parents hadn’t cared much for him

either. But they sure as damned hell, he’d claimed

several times, had not disowned their beautiful little

baby girl.

Saul and Tandy Rafferty, Logan’s grandparents,

had doted on Logan, as long as his mother, Mina, had

been alive. When she had died, Logan’s

grandparents had joined the Corbins in attempting to

take the inheritance that went to Logan on her death,

just as the Corbins attempted to do with Crowe and

Dale and Laura Ramsey had done with Rafe.

It just didn’t seem reason enough, though.

“Clyde knew something,” Rafe murmured. “He

called before the accident, but I was on an operation

and didn’t get back in time to return his call. At the

time, I didn’t think a lot of it, but it was rare for Clyde to

try to get hold of me while I was out of the country.”

Because he knew what Rafe did, Cami

suspected, and knew it would do very little good to try

to get hold of him.

“He could have called one of us,” Crowe

reminded Rafe.

“He didn’t trust us enough to tell us what was

going on,” Logan sighed, the words barely

decipherable above the noise of the generated static.

“Hell, he wouldn’t even allow us to stay at the

house when he wasn’t there.” Rafe’s voice held a

thread of amusement.

Cami could see both Logan’s and Crowe’s

expressions as well as Rafe’s. They all thought Clyde

hadn’t trusted them.

“Perhaps he thought we were going to steal the

silver,” Crowe stated with an irritable breath.

How three supposedly smart men could have

such tunnel vision she wasn’t certain.

“Maybe he didn’t want any of you hurt.” Cami

turned away from the window, keeping her arms in

place as she watched the three men in exasperation.

“Did Clyde ever say he didn’t trust you?”

The three men looked back at her, their

expressions knowing and suspicious.

“He said blood would tell,” Rafe stated somberly.

“He obviously simply didn’t trust Callahans.”

Yet these three men had cared for Rafe’s uncle,

and even more, they’d respected him. But they were

so wrong about Clyde.

“And you’re certain he was talking about you?”

she asked. “Or was he talking about the Corbins,

Robertses, and Raffertys? Three families who have

been known, for generations, to strike out in violence

if needed. Perhaps he was more worried about his

‘boys’ than he was about his silver?”

“And you come up with this how?” Rafe sat back

in the chair, arched his brow inquisitively, and stared

back at her, his eyes so deep, such a dark blue, she

wondered if she could drown in them.

But the question held her attention. She knew the

answer to it, despite the doubt she saw in his eyes.

“Because the year my mother was the assistant

principal when you were in the eighth grade, Rafer,

just before she retired for medical reasons, Clyde

Ramsey had occasion to pay her a visit, and during

that visit he informed her quite frankly, and quite

furiously, that there wasn’t a single one of his ‘boys’

that would steal so much as a drink of water if they

were dying of thirst.”

Rafe’s gaze narrowed on her.

“You remember that, don’t you?” she asked him

softly, careful to keep her voice low, just as she had

from the first word she spoke.

“The principal, Todd Collingsworth, had accused

us of stealing brass from the science lab to sell,” Rafe

remembered, his expression thoughtful.

“I don’t think Clyde ever believed you’d steal. I

think he didn’t want you there alone, because it was

so far from town and anyone could have struck out at

you with no one knowing. But at the town socials, if

you stayed there, or later if you went camping on

those weekends he was out of town, then you were

much safer.”

The three of them watched her. The doubt she

had seen earlier was still there, but there was also the

knowledge that it was possible she was right. They

were considering her argument; that was what

mattered.

“Anything’s possible,” Rafe finally admitted. “It

doesn’t change the fact that he never told us of any of

those battles and there were only a few of the fights

we were aware that he had with the Corbins.”

The fights with the Corbins had been bad, but the

ones he’d had with his father and mother, Rafe’s

grandparents, had been particularly brutal several

times.

“Did you hear of the arguments he had with Dale

and Laura Ramsey?” she asked.

She didn’t call them Rafe’s grandparents. The

disrespect to Clyde and to Rafe was more than she

could bear.

“Let’s say, we caught wind of them,” Rafe sighed.

“Just as we noticed that neither of them were at the

funeral when he died.” Rafe’s voice hardened as his

eyes looked like chips of ice for just a second. “Clyde

never told us about them, though, and he never

admitted to them.”

Of course he couldn’t admit to them, Cami

thought. If the stories her uncle had told over the years

had been true, and Eddy wasn’t prone to lie, then

Clyde had nearly attempted murder the first time his

father and mother showed up in court against Rafe to

claim the inheritance Dale’s daughter had left to her

son.

“He did it to protect you. Jaymi told me of several

times Clyde came to the high school after she began

there as a substitute. The principal was known to run

and hide when his truck was seen pulling into the

parking area.”

Jaymi had always believed Clyde Ramsey had

loved each of his “boys” and had done his best by

them. Cami had always argued that he could have

done so much more.

“None of this answers the question on the table,

though,” Logan pointed out. “Why were you warned

away from Rafe, then attacked when you didn’t obey

the demand carefully enough? And why was Jack

Townsend’s place just blown to hell and back this

morning?”

“Are we sure it began here?” she asked them all.

“Jaymi was receiving the same phone calls. Maybe

we’ve been wrong all these years. Maybe she wasn’t

a random choice by a crazed serial killer. The FBI

said there were two men committing those crimes,

not just one. Maybe Jaymi was targeted for other

reasons? Because she refused to do as she was

told.”

“Why would anyone care to kill the women we

sleep with, Cami?” Crowe asked incredulously. “Why

give a fuck? There are no heiresses left in Corbin

County with the exception of William Corbin’s

daughter, and she’s rarely in Corbin County, let alone

around any of us.”

At that point, Cami’s hands fell from her

shoulders to allow her to rake her fingers through her