Secret Sins (6 page)

Archer paced back to his desk and took his seat once again.

Wayne watched him with quiet sympathy. “It’s been damned hard on the Callahans.” He
sighed. “And those girls.” Shaking his head, Wayne cleared the emotion in his throat.
“Cami, Rafer’s fiancée, and my Amelia used to be damned good friends until I learned
Amelia was getting mixed up with them.” He pushed his fingers through his brown-and-gray
hair with a grimace. “Terrified the hell out of me. I may have even made her hate
me, the way I jerked her home and forced her to disassociate with the Flannigan girl
she was such good friends with.”

Wayne looked away for a moment, obviously torn about how he had handled the matter.
Wayne’s sympathy and attempts to help the Callahans were one reason why Archer found
it hard to believe he was a suspect.

“Ah, hell, it beat having her raped and murdered,” he bit out angrily on a hard breath.
“But that’s neither here nor there. How are we going to handle this? We have to figure
out who that bastard is and where he is or we’re going to have company. Something
that hasn’t been accomplished in twelve years.”

Archer pursed his lips thoughtfully as he leaned forward in his chair, his arms bracing
on the desk. “Well, Wayne, I’m not sure at the moment. I do know I don’t want ‘help’
invading my County.”

The FBI was, of course, already there and had been for a while now. Not that they
were finding anything more than Archer had.

“My God, that’s the last thing we need,” Wayne agreed, his gray eyes darkening with
anger. “It would become a three-ring circus. But if we don’t have any leads at all,
then how will we stop it?”

“We’re just going to have to figure out a way to draw the Slasher out,” Archer stated.
“I’m working on a few ideas. Give me a few days and we’ll go over them and see what
works.”

Wayne nodded, though he didn’t appear in the least relieved. “Let’s hope those ideas
are at least working ideas,” Wayne grunted sarcastically as he rose to his feet. “Is
that the best you can do, Sheriff?”

“Considering the girl we found the other night had no known connection to any of the
Callahans, I seem to just be at a dead end,” he growled in frustration.

“No connection at all?” Wayne murmured, surprised. “But they’ve always been the Callahans’
past lovers.”

“Not this one.” Archer shook his head firmly as he lifted one hand to rub at his cheek
thoughtfully. “Like many of the other women in Corbin County, she was polite to them,
but that was it. She and her boyfriend had just rented an apartment in town and she
was scheduled to start business courses in the fall. But she was definitely in no
way connected to the Callahans.”

Wayne breathed out roughly before shoving a hand in a pocket of the summer-weight
gray slacks he wore. “Let’s just get this done without any damned outsiders coming
in,” Wayne ordered broodingly. “I really don’t relish that kind of hassle.”

Not that Archer did, either.

Archer watched as the County attorney left the office, the door slamming behind him.
Almost immediately it reopened and Madge entered with an irritated look. “You know,
he saw me coming with that coffee. He could have left the door open.”

The tray holding a thermal pot and a ceramic cup proclaiming
FAVORITE SHERIFF
thunked down on his desk as Madge straightened and propped her hands on her hips.
“I don’t like your friends, Sheriff.”

“I never said he was my friend, Madge,” he pointed out with a grin.

She smiled back at him then, causing Archer to pause, his hand reaching for the cup.
That smile was enough to make a grown man shudder in fear. The pure glee in her light
blue eyes was enough to make him turn, tuck his tail, and run.

Hell, he pitied the man that ever married her.

“What is it, Madge?” he asked as she continued to stare down at him with that damned
Mona Lisa curve to her lips.

“Well, you had a call while you were in your meeting,” she informed him.

“Did I?”

“Uh-huh.” She nodded. “Miss Lonhorne called. She told me to tell you that you’re going
to be hearing from her lawyer. It seems she found another of her expensive purses,
a Choo, I believe, clawed up, and used as a litter box. She’s none too happy. Perhaps
you should contact that lawyer of yours now.”

Snickering, she turned and left the office as Archer sat back in his chair in disgust.

Dammit, he’d told Marisa not to bring that crap to the house. His cat, a chocolate-brown
Maine Coon cat with the temperament of a rabid lion, hated her. Archer had warned
her Oscar would shred anything she owned that the cat found lying around, but she’d
refused to listen.

She’d demanded he get rid of the cat instead, so she could move in.

When Archer had refused, she’d arrived with her luggage anyway, and decided she was
going to fight Oscar for her place in his life. She’d then thrown the cat’s pillow
out of the bedroom, locked the door on him at night, and thought she would get away
with it.

Chuckling, he made a note to call his lawyer and let her deal with Marisa, if she
ever actually decided to sue. Until then, he needed to talk to the coroner and wanted
to head back up the mountains to where Katy Winslow’s body had been found.

There had to be something, somewhere, that would give him a lead on the Slasher and
the partner he had to be working with. The FBI hadn’t changed their profile, but they
agreed the man killing the young women had changed after the death of the assailant
who had attacked Rafer Callahan’s fiancée, Cami Flannigan.

The FBI had yet to take over the case, though, because the minute they had tried to
do so in the past, the killings had simply stopped. Of course, it had also coincided
with the Callahans’ departure from the County.

It had been Archer who had gone to the agency when the first victim in twelve years
had turned up the summer before. The FBI was here, not that he knew who it was or
where that person was, but he’d bargained for just that. An undercover agent rather
than having the case taken over by the agency might give them a greater chance of
finding the bastard.

Opening the door and peeping in, Madge stared at him with a frown. “You have a call
on line two from Lisa Corbin. She says it’s urgent.”

A frown furrowed his brows as well as he picked up the phone and pressed the button
to line two as Madge stepped back and closed the door.

“Lisa, is everything okay?” He didn’t know her well, despite the years he’d spent
vacationing with her family. What he did know was that she was Anna’s mother, and
despite the distance he’d always seen between them, he’d always sensed the love she
felt for her daughter.

“No, it isn’t. You said if I or Anna ever needed anything, you’d be there for us,”
she reminded him.

Archer tensed, dread suddenly striking his chest as he felt the flesh down his spine
begin to crawl in warning.

“What do you need?”

As he listened, disbelief, fury, and some dark, unknown emotion began exploding within
him.

“I’m going for her now, Lisa,” he promised as he rose from his chair and jerked his
hat from the side of his desk. “Don’t worry, I’ll watch out for her.”

*   *   *

Lisa hung the phone up slowly before wrapping her arms across her stomach and releasing
the sobs she’d been fighting to hold back.

Again.

“Not again,” she sobbed painfully as she felt her husband’s arms wrap around her,
felt his tears against her cheek as they held each other. “Oh God, Robert, please,
please don’t let me lose my baby again.”

CHAPTER 3

Anna was silent as Sweetrock came into view from the curve in the road that wound
around the mountain. It wasn’t one of the more dangerous roads. The four-lane had
heavy steel guardrails stretching along it, ensuring there were no winter accidents.

The road itself wasn’t as elevated as most. Where they couldn’t cut through the mountain,
excavation had centered on cutting
out
the mountain instead.

The view wasn’t as incredible as many of the scenic routes were, but neither were
they as dangerous as the one now named in honor of the Callahans who had died on it.

Callahan’s Peak, the sharp curve that had taken Crowe Callahan’s grandparents, and
then his parents, uncles, and their wives, was a treacherous stretch of road when
even the lightest of snows fell.

She wasn’t on that road, but the decisions she faced felt nearly as dangerous as that
cliff had become. And she felt as though her situation was just as precarious.

What was she going to do now?

No doubt she wouldn’t be able to afford the exclusive, boutique-only underwear and
gowns she preferred for a long time, she thought in rueful amusement.

She would be lucky, if she could make the money she had stretch to afford dinner on
a daily basis until she began getting paid.

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay with me?” Archer asked again as the Tahoe passed
over the small stone bridge that spanned Corbin Creek and marked the last mile to
the city limits.

He’d made the offer when he first picked her up.

She’d turned him down then, too.

“That’s okay, Archer.” Shaking her head, she stared straight ahead, loath for him
to see the confusion and indecision she knew would show in her eyes.

Or the tears.

She was still battling those hated tears.

“Why?”

The question made her pause.

Turning to him, Anna called up the only defense she had against the emotions and fears
weakening her.

Anger.

“You didn’t want me there two weeks ago, so why would you want me there now?” she
asked him, the hurt from that night still lying inside her, brought fully to the surface
by the rejection of her family.

“I didn’t say I didn’t want you there, Anna.” The golden brown of his gaze, the mix
of colors reminiscent of an eagle’s, touched her as he glanced at her with predatory
intent. “I said I wanted you to be certain, damned certain, of coming to my bed, before
you made that decision.”

Her lips pursed bitterly. “You pushed it pretty far before making the offer. You could
have at least let me orgasm to be certain, one way or the other, before rejecting
me.”

She hadn’t stopped aching for him.

If the hurt building inside her weren’t so brutal, so filled with anger, then she
would still be aching for him.

Hell, she
was
still aching for him. Aching to be held, to be touched—God, she was dying to live
for a change rather than keep herself in some kind of abyss to prove her love for
her family.

Archer didn’t say a word. Flipping on the turn signal, he took the turn that led into
town rather than turning into the hotel parking lot as they passed it.

“I didn’t say I was certain I was ready to go to bed with you,” she reminded him pointedly.

“I have a guest room.” The shrug of his muscular shoulders indicated he didn’t care
either way, but the heat in his gaze told another story. “You can stay there until
you’re sure.”

“I heard you have a cat that loves to shred leather purses, too,” she retorted, sitting
back in the seat and letting go of the seat belt latch she’d been prepared to unbuckle
when the hotel came into sight.

“Hmm, only when he gets thrown out of his bed.” A grimace pulled at his lips as he
glanced at her, his gaze filled with mirth. “Come on, don’t tell me you already heard
about the cat?”

“And Marisa.” And how jealous she had been.

She’d wanted to scratch the other woman’s eyes right out of her face, and might have,
if she’d known who she was. All Anna had heard was her name, as her grandfather’s
maids laughed over the rumors of the other woman’s attempt to move in with Archer.

“Marisa’s not there, Anna. She left. And Oscar’s a big ole lap baby,” he told her
as he glanced back at her with a grin. “He just wanted to keep his pillow at the foot
of my bed. Marisa threw him out instead. She put his pillow in the guest room, and
when he sat outside my bedroom crying she took him to the guest room and locked him
in with her extra purses and her luggage.”

“While she occupied your bed,” she filled in, her jaw clenching as spikes of jealousy
raged through her again. “I’m sure Oscar appreciated your loyalty.”

Archer chuckled.

“Actually, I was called out that night.” Rubbing at the side of his face, his fingers
rasping over the closely cropped beard growing there, he glanced at her with devilish
amusement. “She didn’t spend the first night in my bed the whole month she was there.
Oscar would start squalling every time the bedroom door closed.”

She was in love with Oscar, that was simply all there was to it.

The remainder of the drive to his house was made in silence, and an uncomfortable
one at that. Anna could feel a tension rising between them now that hadn’t been there
in all the years he had vacationed with her family in the exotic locales they had
chosen.

Bermuda when she was sixteen. That was the first year he had flown in with her grandfather.

He had been twenty-six. He’d just been discharged from the Marines for medical reasons.
She remembered the cast he’d worn from his ankle to above his knee, and the jeans,
cut short on that one leg, revealing the bronzed, hair-spattered flesh that seemed
to fascinate her.

The next year, he’d sported a scar from his thigh to his ankle, thanks to the surgery
and the metal pins that had fused the shattered femur in his thigh, and the tibia
below his knee. The shattered bones, courtesy of an IED, had taken the military career
he had been working on, but, as her father had explained to him the summer he turned
twenty-seven, it didn’t have to destroy a very promising career in law enforcement.

Seven years later, he was on his second term in the sheriff’s office, and it didn’t
appear he would have much competition for a third term.

Unmarried and unattached, he was considered the most sought-after bachelor in Corbin
County and the counties surrounding it.