Deadly Sins (27 page)

Unlocking the doors and sliding them open soundlessly, Skye crouched and stepped out, covering the area as Logan followed and moved quickly across the small yard.

Opening his patio doors to his own house, he set Bella on the floor, closed the doors enough to keep her inside, then turned and gave Skye the motion to follow.

Having already secured her own doors, she followed him quickly, slipping into the house as he opened the door once again, then pausing as he stepped in.

Bella was across the room in her heated puppy bed, slipping back into sleep as though nothing were wrong. The puppy’s appearance of unconcern assured him the house was empty. He’d been working with her, him and Crowe, teaching her to alert him to any other presence in the house, even one she was familiar with.

Motioning to Skye, they did a quick sweep of the house anyway, Logan headed through first.

She worked well with him. The house was given a quick scan within minutes before they moved through the dining room to the patio doors just as Crowe and Rafer approached the entrance, Cami cradled in her lover’s arms.

Leaving their entrance to Crowe after unlocking the doors, Logan dragged the fully stocked military medical kit from beneath a cabinet in the kitchen and returned to the dining room as Rafer laid the delicate form of his lover on the long couch Logan had placed in the room.

“What the fuck happened?” Logan snarled as he knelt next to the couch where Cami lay on her stomach, a makeshift bandage covering the back of her shoulder.

Pulling the gauze and tape aside, Rafer cursed as she jerked at the pain. Her smothered moan had each man grimacing in fury.

Logan had turned to order Rafe to gather clean towels when Skye was suddenly at his side, a stack of clean dish towels in her hands.

“Two of the bodyguards watching her were taken by surprise by the third when he tried to kill her. If that weren’t bad enough, a fucking sniper decide to come out to play at the same time.” Tortured and filled with pain, Rafer’s voice was like a dark vision of coming death. “I was coming in as it happened. Cami managed to get out of the house with the help of one of the guards as the other tried to distract the sniper. She was clipped as the bodyguard threw her out a fucking window when they couldn’t disable the third.”

“Clipped?” The flesh wound was a vicious slash across Cami’s shoulder.

The bullet had dug in deep, tearing across flesh and muscle in a ragged gouge that Logan knew had to be agonizing.

Cami’s face was buried in the couch, and now that her lover couldn’t see what she would feel was a weakness, Logan could feel the slight tremble of her shoulders and knew she was crying.

“It’s okay, little sister,” he murmured, knowing if Rafer saw those tears, he would go ape-shit. None of them would be able to control him then. “I’ve got something for the pain.”

She gave a jerking nod.

Glancing at Rafer as he crouched at the arm of the couch, his fingers buried in her hair to keep some connection to her, Logan knew his cousin was well aware that she was crying. His gaze was tortured, filled with the knowledge of her pain. And he hated it.

Hell, they all hated it.

Pulling a syringe and small bottle from the med kit, Logan quickly filled it with enough of the medication to not just fight infection but also take the pain away. Something that would help her rest.

“Here we go,” he murmured as he quickly gave her the injection. “Just a minute, sweetheart. All the pain is going to go away.”

Literally, no more than a few seconds.

Logan prepared the sutures as he waited, watched the tension in her small body slowly ease away until she was breathing more normally and the slight hitching of her breath from her tears eased away.

“God. Thank you, Logan,” Rafer whispered, his voice hoarse as Cami finally relaxed and drifted into a medicated drowsiness.

“She’s going to be fine,” he promised his cousin. “We’ll just close this up and I’ll even try to do it pretty enough that, hopefully, she won’t even know there’s been a wound there. I promise she won’t be afraid to wear that bikini for you again.” Logan smirked, hoping to take Rafer’s mind off his fury. Just a little.

“Bastard.” Rafer gave a rough grunt. “You weren’t supposed to see her in that bikini.”

“I promise, I kept my eyes closed.” Logan forced a chuckle as he lied.

“God, Logan, I didn’t think I was going to get to her in time.” His voice was a tortured rasp of pain.

“But you did. That’s what counts, Rafe,” Logan assured him. “That’s all that counts.”

“Are the bodyguards alive?” Skye asked Rafer as Logan motioned to her to hand him the next suture.

“All but one. The one trying to kill her.” Rafe’s voice was hard now. “He was the one I was heading up to talk to. I received a blocked text informing me that the bodyguard had contacted John Corbin and offered to give up Cami’s location for payment.”

“And you didn’t call us?” Logan snarled, careful to ensure the stitch he was applying pulled the flesh together gently despite the rage pouring through him.

“There was no time,” Rafe snapped back. “You were too far away to help, Logan, and what you were doing was just as important. I was only ten minutes from her location going through that damned lawyer’s files. I just ran when the text came through. I thought there was still time. The information said Corbin had just received the information.”

The lawyer their parents had seen regarding the details of the resort they were combining their finances to go into in partnership with a resort developer the day they were killed. According to the lawyer, the Callahan couples had not been in that afternoon, while Clyde had known for a fact that they had been there. Clyde had known because he had set the appointment up himself.

Now, twelve years later, the lawyer was claiming he had never met the three couples.

“And why would someone at the Corbin ranch try to warn us of anything?” Crowe asked broodingly.

Rafer smoothed Cami’s hair back from her drowsy face, his eyes never leaving her as he answered. “I don’t think the caller was from the ranch.”

“If the Barons are upping the ante like this, then we’re going to have problems,” Crowe stated, the ice forming in his voice sending a chill of warning up Skye’s spine.

“That shooter was good, Crowe.” Rafer sounded strangled by the emotion in his voice as Cami gave a small, unconscious moan. “Damned good. There shouldn’t have been a soul left living. And the only reason Cami was shot, according to her, was because the bodyguard bargaining to reveal her location tried to take her out himself. She tried to run when he turned the gun on her. The other guy threw her out the window but not before his partner shot. She turned in time to see the bastard’s fucking head explode.” His eyes blazed with fury; his face was taut with it.

Logan wiped his hand over his face. “This isn’t worth it,” he whispered, sitting back on his heels when he finished the fifth and final stitch. “Hell, give them fucking trusts. It’s not worth another life.”

“If we could do it, legally, I’d be all for it,” Crowe snarled. “They don’t get the property or anything else unless we leave the area and stay gone for three years. Or unless we die of natural causes or suicide. Otherwise, it goes to our heirs, if there’s even a chance of an heir. Do you want to leave Cami unprotected that long, Rafer?” He turned to Logan. “Would you leave Skye that long?”

Logan glanced at Skye and knew he wouldn’t.

“Hell, our parents weren’t even certain they wouldn’t try to kill us for it,” Rafer stated, his voice grim now. “Our mothers were spoiled every day of their lives until they married our fathers. The hell the Barons must have put them through to make them distrust their own fathers to that extent.”

Skye watched the three men then, their expressions, the savagery in their eyes, the way their jaws clenched tight, the disillusionment and bitterness on their faces.

“Suddenly the bastard stalking us is using a rifle instead of a knife?” Crowe sneered. “If he was that damned good with one, why wait until now to start using it?”

“None of this makes sense,” Skye said then. “There’s no way he could be in two places at once.”

“What do you mean?” Crowe turned to her quickly when Logan spoke.

“He was waiting in Skye’s house when she came from the Social.” He stared back at Rafer. “I’m going to guess, not long before Cami was attacked.”

“A new player? Or do you think his partner is coming out to play?”

“His partner wouldn’t be trying to save Cami,” Skye pointed out. “None of this is adding up. The Slasher is suddenly changing his habits? That’s very rarely seen in a serial killer. They get off on keeping to their agenda and to their little rituals.”

“What do we do now?” Rafer whispered, desperation filling his gaze as Logan bandaged the wound. “Cami’s not trained for this, Crowe. Hell, I can’t even hire bodyguards to protect her. How the fuck are we supposed to keep her and Skye safe? Hell, I don’t know if we’re trained for this.”

“She’s considered a weak link,” Skye stated softly, almost wincing as their gazes jerked back to her. “But even more, kill her, take your reason for fighting, and you could simply give up.”

“Why?” Rafer lashed out, his gaze livid. “Why go after her at all, let alone consider her a weak link?”

“As you said, she’s not trained,” Skye pointed out. “And because she has the potential to conceive another heir. That heir would acquire everything if the three of you were dead or if you left the county and decided to just give up. That option would be considered voided if there’s an heir. I think that’s the same reason your lovers have been killed. That’s the only reason to kill the women you’ve slept with, or had relationships with.”

It was the only thing that made sense.

Skye had considered it from every angle she could find, and it all led back to the fact that there was only one thing that could have tied all the women together.

They all had the potential to conceive heirs to the Callahan trusts.

“My sister was killed,” Crowe retorted then. “She was only two weeks old.”

“Perhaps they were unaware she was in the SUV with them,” Skye mused. “If your parents were murdered, and I believe they were, then it’s possible the murderer was unaware she was in the vehicle.”

Crowe’s gaze was filled with such ice, it was so hard and blank, that for a moment she wondered if he had even heard her.

“They’ve targeted our lovers to implicate us in their deaths,” Rafer said then. “And to torture us. There’s no reason to believe we’d risk impregnating them.”

“That doesn’t gain them anything other than the possibility that you’d be easier to kill. Having you imprisoned would result in the same end. You’d be out of the county for at least a year, longer if you’re imprisoned for murder. The only way to gain what it seems they want, is to force you to leave the county, have you imprisoned, or if you die in a way there’s no possible suspicion of foul play. At this point, no matter how you die, it would be suspicious simply because of the psychological profile that would be done on each of you and the fact that it would prove suicide was not in your nature. And they only gain it then if there are no heirs conceived before you left or before your deaths.” She glanced at Cami. “She won’t be safe until you’re out of the county for the required year. That’s a full year that they have to kill her. You won’t be able to keep her safe that long,” she said gently. “The only answer is to place her in federal protection until you can resolve this.”

“Hell no,” Rafer snapped then. “Whoever’s doing this obviously has political ties. It’s too big a risk.”

It was a slight risk, Skye admitted. A risk she knew the Callahans would find unacceptable.

But there were no other alternatives. Unless—

If she called in a single favor from a source she had promised herself she would never contact.

Staring at Logan, she realized that ultimately he would give up his life, die, for each of his cousins or any of the women he’d ever known in his life. Just as Crowe or Rafer would. And at the moment, Cami’s life was in grave danger. The cousins would die, or they would kill whoever they had to kill, to save her.

She was a part of all three of them. A part of their pasts and, through Rafer, a part of their hearts.

Skye breathed in deeply.

“I know someone who can’t be bought and his men can’t be bought,” she said, her voice low. “Someone with no political ties that count and all the resources needed to keep her not just safe and alive but close enough that you won’t have to worry about her because you’ll know she’s safe.”

Federal protection would take her completely out of Rafer’s life. Skye’s contact would delight in keeping Cami close enough, and safe enough, that it would drive whoever was attempting to kill her completely mad with rage. Such games were the spice of his life and he practiced them diligently.

Skye’s contact had the ability to do that. To enrage even the most calm, mild-mannered people.

The three cousins watched her suspiciously now.

“Criminals?” Logan guessed. “I don’t know about that—”

She shook her head. “He calls himself a legal misfit. But to my knowledge, he’s no criminal.”

She just suspected that he was.

“Go on.” It was Crowe who encouraged her to reveal her contact’s identity.

“He delights in driving deserving souls insane with rage. He’ll keep her close, well-protected but in plain sight. His men aren’t bound to him by money, but by blood loyalty and ties created in ways that ensure he would never be betrayed. And if anything happens to the three of you, he’ll ensure her safety. And the safety of any child she’s conceived. Trust me, Rafe. No one could touch her if she’s under his care.”

“And who could have that kind of power at his fingertips, owe you a favor, and be willing to put himself out to such an extent?” Rafer was still suspicious.

Skye licked her lips, nervous, uncertain not because she didn’t trust her contact but perhaps because she didn’t trust his ability not to deliberately antagonize these three men.

And she couldn’t say they weren’t already suspicious.