Secret Sins (15 page)

John swallowed painfully, turned away, and blinked at the moisture filling his eyes.

He would prove it now, Archer assured himself. The minute he identified the bastards,
he’d make damned sure he proved their connection to not just the young women who had
died at the Slasher’s hands, but also the deaths of the Callahans.

“It’s time we go.” It was Marshal who glanced toward the curtain-covered windows warily.
“Dawn’s coming, and we don’t want to be seen here. We have to leave before it begins
getting light.”

“Do you need a ride? Help getting to your vehicles?” Archer rose to his feet, suddenly
concerned about the three men. Hell, they were in their early seventies—not exactly
the best age to be tromping through the woods at night by themselves.

“If we can’t make it, then we deserve to drop where we stand,” Saul muttered as he
picked up the cane he had set by his chair and rose to his feet.

“Didn’t remember you carrying a cane before, Saul,” Archer drawled.

The old man gave a bitter half grin before gripping it with both hands and pulling
free a long knife from one end. “I only need it when I want to, Sheriff. Only when
I want to.”

Shaking his head, Archer watched as the three men slipped from the study through the
back door and made their way into the darkness.

Closing and locking the door after them, he stiffened, feeling the presence that stepped
into the room as he silently cursed with a virulence he hadn’t used in years.

Turning, he faced Anna, and in that second knew she had heard far too much.

“You could have told me you were just fucking me to draw a killer out,” she drawled.
“I might even have gone along with it.”

“I think you know better than that, Anna.”

He could see the pain and the confusion in her eyes. Chaotic, soul-deep, the emotions
tearing her apart now were clearly reflected in the deep, emerald green of her eyes,
and he’d be damned if he could blame her for any of them.

Uppermost in her gaze, and filling her expression, was bitter betrayal. The emotion
darkened her eyes, but it also caused her face to pale and revealed the ultra-light
scattering of freckles across the top of her nose.

Hell, and why had he just noticed those? There wasn’t a chance in hell she was going
to let him brush his lips across them as he suddenly wanted to.

Her gaze dropped down, eyes narrowing at the evidence of the hard-on pressing against
his cotton pants.

A grin tilted the corner of his lips. “I think you just might have made me hard again,
sweetheart.”

Her lips tightened in anger, but that flame of arousal he glimpsed in her eyes hadn’t
been doused. Hell, it might even be a shade brighter now.

“Don’t think you’re good enough to make me forget a single word of what I heard tonight,”
she warned him. “And don’t think for a moment you’re not going to fill me in on every
word I might have missed.”

“Just exactly what did you hear?”

She was smart, and despite John’s assertions, Anna knew how to keep her mouth shut,
especially when it came to the only friend she had in Corbin County.

“I believe it might have been the part where my grandfather was asking you about the
ring and the commitment. And I didn’t miss the part where you assured him I wasn’t
into fairy tales, either.”

Ouch.

Now that part he would have preferred she hadn’t heard. Because Anna did have fairy
tales she still lived by, but there wasn’t a chance she’d believe his explanation,
either.

Anna was smart enough to know love rarely, if ever, happened at first sight. It came
with knowledge, it came with understanding.

And that wasn’t a discussion that was going to walk hand in hand with explanations
of the danger she was currently involved in.

He breathed out wearily and glanced at the clock before meeting her gaze once again.

“You didn’t miss much,” he growled as he rubbed at his lower jaw in irritation. “The
reason they placed you in private schools, and kept moving you, was because, according
to your grandfather and his friends, they’ve been blackmailed for decades, Anna. That’s
why they disowned your aunt, Crowe, and now you. If you didn’t leave Corbin County,
then he was to disown you and ensure you had no option but to leave the county to
survive.”

Graceful, charmingly innocent, she lifted one hand to rub at her forehead, her brow
creasing thoughtfully.

“My parents moved with me for several years,” she said softly as she turned from him,
the white gown and robe sweeping softly at the floor as she moved. “Until I was nine.”

He remembered that. Her father had traveled often between the ranch and wherever she’d
been enrolled in school.

“I don’t know why they stopped.” He knew the unvoiced question before she turned and
stared back at him, her gaze tortured. “Those are questions you can ask later. But
I think you know it’s not a question you can ask right now, Anna. You have to maintain
the illusion that you are indeed disowned. Not just being protected. As your grandfather
said, even your only friend, your best friend, can’t know the truth. The chance that
she would confide, in anyone, would be too great.”

Delicate nostrils flared as a jerky breath shook her body and she gave a tight nod.
A shudder worked down her spine.

God, if she started crying it was going to destroy him.

Instead, she wrapped her arms across her breasts before pacing to the map on the wall
and staring at it unseeingly.

“Why?” she asked. “Why all this conspiracy just to claim property that could have
been sold? Hell, it
was
sold. Crowe’s grandparents sold it in three parts to the remaining Barons. Remember?”

“The property was tied up in their daughters’ trusts after JR and Eileen Callahan’s
deaths. JR and Eileen had the property placed in trust for their sons in the event
of their deaths. According to papers filed several days before their bodies were found,
they had sold the property to Corbin, Rafferty, and Roberts on the condition that
the property went into their daughters’ trust funds. Everyone knew JR and Eileen had
a soft spot for the other three Barons’ daughters. They wouldn’t have sold to your
grandfather, Rafferty, or Roberts, though, after they refused to help Eileen while
JR was in the hospital. Especially considering her youngest child’s death occurred
at the time she was begging the others for help.” He frowned at that knowledge.

Unless they hadn’t actually sold that property, he thought.

Forty years.

That would have been about the right time if JR and Eileen had been murdered. Then,
to frame the remaining Barons, that property had somehow been placed in trust for
their daughters?

Still, none of it added up.

“Archer, it doesn’t make sense,” she pointed out what he already knew. “Why make it
so damned difficult if the point was to get the land?”

Giving his head a hard shake, he focused his attention back on Anna.

“Unless the point was to frame your grandfather and the others for JR and Eileen’s
deaths,” he murmured.

What the hell was he doing? He’d told himself he wasn’t going to discuss this with
her, yet he was.

Archer tightened his lips, determined to hold back any other observations he might
have.

Hell, she wasn’t a trained law enforcement agent or a deputy. She was a tender twenty-four-year-old
ex-virgin with more dreams than experience, and more stubbornness than any woman had
a right to possess.

And that stubbornness went hand in hand with her soft heart, her generosity, and her
open nature.

Yet, who else deserved the information? Who else could he discuss it with besides
Anna and the Callahans? Crowe, Logan, and Rafer would have to have the information.
And, no doubt, Ivan Resnova as well. Resnova would have the resources to get answers
they couldn’t.

That added four others who could possibly reveal the secrets the Barons had kept for
so long.

Fuck.

“If they were framed for JR and Eileen Callahan’s deaths, then once the trusts were
acquired, he’d have to have something in place to ensure he had the property,” Anna
pointed out logically. “Their daughters were teenagers then. He couldn’t marry all
of them when they came of age, which is what he would have had to do if gaining the
property was the point.”

Archer nodded. “Dead end,” he murmured.

“Why demand I be taken out of the County and placed in a different school every year?”
The years of loneliness filled her voice. “How could I have played in this scheme,
Archer? What makes me so important?”

“That’s a question only one person can answer.” He sighed. “Hell, there are a lot
of questions only the person who began all this can answer.”

“And the Barons believe that person is the Slasher,” she stated, rather than asking
for affirmation.

“That’s what they believe.” He nodded. “So far, there have been three different men
committing these murders. Thomas Jones killed twelve women twelve years ago. Lowry
Berry killed three women this past spring and tried to kill Cami Flannigan. Now, someone
else, so far unidentified, has killed at least two women, and possibly a third. Yet
there are too many similarities to rule out the same man being involved in each death.”

“The FBI profilers have always said there were two or more men involved.” Her frown
deepened.

Archer grimaced. Hell, he couldn’t keep his mouth shut here, and this endless round
of questions was going to get them nowhere.

“I didn’t take you to my bed to catch a killer.” It was time to change the subject.

Rather than arguing the statement, she stared back at him silently, the bitter betrayal
in her expression never wavering.

“Then why did you?” she asked him. “You’ve had every chance to take me since I turned
sixteen.”

“And I was an adult,” he snapped. “Do you really think I would have touched you at
that age?”

“That wasn’t what I said, Archer,” she retorted, her own tone heated now. “I said
you had every chance. Since I was sixteen, every time I saw you, I flirted so blatantly
it’s a wonder the words ‘Fuck me’ weren’t stamped on my forehead.”

His jaw tightened. “Should I apologize for waiting until you were old enough to understand
what the hell I might want from you?” he growled.

Her nostrils flared, eyes narrowed. Well, hell, wasn’t she just pissed off now?

“What you should do is forget the whole thing,” she snapped. “While I move into your
very comfortable guest room.”

Oh, he wanted to fuck her. He wanted to fuck her with a hunger that belied the fact
that he had already had her once that night.

As she turned to stalk from the room, determination began to burn through him.

Before he could stop himself, he was pulling her around and jerking her to him. “Damn
you, Anna, I don’t think I’ll ever have enough of you. I could fuck you until the
end of time and I’d still want you.” And he didn’t look in the least happy about it.

There was nothing so sexy, so sensual, as the lust burning in his gaze, tightening
his face. Nothing that could have held her in place easier than the pure erotic heat
that surrounded her.

Before she had a chance to argue, even if she had wanted to, his lips covered hers,
possessed them, and stole any fight still hiding inside her.

She couldn’t fight this pleasure. She couldn’t fight his touch. She loved it far too
much. She loved him far too much. Her fingers gripped his shoulders, her nails digging
into him as she strained against him, desperate to get closer now. Her lips parted,
accepting his tongue, stroking it, tasting him and becoming drunk off the need spilling
from his kiss. Moaning, aching for him, Anna pressed closer to the hard wedge of his
cock as it centered between her thighs. Rolling her hips, riding it, aching for more,
she dared him with every move to take her. With the hard wedge of his cock centered
on her sensitive pussy, Anna couldn’t help but move against him. Whimpering with pleasure
and rising need she rode the iron-hard erection her body craved, torturing them both
with her hunger.

As she felt her back meet the wall, Anna moaned at the sexual promise inherent in
the move. Her fists uncurled, her nails biting into his shoulders as she arched against
him. She couldn’t get close enough. No matter how she tried, her gown and the cotton
pants he wore kept their flesh from touching, kept his cock from demanding entrance
inside the aching depths of her sex.

“Oh hell, no, you little wildcat,” he growled as she tried to push the elastic band
of his pants over his hips. “I’ll be damned if I’ll let you have it that easy.”

Archer pulled back, placed her on her feet, then shocked her again. Just when she
thought he was going to release her, he gripped her gown and robe in both hands and,
before she could fight him, had both over her head and tossed to the floor, leaving
her naked before him. His head lowered, lips parting, and as Anna gasped, his teeth
gripped a tight, hard little nipple.

Worrying it first with his teeth, Anna felt the electric jolts of sensation shooting
from the tender tip to her swollen clit and the clenched depths of her pussy. Her
hands buried in his hair, pulling at the thick strands as she strained to force him
to suck the needy tip.

Anna cried out in desperate pleasure at the lashing sensations surging through her
sex with each hungry draw of his mouth. She was only dimly aware of him removing his
pants as his tongue licked at the tortured tip before moving to its mate. Pleasure,
desperate and burning in its intensity, rocked her senses.

What was he doing to her?

She should never, not in a million years, allow him to touch her now. As furious,
as hurt as she was, she should be anywhere but here.

But, oh God, it was so good.

The pleasure bordered on pain. It rode an edge of sharp sensation so incredible that
Anna couldn’t resist, no matter how hard she tried.