Deadly Sins (16 page)

She had been lying to him all along.

The secrets he’d suspected she was harboring and the ones he knew she was determined to hold back from him.

She was Carter Jefferson’s foster daughter. The papers of guardianship he’d found in the album proved it.

And she was the much loved younger foster sister Amy Jefferson had once mentioned.

When Logan had first met Amy, who was three years older than he, she was like a damned goddess. Tall, her hair a sun-streaked caramel, straight and silky soft. She’d always laughed at him. She’d had nice legs, though. Toned, as soft as satin, with a pleasant strength to them that had enabled her to keep up with him when they went hiking.

She’d actually danced with him at the weekend county social she’d attended when they first met. She’d thought it was amusing how everyone watched them.

If only he’d known then why she had danced with him and why she had sought out his friendship. If he had known he would have stayed as far away from her as possible.

Realizing who he was and hearing about the Stalker, Amy hadn’t told him what she was doing or who she was, and he hadn’t known until after her death.

She’d lied to him just as Amy had and she hadn’t given a damn how he would feel if she managed to get her ass killed.

Keeping his calm, keeping his head was nearly impossible now.

Damn her. What the fuck was he supposed to do now? How was he supposed to deal with the fact that she was evidently determined to get into his bed for one reason only?

To draw a killer to her.

Just as Amy had become his friend to do.

At the time, he’d been shocked that Carter Jefferson hadn’t blamed him for Amy’s death, though Logan had definitely blamed himself. Carter had even flown into Sweetrock to meet with Logan, his cousins, and their lawyer when the Barons had pushed to have the cousins jailed for Jaymi’s murder.

With him, Carter had brought the file Amy had put together while investigating the murders. She’d taken what the profilers had put together and attempted to find a monster on her own.

He’d found her instead.

Logan had spent several hours, after learning about Marietta’s death, on the phone contacting the other two women he had been with since returning to Colorado.

He had warned them of the danger, told them what had happened to Marietta.

They were pissed, to say the least. That and terrified. Because the news stations were already carrying the story of the rebirth of the Sweetrock Slasher.

Thankfully, for some reason, and Logan wasn’t certain why, neither his nor his cousins’ connection had yet been mentioned.

Remaining silent rather than discussing the problem with Crowe on the other end of the communications earbud he wore, Logan continued to follow a white heavy electrical line from the electric box where he had found it in the basement through the house.

He would lose it in one room, find it in another, tucked beneath a piece of carpet, the only sign being a frayed edge of carpet against the wall, a hint of wood shavings, no more than a speck that the sweeper had missed against another wall.

He tracked the line through every damned room of the house until he came to the small suite Skye used to sleep in.

The additional electrical line hadn’t been installed by a legitimate electrician, because Logan hadn’t received notice of it.

Even with his knowledge of covert surveillance and electronics, he’d been unable to pinpoint any specific area that the electrical line had powered.

But it was the memory of Amy, a friend he hadn’t intended to have, a part of his past he’d believed could never return to haunt him, that was twisting maliciously through his mind.

He should have found the information while doing the background check on her. It should have been there somewhere.

Unfortunately, Rafer hadn’t been able to escape Corbin County with Cami. Hell, Cami hadn’t been able to escape far, because Rafer had damned near gone crazy that first week when they had sent her to the Caribbean for fun and sun.

She’d returned as white as she left, crying tears as Rafer gathered her into his arms at the private airport he’d had her flown into.

Kneeling on the floor, Logan lifted the edge of the carpet where the slightest hint of upraised threads indicated it had only been loosened from the metal strip it was attached to.

Skye was fucking good. If he hadn’t helped install the new electric box himself during one of the brief furloughs he’d had, then he would have never known there had been an additional wire run to it. The job was that damned good and that well hidden.

What the hell had she been up to? And had it been her or someone else?

This job hadn’t required not only time but also experience and patience. Did Skye actually possess enough of each to install this electric line? And what the fuck did it go to?

Evidently the background check Crowe had done on her hadn’t gone nearly deep enough. That had been proven when her connection to Governor Jefferson hadn’t been revealed.

“We have a problem here,” Logan reported as he stood and moved into the spacious bathroom to see if he could track the cable farther.

There was no carpet there, he thought as he heard a puppy’s excited growls at the sound of his voice on the other side of the communications device. The open receiver was the only way to keep that little mutt from howling for him.

Frowning, he scanned the floor carefully.

The ceramic tile was a bronze and sunset hue. The dark, blended colors would make it damned hard to find the cable if it ran through this room.

Bending to his hands and knees, he began running his fingers over the grout, checking it carefully. It was all well maintained, and the color matched from line to line.

Probing at the wall and the tile, he narrowed his eyes before pulling the high-powered magnifier from the back pocket of his jeans and moving to the baseboards.

“Bathroom tile has been replaced in at least one spot,” he murmured to Crowe. “I can’t find where it goes, where it ends, or what it’s for.”

“Sucks, bro,” Crowe drawled. “But I’d be moving out if I were you. One of her lunch partners just got a call and now both of them are paying their bill and getting ready to leave. She’s flown.”

“Not possible,” Logan argued quietly as he probed at the baseboard again. “No way she could have known.”

Sitting back and preparing to rise to his feet, Logan suddenly came to a stop, his body stiffening in surprise.

Against the back of his head cold steel pressed into his scalp, assuring him that it was indeed possible.

“Never mind,” he murmured, “I think I just found her.”

Or, more to the point, she had found him.

CHAPTER TEN

With the cold barrel of the gun pressed against his head, Logan rose slowly to his feet, careful to keep his hands slightly out from his body.

“I’d take that damned thing from you, but I have a feeling you’d use it,” he stated, trying to hide a smile and wondering why in hell he found this so funny.

When the weapon eased from the firm pressure against his scalp eased and Skye stepped back, he turned slowly.

Yep, she’d probably shoot him.

But he still wanted to grin.

Her expression never wavered, though. However, there was no amusement on her face, no affection in her gaze. As a matter of fact, her eyes were as flat and hard as any soldier’s.

“Give me the earbud,” she ordered. “Crowe and Rafer have no business in this conversation.”

“Just Crowe,” he murmured, wondering if she was simply guessing where Rafer was concerned. “And I don’t know if I want to turn over my only link to help. If you shoot me, who would know?”

An imitation of a smile that didn’t even come close to reaching her eyes curved her lips, making him a bit wary.

“I can sincerely make you regret being here without killing you. And how did you slip in without tripping the house alarm?”

His brows arched. “Evidently I did trip it; you’re here, aren’t you?”

She gave a quick shake of her head. “That wasn’t the house alarm. I have a separate alarm on my bedroom. You tripped that one.”

Logan removed the earbud slowly. He had a feeling he didn’t want to know the many and varied ways she could make him regret anything.

“You might want to turn that off; it has good range,” he offered as she held the earbud loosely. He could practically hear Crowe laughing his ass off now.

“I know.”

Flipping the hidden little button at the side of the earbud, she pocketed the device, then without a word turned and stalked from the bedroom.

Logan followed her curiously, especially when she jerked open the double doors on the walk-in closet and moved inside.

Standing at the entrance to the closet that could have arguably doubled as a good-sized bedroom, he watched as she began pulling clothes off the rod in the back of the closet and placing them on the rods on each side of the wall.

It took a minute, but the clothes were moved out of the way and she was stepping back once again.

Turning to him, she stared at him, her gaze still flat, her expression remote, as she indicated the wall.

Moving to it, Logan surveyed it closely. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, he then peeked into several areas that would have indicated if the wall was solid or part of it was hollowed or had something built behind it.

Checking the corner joints and telltale indents of nails in the drywall, he finally stepped back and turned to her. Clearly, she was trying to show him something. He just couldn’t figure out what.

Logan stepped back, looked at her, then arched his brow in question.

Her demeanor bothered him.

The silence, the air of complete emotional distance and hardened, icy anger, assured him that the woman who had sought him out, who had been willing to tease him, had given way to another side of her. This side he didn’t like much, not when it was directed at him.

It reminded him too much of fellow soldiers, of the look he sometimes saw in his own eyes—that of some-one who had seen too much blood and death. Just what kind of life had Skye O’Brien lived, he wondered.

Pulling what appeared to be a television remote from her back pocket Skye pointed the device at the wall and pressed several buttons. Detecting the order used was damned impossible, but when she pressed the “SELECT” button he frowned. A slight pop and the wall that should have been, had appeared to be, nailed into the joint there separated about an inch.

Logan turned back to her, glaring. “Your rental agreement demands permission, in writing, for any construction made inside or outside the house.”

The irritation surging through him didn’t have a damned thing to do with her knocking down some walls. It was the fact that her secret room was a hell of a lot bigger and better than his room was.

It should have been insulting.

Instead, it was rather arousing.

His dick was hard.

She’d lied to him. Well, perhaps not lied, but she’d deceived him.

Again. Another part of her that wasn’t as she’d led him to believe. Another part that she’d hidden from him and kept him in the dark with.

Damn her, his dick shouldn’t be hard, not while his stomach was clenched with the fury burning through him.

He’d trusted her.

He’d let her into his life when he’d known better.

When he’d sensed the deceptions but couldn’t prove them, he’d convinced himself it was the situation. It was the danger swirling around him. It was a defense mechanism to protect a heart already opening up to her.

And now she was there and all he wanted was to rip her the fuck out.

Her arms crossed over her chest as her hip cocked with such feminine arrogance his balls tightened and the anger seemed to burn higher.

Why hadn’t he acknowledged the fact that he knew, knew his instincts were so finely honed for a fucking reason?

Her brow arched mockingly then. “And as you’re the silent owner and received no such request, then you of course had no idea it was here. Neither did the rental agent, the agent, or the assumed owner.”

In other words, it was a complete secret to everyone, with the exceptions of her and whoever had helped her.

Turning back to the wall, Logan opened the wide panel to inspect the narrow room. About three feet of the closet, as well as perhaps three feet of the large kitchen pantry behind it, had been taken.

The wall of the six-foot-wide room held six monitors, each screen split with a different camera view.

There were twelve cameras total.

Two of those views covered the entire perimeter of the side yard that separated his house from her rental.

He turned to her slowly. “You had proof all along that I never left the house the night Marietta was taken or killed. Yet you revealed your ties to the governor instead and put yourself smack in the middle in the sights of a killer?”

The anger was like a beast, gnawing at his soul. It was doing nothing to soften the hard-on filling his jeans, though and for a moment, he almost hated her for that.

There was nothing arousing about the fact that she had deliberately placed herself in danger. There was nothing that should have cooled his desperation to have her faster.

“The detective pissed me off,” she told Logan with a shrug, her tone icy cold.

That tone, the lack of emotion on her face and in her eyes, the emotional and physical distance between them, was beginning to do more than irritate him.

“You’re lying to me.”

She laughed then, a sound devoid of humor.

“I wouldn’t bother lying to you, Logan. I had no reason to. You never suspected I was anyone other than a renter, and an irritating one at that.”

That wasn’t necessarily true. At least not the irritating part.

“Why?” he asked, turning to her fully as anger surged as hot, as furious, as the arousal tearing through him. “Why are you here, Skye? A governor’s daughter, real or fostered, doesn’t just up and move to some two-bit county in the mountains of Colorado.”

“Medical leave.” Her brow arched, her lips thinning as a spark of anger began to gleam in her eyes then.