Jaymi’s funeral. The uncle Cami had always thought she could depend upon to care for her, no matter what choices she might make in life.
“You okay, Cami?” Archer asked, his voice gentle as she continued to stare into the snow-buried landscape they passed.
The gentleness in his voice had her throat tightening further, had emotions threatening to swamp her. He’d been one of Jaymi and Tye’s best friends as well, and over the years had become one of hers.
“You know,” he said when she didn’t answer, “if there’s something I need to know about, then now might be the best time to tell me, sweetheart.”
She knew what he was asking, and the fact that he felt the need had the emotion tightening her throat instantly easing as frustration tightened her jaw instead. “He didn’t rape me, nor did he attempt to murder me, if that’s what you’re asking,” she informed Archer, as she turned and directed the full measure of anger churning in her on him instead.
“Well now, I didn’t think he had been, but it’s my job to ask.”
“I was unaware that investigating stupid questions and obviously slanderous accusations was part of your job description.”
“Normally it’s not,” he assured her. “But sometimes with some people it’s better to deal with it and get it over with before moving on.”
The Callahan cousins were accused often of all manner of crimes, he had once told her.
“At least they have one friend,” she sighed. “I was beginning to wonder.”
“I’m not the only one, Cami, but as you’ve probably learned by now, it doesn’t do any good to argue with those who aren’t their friends.”
Of course it didn’t. They were the fathers, the mothers, the aunts and uncles who had first followed the dictates the barons had first given where the cousins were concerned.
“Yeah, Jaymi learned that one,” she sighed. She remembered those days far too clearly sometimes.
“Your sister was a fine woman, but she was more a rebel than anyone wanted to admit after her death. But, even more, she lived her life as she felt best, as she wanted to. That’s really all you can do as well Cami. If Rafe is what you want, then that’s what you should have. Don’t let this town’s pettiness affect that. And you and Rafe have plenty of us friends willing to stand by you if the barons decide there are other ways to make their grandsons’ lives miserable.”
She could hear a mild chastisement in his voice and she didn’t understand where it had come from or what made him believe there was anything between her and Rafe that would warrant it.
“We’re not lovers, Archer.” She turned, glancing at his profile before staring through the windshield to avoid his gaze. As lies went, even she wasn’t certain of the lie in that one.
“I never said you were. But, if I were you, I’d remember it was no one’s business if you were. You’re an adult, not a child to be ordered about.”
Neither did she need anyone attempting to push her closer in Rafer’s direction. She was going to feel like a bone between a gang of dogs very soon.
She suddenly remembered her sister Jaymi making a similar comment the summer she had died, while she and Rafer had been living together, or rather, sleeping together.
“Do you ever see the ignorance in this war against them?” she said as she turned to him. “I’ve never understood why his family disowned him, or why everyone made the decisions to either follow suit, or secretly befriend them.”
Archer grimaced. “If you figure that one out, then why don’t you let me know about it?”
“Do you have any idea why?” she asked.
Archer breathed out harshly. “You know, Cami, I’ve known those boys all my life. My father knew all their parents and worked for their grandparents, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard why they disowned them. It might be interesting to know, though.”
She hoped he had better luck than she had in finding out because so far she didn’t have a clue. Even her sister hadn’t been able to explain to Cami or to herself, why it had happened.
She knew the Callahan brothers Rafe, Logan, and Crowe’s fathers had married three heiresses who had already been engaged to three men their fathers had chosen for them. Once those three women had met the Callahan brothers, their hearts had been lost forever, though.
Still, that wasn’t reason enough to try to frame their only children more than twenty years later for the vicious rapes, torture, and murders of the six young women who had died twelve years ago. Nor was it reason enough to hate three children, as those young men had been hated in their youth.
“Why do it?” she murmured, almost to herself.
“Do what?” Archer was obviously paying close attention to everything she was saying.
“Why hate the sons so viciously for whatever their fathers had done?”
And that was what her sister had suspected was behind the animosity directed toward the cousins. Whoever had targeted the cousins’ fathers had immediately turned their attention to the cousins once their parents had died.
“Did you know Jaymi and her boss were both threatened when she was seeing Rafe, just before she died?”
Cami turned to look at Archer, watching as he threw her a dark frown.
“No one mentioned that, even Rafe, and we’ve seen each other and discussed Jaymi’s death a time or two since the charges were dropped.”
“She was trying to keep Rafe from knowing about the harassment she was dealing with,” she told him. “But she began getting calls after he would leave at night, or the next morning. Threats, filthy accusations. The Gillespies pulled the babysitting job she had watching their granddaughter, and someone called Dad and warned him that she would be ‘punished’ if she didn’t sever the relationship.”
Archer’s gaze flicked back to her as he slowed down, obviously trying to make the drive longer as he grew more curious.
“Did she know who it was?”
Cami shook her head. “She never knew who was calling her. But she finally did break things off when her boss came to the apartment to talk to her the night before the last social she attended with me, Rafer, and his cousins. He was warned that if Jaymi didn’t stop seeing Rafe and he didn’t fire her, then they would burn down the pharmacy. He was so scared he was shaking.”
“The man that killed Jaymi was linked to the other women’s deaths as well,” Archer mused. “Only a few of them had a connection to Rafe and his cousins.”
“I’m not saying it wasn’t him,” she told Archer. “I don’t know anything more than that. Two weeks after the pharmacy owner came to the house, Jaymi was dead and her killer was dead.”
Archer was silent for long moments. “My dad was sheriff then,” he said. “I asked him about it. He said there were no ties between the cousins and the killer at all. Nothing tied the six women together, and he couldn’t remember seeing the Callahan cousins with any of the women that summer except Jaymi.”
“And everyone wanted so desperately to believe they had killed Jaymi,” Cami said softly. “Archer, didn’t your father ever question any of this?” Archer gave a tight shake of his head. “I argued with him over that at the time. Not that it helped.”
“None of it ties together, no matter how I try to find a way to understand it.” And she needed to understand it.
Archer grunted. “And that’s exactly how their lawyer managed to get the charges dropped,” he reminded her. “The fact that the DNA that came back proved that Thomas Jones was the man Crowe stabbed that night managed to clear them.”
“Yet they’re still treated worse than rapists and murderers who admit to their crimes,” she pointed out. “I thought it would get better for them, but in the past twelve years it seems to have only grown worse.”
“It’s easy to blame them,” Archer suggested. “Thomas Jones is dead, and they’re alive.”
Could it possibly be that simple?
It wasn’t enough to satisfy her though, just as she knew she had an ulterior motive. She wanted Rafe. She wanted back in his bed, she wanted to know why she couldn’t forget him, why she ached for him, and that wasn’t going to happen if she wanted to live and work in Sweetrock.
