Deadly Sins (12 page)

Then, before she went to bed this morning? The little wench. If she’d been naked it wouldn’t have aroused him more. Dressed in a black floor-length, flowing gown and a see-through black chiffon robe with just the slightest little train behind it, she’d blown his fucking mind.

That was the romance in her.

Fuck him six ways from Sunday but that romance had never been the turn-on that it was now. With this woman.

He’d known it was there. He’d seen it in the softness of her eyes every time he looked into them. He’d felt it in her kiss and in the innocence of her response when she’d come in his arms.

But son of a bitch! God have mercy on his black soul!

She’d looked like a damned fairy princess or something and his dick had responded with an iron hardness that had been damned uncomfortable. All he wanted to do in that moment was replace the innocence with pure sensual, sexual knowledge.

With a temptress’s heat.

A lush, sexual goddess who knew how to make him insane and used it ruthlessly.

But even in her innocence she was already doing that.

At times, he found himself actually having fun with the teasing games they were playing.

Then, he would glance across the yard, wouldn’t see her, and the disappointment, the loneliness, would grip him again.

Son of a bitch, he wished Rafer and Crowe would track down whoever had hired the bastard who had attacked Rafer’s fiancée, Cami, last month.

As Rafer and Crowe worked their end, Logan had been attempting to work his during the day, but his excursions into town weren’t too successful.

It didn’t matter where he went or who he tried to talk to, he was still watched with wariness, suspicion, and even fear. He wondered if threatening a few would work.

Sighing, he leaned against the door frame again, his gaze narrowing on the shadowed house across the side yard before a frustrated curse slipped past his lips.

This was it.

The minute he saw her moving around, he was going over there. He would explain what he could. Attempt to make her understand the threat, the danger, she could face if she dropped his guard and let her into his bed.

He’d have to make her understand what losing the sight of her, the knowledge of the life that glowed in her eyes, would do to him.

It would destroy him.

The teasing, the sense of waiting, it was going to have to stop. His attention was becoming too divided by the woman he couldn’t keep his hands off.

So much for all those years of training the government had paid so much money for.

It could work if injected with truth serum or if any number of other agents designed to compromise him or his strength. But he’d be damned if he could work past the thought of the pain he’d put in her eyes that last night.

It was after two in the afternoon, and still he hadn’t seen Skye or the pup venture through the house. But then, he hadn’t really expected Skye to.

He never saw her in the morning. Once the sun rose, the house became still and quiet until late in the afternoon. She slept through the day in the small in-law suite that had been built onto the house by a previous renter.

Logan hadn’t been so sure about the addition when he’d agreed to it; now he almost wished he hadn’t allowed it, despite the additional rent he was able to charge for the place. Because he couldn’t stare into the windows of that suite. It was on the other side of the house, away from his own.

Where he couldn’t see Skye, where he couldn’t watch her, get to know her at least through her habits.

He knew from her rental application that her employer was listed as a major software firm, her job title that of editor for instruction and design manuals.

It sounded damned boring to him and not really a job he could imagine she would have subjected herself to.

Pushing away from the patio doors at the sound of the doorbell ringing, Logan grimaced and made his way from the room, despite his reluctance to answer the door.

He should ignore it.

He didn’t want company, and he sure as hell had no intentions of putting up with it. For twenty years the good citizens of Sweetrock, and of Rafferty Lane in particular, had ignored the injustices against the Callahan cousins and watched as they were disowned, participated in snubbing them, and refused to testify to the fact that Mina Rafferty Callahan had cherished her only child as well as her husband.

Moving down the stairs, Logan raked his fingers through his hair and grimaced at the memories of the past. Memories he simply didn’t want to revisit yet had no choice now that he was back in the house where he’d spent the first eleven years of his life.

Pulling the door open, he stared at his visitors coolly despite the small tingle of warning that came to life just beneath the skin at the back of his neck.

“Archer, can I help you?” Logan leaned against the door frame and crossed his arms over his chest as he noticed the neighbors gathered on the porches and in their yards along the street.

Another day in Sweetrock,
he thought furiously as he turned his gaze back to the sheriff and the stranger standing still, watchful, and armed behind him.

Archer pulled the dun-colored hat from his head before raking his fingers through his dark hair in a gesture of frustration.

“Logan, this is Detective Ian Staton from Boulder. We need to talk to you.”

Dark-haired, his craggy features set and stone-hard, the detective watched Logan from icy, hard blue eyes. Jeans and a cotton shirt, a casual sports jacket that hid the shoulder holster Logan detected beneath it, and well-worn leather boots on his feet.

“Now, Logan.”

There was something about the demand that grated on his senses and had the small hairs at the back of his neck tingling in warning.

Logan stared back at them coolly. “So talk.”

“Privately, if you don’t mind,” the sheriff sighed. “You don’t want this here in front of your neighbors.”

Logan narrowed his gaze warningly at the sheriff. “Crowe and Rafer okay? Cami?” His gaze shifted to the detective.

“As far as I know.” Archer nodded. “This isn’t about them.”

Logan stared at the family standing on their porch across the street.

Mr. Williams, his wife, Nila, and their four children were staring back at Logan as though he had killed their dog. Williams had his brawny arms crossed over his chest, his rounded belly curving out beneath them.

“Fuck it.” Stepping back, Logan let the two men into the house. “Want some coffee?”

“If you don’t mind.” There was an edge of relief in the sheriff’s voice.

“We really need to get this taken care of, Sheriff,” the detective demanded, his tone harsh. “Coffee wasn’t part of the agenda.”

“Then pencil it in, dammit,” Archer ordered, his tone harsh. “I told you, you’ll handle this my way.”

Judging by the look on Archer’s face, he was pretty damned sure he didn’t want to know.

Logan led the way to the kitchen, put the coffee on, then as the dark liquid ran into the pot turned back to the two men.

Archer was keeping a careful distance between them and him, assuring Logan that his cousins might be fine, but someone wasn’t.

Or something wasn’t, and Logan was damned sure he didn’t want to know what it was.

Weariness, guilt, sorrow. The emotions flashed through him as he fought the knowledge he could see in the sheriff’s gaze.

A knowledge that hell was about to revisit.

“What’s happened?” Logan asked as he turned and poured the coffee, more to give himself something than out of any need for the caffeine. Setting the two cups on the center counter, Skye’s counter as he now thought of it, Logan crossed his arms over his chest and waited.

“We’ve talked to your neighbors,” Archer sighed. “No one will say one way or the other if you were here Saturday night/early morning or not, if you left or if they saw you at all.” There was a growl in his voice, an edge of anger as Logan felt himself tensing.

Archer needed an alibi for him.

No one was going to stand up for him here, though, in other words, and it was obvious he was going to need it.

He found it strange, though, that they weren’t swearing whatever the hell they thought would get him in the most trouble.

“And I haven’t finished installing the security system either,” Logan stated.

That was a lie, but he had no intentions of revealing the extent to which the inside of the house had been wired. It was the outside he hadn’t yet gotten around to. He’d only reveal the fact that the inside was done though, if he had no other choice.

“Do you have an alibi for Saturday after midnight, Logan? Specifically, between three thirty and five?”

Logan paused as he lifted the coffee to his lips. His gaze locked on Archer’s before he completed the motion, brought the cup to his lips, sipped, then lowered it.

“Does it matter?” he finally asked.

Skye O’Brien hadn’t been happy when she’d left the other night, so he wasn’t certain she would attest for his whereabouts that night.

“It fucking matters, Logan,” he snapped as the detective beside him shifted, his hand lying on the butt of his weapon, a secondary at his hip. Logan set his coffee on the counter and recrossed his arms over his chest.

“Do you have anyone who will go on record as having seen you between three thirty and five that morning?” Archer’s tone was sharp now.

Logan gave a mocking laugh. “What do you think? Why don’t you just tell me what the hell is going on?”

“This is bullshit, Sheriff,” the detective growled then. “Why are you wasting your time? You have the DNA evidence and it matches. Stop fucking around.”

Logan felt something in his stomach clench as the words “DNA evidence” filled the room.

“Archer, what the hell is this?”

The sheriff slapped his hat against his thigh as his jaw clenched, fury raging in his gaze.

“A rancher found Marietta Tyme out by Wiley’s Creek early yesterday morning,” the detective stated coldly before Archer could speak. “She’d been raped, tortured, sliced in so many areas she looked like a cutting board, and her throat sliced. A witness places you at her home at three Saturday morning, putting her in that black pickup parked in your garage. You tore your jeans on a thorn bush, Callahan, and forgot a glove. We have your fingerprints and we have your DNA, on scene. I want you to lower your arms and turn around, we’re taking you in for the murder of Marietta Tyme.”

Logan wanted to sit down.

He needed to sit down.

He wanted to give in to the need to ram his fist down that arrogant detective’s throat, then find a way to accept what he was being told.

Instead, he stood silent and still and just stared back at both men.

He wanted to convince himself this was just another nightmare, that somehow he’d manage to slip back into sleep and find himself once again enmeshed in the tortured dreams he found there.

“The Slasher?” His voice was even but now harsh with fury. He could hear it, and he knew the two men watching him warily now heard it as well. “There’s no way my DNA was there, Archer.” But mistakes like that weren’t made. If Archer was there, and he wasn’t denying it, then there was no mistake.

“You’re going to have to come in with us, Mr. Callahan,” the detective repeated. “Let’s not make this difficult.”

“Was it the fucking Slasher, Archer?” he snarled back at the man he liked to call “friend.”

“Same MO, same type blade.” Archer nodded. “We found your fingerprints at her apartment as well as a leather jacket you’re known to wear, also with your prints.” Archer swallowed, glanced away for a second before his gaze returned. “Several feet from her body we found a piece of torn denim, there was enough perspiration to run DNA. It was unmistakable, Logan. It was yours. As were the prints on the glove we found.”

Logan’s teeth were going to crack, he was clenching them so hard.

“I left the jacket there last month.” He breathed out roughly as he met Archer’s gaze. “It was the last time I saw her. It was the only time I was at her house.”

But she had called a few times. Laughing, flirty, inviting.

He’d ignored the invitation and hadn’t returned for his jacket.

And now she was gone.

“I need an alibi, Logan,” Archer said again.

“He doesn’t have an alibi, Sheriff,” the detective bit out with icy rage.

Logan let a harsh, mocking sneer curve his lips as he watched the sheriff. “Because myself and my cousins haven’t been targeted to be framed again, right?”

Archer sighed wearily. “One of her neighbors became worried when they hadn’t seen her in the past four days. He called her employer, found out she hadn’t been to work, then reported it to Missing Persons. The report came in to Detective Staton yesterday morning. He was on his way down here to question you when Tim Robbins called. He owns that little place on Wiley Creek? He reported a naked female who appeared dead at the creek’s bank about a mile from the main entrance to his place. I sent my deputy, John Caine, out to check on it.”

Logan nodded slowly, fighting the truth of what he was hearing as Archer continued. “Staton and I drove straight out there as soon as he contacted me, and the detective confirmed her identity. But Caine had already found her ID. We came straight here from the crime lab, Logan.” Archer shook his head. “It was bad. The coroner puts her death between three thirty and five Sunday morning, and her killer put her through hell first.”

Between three thirty and five Sunday morning. Yeah, Logan had an alibi, but he doubted very seriously Ms. O’Brien would stick her neck out for him. No one else on the fucking street was willing to do it.

“Logan, you have to give me something,” Archer demanded. “Something to at least give me some room to maneuver. If I don’t arrest you on this, then the Barons, the mayor, and the city council will have my ass. Give me a fucking alibi, man.”

The Barons. John Corbin, Marshal Roberts, and Logan’s grandfather Saul Rafferty. The city hall was made up of their puppets, and no doubt the mayor may not have given in to the pressure to target the Callahans yet, but Logan had faith he wouldn’t hold out much longer.