Secret Sins (29 page)

“Considering you were disowned, abducted, and you’re now being stalked and shot at,
I think you’re doing amazingly well,” Cami stated.

Anna shrugged. “The two of you have faced the Slasher as well.”

“We weren’t disowned and left all but alone with no one to turn to,” Cami pointed
out. “My father never cared much for me anyway, and I knew it, but I had my aunt and
uncle, friends, and Rafer. It has to be harder the way you’ve been kept from the County.
It must seem as though you have no connections here at all.”

Anna just gave an uncomfortable shrug.

“Anna, talk to us,” Cami urged her then, sympathy marking her expression as her eyes
filled with a rare empathy. “Skye and I have learned that talking about it goes a
long way to easing the nightmares.”

Anna’s gaze jerked between them in surprise.

“Yeah, the nightmares are brutal,” Skye sighed. “But, Anna, your eyes are breaking
my heart. I swear, the pain and fear are so clear in them that it makes me want to
kill the Corbins as painfully as possible.”

Anna quickly averted her gaze. She’d forgotten about that. Skye had always told her
that her innermost emotions reflected as clear as day in her eyes.

There was no way to hide it, she thought in resignation. Once she would have just
hidden in her room, weeping until she couldn’t cry any longer. When she was finished
crying, her natural optimism would return.

She wasn’t a child anymore though, and sitting and crying took precious time that
she could be using in her attempt to enjoy life and to carve a future for herself
in Corbin County.

“Have you even tried to call your parents—”

“Skye, please,” Anna protested, wanting nothing more than to just hide again. They
had to stop this. They had stop poking and prodding at the pain radiating with each
question. “I don’t want to offend you, but I really can’t talk about this.”

Not without getting out of here and crying like the child she used to be.

The understanding in Cami’s and Skye’s eyes was comforting, but she couldn’t handle
it right now. The pain was too close to the surface and too hard to deal with.

She could ignore it, if she didn’t have to talk about it. But if she had to talk about
it, and be honest, then she actually had been able to deal with her family. They were
doing what they felt they had to. She didn’t agree with them. She couldn’t understand
how they had imagined that was the best route to take, and she missed them so bad
sometimes it ached.

But she knew there was hope they loved her.

No, if there was pain in her eyes, then Archer had helped put it there.

“Anna,” Skye drew her attention. “Promise me, if you need someone to talk to, day
or night, you’ll call one of us.”

Anna nodded swiftly.
Anything,
she thought,
to divert their attention elsewhere
. “I promise. Both of you, I promise.”

Skye wasn’t happy, and the look she shot Cami was doubtful. Anna wasn’t the teenager
she had been when they had first met.

Disillusionment and a lifetime of loneliness and empty promises had led to all the
emotional misery that lay trapped inside her now.

Skye just prayed that Archer, with his disbelief of being “in love” and his determination
to remain commitment-free, didn’t permanently break the heart that had already been
broken far too many times.

*   *   *

“Tell me, Sheriff Tobias, have you yet found someone, anyone, that I can punish for
the hell those three young women are being put through?” Ivan asked as he turned back
to them after watching Jeanne step onto the patio to join the other women.

She’d become a steady visitor to the house, bringing information, gossip, and often
helping Sophia, as she had just finished doing; his sister had arranged cheese, meats,
and crackers for a snack while the Callahans and their friends were there.

“Stand in line,” Archer sighed as he tossed back the remainder of the whisky he’d
been sipping. “I’d beat you there.”

“And her parents’ disavowal had nothing to do with her pain? Nor her grandparents’?”
Ivan asked with icy calm as Antoli joined them from his normal position close to the
front door. “Do not deny what I have already learned myself, my friend.”

Archer slid the bottom of his glass back and forth in front of him, refusing to answer
the other man just yet.

“They’ve kept her away from Corbin County since she was nine,” Jack said as Archer
lifted his gaze and looked out to the patio, at the woman who made his chest both
tighten and melt whenever he saw her smile. “Her parents changed her schools almost
yearly. They moved around as though money didn’t matter, and old man Corbin financed
every move. For a few years my cousin was employed by his accounting firm. The things
he heard and saw where the Corbins’ determination to keep her out of Corbin County
were concerned, were outrageous.”

“Such an accounting firm should not exist,” Ivan murmured.

Jack’s look was cynical. “Come on, Ivan. I like you, man, I do, but we both know ole
Mother Russia ain’t much better.”

Ivan’s lips quirked. “Perhaps not. But my sense of outrage over that young woman’s
pain and the danger she faces has nothing to do with such things. I want to know why—
Why have they kept her from the bosom of her family? Why was she made to be alone,
forced to be isolated, by parents who should have wished only to have her with them
and to see to her happiness, who should have only wished to love her.”

“These are questions that I would wish to have the answers to as well,” Gregor growled,
his dark expression somehow more dangerous for the lack of fury in his cool eyes.
“And these questions, my friends, are perhaps yet another piece to your puzzle where
the Corbins and the Callahans are concerned.”

“How so?” It was Crowe who beat Archer to the question.

Gregor shook his head, frowning. “They have kept her out of this County, and I can
think of only one reason to do so.”

“To keep her away from her cousin,” Archer murmured, feeling the tension that was
beginning to settle in the pit of his stomach.

“There is no other explanation.” Gregor shrugged, his dark gaze assessing now. “The
five of you have not been born and bred to suspicion, paranoia, and the daily threat
of your lives and those of your loved ones being in peril. You have not yet learned—no
matter how you think you have, not to the bone—that in all things, the more they are
made to appear they do not connect, the more they connect. And that girl—” He nodded
to Anna. “Many people, for many years, have worked hard to prove she is not connected.”

Breathing in hard, Archer looked to the Callahans, his jaw clenching. “There’s more,”
he stated, glancing back at the patio, seeing the incredible distance between Anna
and the other women, despite the fact that they were sitting close together.

“More? In what way?” Crowe asked, the low tone of his voice a heavy warning.

“There’s more going on,” Archer growled. “The killings have been going on far longer
than we guessed and have had more to do with your lives than we ever imagined.”

“And you know this how?” Logan leaned forward, his gaze suddenly intent.

“Because your uncle, Ryan, and my deputy, John Caine, arrived at the house last night,
well after two in the morning, with an incredible story.”

Gregor’s expression was hard, pure stone as Crowe’s amber-brown eyes suddenly seemed
to burn with fury.

“And?” Rafer injected impatiently. “This ain’t a reality show, goddamn it, and I don’t
need to be dangled on some fucking string.”

“Has Ryan been in contact?” Archer asked.

“He was,” Crowe growled. “And he told us about the contract he accepted this summer
to kill all of us. I can’t believe Dave Stone was so fucking crazy and we never knew.”

Archer shook his head slowly. “They’re watching three men as suspects to the identity
of the Slasher team.”

“Who?” Crowe asked, his tone guttural as he demanded the identities of the three men.

“We have to wait for more proof, Crowe,” Archer warned. “We have just enough right
now to make a hell of a mistake and end up killing an innocent man.”

“Come on, Archer. I’m not a fucking kid. None of us are,” Logan snapped. “Who are
they?”

Archer revealed the names and detailed the majority of the meeting he’d had the night
before with Ryan and John Caine.

He didn’t mention Wayne Sorenson. He couldn’t, not yet. Not until he had a chance
to check a few things out himself, because right now there was just enough proof to
get him killed.

Rafer, Logan, and Crowe slowly straightened. At the same moment, Archer glimpsed both
Cami and Skye as their heads suddenly turned, their gazes intent, their body language
concerned as they looked for their fiancés.

There was instinct, and then there was just plain weird, because at the same time
Anna had turned, as though searching him out as well. There was no way she could have
turned in response to the other two, because he was damned if the three women hadn’t
turned at the exact same moment.

Just as they were rising to their feet, then turning to look at each other in confusion
for a single heartbeat. Then they were moving faster.

It would have been damned amusing if Archer hadn’t seen it for himself. That instinct.
That bond and connection confused the fuck out of him, and he couldn’t understand
how Anna had felt what Rafer’s and Logan’s lovers had felt.

“Caine believes the killer is his natural father, but his mother never revealed the
identity of his natural father, right?” Crowe mused quietly as Cami, Skye, Anna, and
Jeanne made their way back into the house. “What would be the point of killing her?”

“Unless she knew something, had some way of identifying the Slasher. She’d been out
of the country for nearly thirty years. If she returned and reconnected with anyone
who knew and heard about the Slasher, she might have been able to reveal their identities,
or even give pertinent information on JR and Eileen Callahan’s murders,” Archer stated
softly, his gaze on Anna, that tension in his stomach tightening further. “And perhaps
that’s even why it’s so important to keep the Callahans out of Corbin County, and
the Callahan property away from its rightful owners.”

“Perhaps,” Ivan mused, “what I have learned can add another piece of the puzzle.”

Ivan waited until Cami, Skye, Anna, and Jeanne had joined them before he recounted
John and Robert Corbin’s visit to Archer’s study.

Archer watched Anna as the Russian quietly explained the visit and their suspicion
that, if not the Corbins, then the Slasher and his partner, were desperate to hide
something.

“Perhaps they are also desperate to find something,” Ivan stated as he finished. “We
Russians, we understand family, and we understand tracking and tracing family in ways
Americans have forgotten. You make a hobby of tracing your ancestors. To a Russian,
it is not a hobby; it is a part of who and what we are. It is a part of our honor
and has much too high a potential to be a part of our disgrace as well. So we must
know.”

“I’m getting really impatient, Ivan,” Crowe warned him.

Gregor snorted. “Remember, Ivan,” he mused, “what impatience gained you?”

“Don’t make him smack the back of your head, Crowe,” Ivan suggested. “We may never
finish this part of the tale if you do.”

Crowe slid Antoli a smug, mocking look, but he said nothing more.

“As I was saying,” Ivan continued. “Russians know how to find ancestors. Knowing this,
I placed several families of the Resnova clan, particularly talented in collecting
family rumors and following them where they may go, onto this particular problem.
Some worked on the Internet and followed what was found there, contacted others in
the appropriate cities and so forth. I have at last collected quite a history on the
Barons of Corbin County, and the Callahans as well, as to what may have fueled the
killings of the past forty years that seem to have no explanation.”

“When you’ve finished bragging on your fine Russian talents, you could get on with
the story.” Crowe sighed.

Ivan chuckled, then began. “Nine generations ago, the founding fathers of Corbin County
pooled their money, filed a land grant, and bribed certain officials to ensure their
land was secured against all other claims that might come in. Then Patrick O’Hara
Callahan, Douglas McQuire Roberts, Dennis O’Halloran Rafferty, and Augustus O’Ryan
Corbin made the journey to the land of green pastures and wild mountain passes in
Colorado. They had been here once before, plotted the land they fell in love with,
and rushed to Washington to ensure their claim before a retired ship captain—some
said pirate—and his son, could make their claim. The pirate, known as the Raider,
and his son, known only as Blood, were only days late in attempting to claim the land
when word reached them that the lush valley they had been building their cabin within
was no longer theirs. They confronted the four men, and in a shoot-out with Patrick
Callahan and Augustus Corbin, Raider and Blood took a bullet in the heart apiece.
There were rumors though, and many believed them, that the two men, each captain of
his own pirate ship—Raider for nearly three decades and Blood for more than two—had
brought their chests of gold, jewels, and priceless plunder with them to the valley
they called Raider’s Valley. There, it was said, the pirates had found a cavern so
well hidden, so perfect to preserve their treasures, that they had no fear of it being
stolen. They were a paranoid lot though. The men who had come with them came on the
promise of rich land to raise cattle, horses, and crops, and that the numerous chests
of treasure would be divided once the pirate son’s wife and small son arrived. They
had worked hard ensuring the two captains had everything they needed. When Blood’s
wife and son arrived, though, the pirates were dead and no one knew where the treasure
was hidden.