“Thanks for the ride home, Archer,” she said dropping the subject and hoping she had given him enough for him to investigate it as he drew closer to where she lived in her two-story little ranch.
“I’ll call Jack’s Towing before heading back up the mountain,” Archer told her. “He can bring your car in sometime today.”
She nodded slowly. “That’s fine; thank you again.”
She wasn’t going to need it today anyway.
Archer sighed as he turned the car down Main Street and drove closer to the dark, probably cold, and definitely lonely house she had bought from her parents.
It was all she could do to keep from begging him to take her back to Rafer’s. To beg Rafer to hold her just a little while longer. But the fear was like a padlock, locking the words and the ability to reach out to Rafer in such a way deep inside her.
“I don’t know what’s going on.” She rubbed her temple with her fingers, finally glancing at Archer again as she breathed out a hard sigh. “Why did he have to come back, Archer? Why did he have to change everything?”
“He’s not changing anything for you without your help,” Archer said gently. “And from what you just said about Jaymi, you be damned careful. It might be a good idea to be a little cautious for a while.” Archer knew about the nights they had spent together, though he didn’t know about the child she had lost.
A sardonic smile twisted her lips. Hadn’t that been the same advice she had given her sister twelve years before?
“I’ll be sure to do that,” Cami promised as she slid out of the sheriff’s vehicle and closed the door before heading to the house.
She turned and waved good-bye as she stepped into the silent house.
Yes. It was cold. Lonely.
Closing and locking the door behind her, she turned the thermostat up, hoping to alleviate the chill inside her as well as the one that filled her home. She hadn’t really been warm in years, until Rafer had held her again. Now the lack of that warmth was damned painful.
The cell phone rang out its strident ringtone to alert her she had a call. Caller ID was clearly blocked, and until now she didn’t think she’d ever received a blocked call.
“Hello,” she answered cautiously.
The voice, despite its gentle sadness, held a sinister, malicious edge.
“You better hope you spent your time with Rafer Callahan wisely. You should have chosen someone else to dirty yourself with if you needed a hard fuck,” the voice warned her somberly. “If it happens again, you could meet the same end as your sister. Wouldn’t that be a shame, Ms. Flannigan? Wouldn’t it hurt your family, your friends, to find your body broken and discarded for fucking that bastard?”
Who the hell would call and say something so cruel? She and Jaymi had been close, much closer than most sisters with such an age difference between them.
But she remembered the calls Jaymi had received while sleeping with Rafe, and she had once told Cami that the caller’s voice had sounded tearful and filled with regret.
“I’m always careful,” Cami told him quietly, confidently. “And I don’t do bullies. Or cowards.” She disconnected the call quickly, then ignored the next several as she moved back to the kitchen and laid the device on the table. She stood back by the counter and simply watched it as though it were a snake, coiled and hissing as “
As a third-grade teacher for the only elementary school in the county, she ended up meeting most people, whether they were parents or not, more than once. She recognized that voice, even as carefully disguised as it had been.
Still, she would remember whose voice it was, and when she did, unlike her sister, Cami would raise hell and make damned sure he paid for attempting to terrorize her, let alone threatening her.
She knew Jaymi had finally realized who had been calling her. The week before she had died she had attended one of the county-sponsored street dances in the town square, and when she had returned to the apartment she had been more than upset. She had been furious. She hadn’t said she had known, but Cami had known her sister and she had known when the phone rang that night and the look on Jaymi’s face when the caller ID had come up “blocked.” Jaymi had taken the phone to the bedroom, but as she walked into the other room Cami could have sworn she heard Jaymi say,
Cami drew in a hard, deep breath.
What was she going to do now? she wondered. The implications of the phone calls were frightening.
The phone rang again.
Eyes narrowed, she stalked back to the table, checked the number, and saw the “blocked” signal again. Pushing the call button, she brought it quickly to her ear. She would be damned if she was going to live in fear. “Fuck off, nutcase,” she snapped.
There was silence for a moment. Long enough for Cami to realize it wasn’t the unknown, threatening voice of moments before.
“I just wanted to make certain you got home okay,” Rafe’s voice came over the line carefully.
Cami’s teeth snapped together. “Here’s a piece of advice, Rafer Callahan. Unblock your number when you call; otherwise, I won’t be answering.”
She was not going to worry about missed calls and whether or not it was Rafe.
“You know, you’re the only person that calls me Rafer,” he growled, something in his tone warning her he was more angry than simply irritated. She didn’t think it was because she was calling him by his full given name.
“Learn to live with it,” she muttered as she began moving through the house, closing curtains and checking locks again.
The normal nightly ritual suddenly had a new, sinister meaning, and she didn’t like it. Because it didn’t matter she had already checked them once, she needed to check them again.
“Your cousin Martin took out close to a thousand feet of new fence on his way in and out,” Rafe informed her. “I’m suing.”
Yes, Eisner was her third cousin on her mother’s side and Crowe’s very, very distant cousin on his mother’s side.
“And you’re telling me why? I’m not his lawyer; that’s his cousin Doug Atchinson. Give him a call.” She had no sense of guilt because she rarely remembered Martin was related to her. Besides he should have known better.
“You’re being awful accommodating all of a sudden.” Suspicion laced Rafe’s voice, and she could almost see him staring back at her. She could almost see herself drowning in those bottomless sapphire-blue eyes.
“So are you,” she fired back. “How the hell am I supposed to pretend we haven’t been occasional fucks if you start calling to check up on me?”
She needed to get over the past few days, the heated passion and the feel of his flesh against hers. She needed to let her body readjust to not having him inside her. To not having him pumping hard and deep and stretching her pussy with that delicious pleasure-pain she could have so easily become addicted to. She might have already become addicted, because she was dying for him. She needed her fix.
“What happened?” Suspicion laced his voice. “Was someone at the house when you got there? Has someone called?”
She tensed. How had he known she was feeling spooked?
“If there were, and they had, then I know how to use my Smith and Wesson to deal with it,” she promised him as that craving for him began to pound through her blood veins. “And just to set you straight, Rafer,
She disconnected the call. But she held the phone between her breasts, her eyes closed, her breathing rough, as she fought to hold back her tears and to contain her anger. She couldn’t let this happen to her again. She could not allow herself to sink into that well of physical and emotional hunger as she had the last time.
