“I just wanted to know what happened,” she said softly. “Nearly a whole community turns against three children and it seems no one has questioned why? Perhaps I thought it was time someone asked those questions.”
“Let me give you the answer there, kitten,” he offered as though the why didn’t matter to him any longer. “Our fathers not only married three of Sweetrock’s favorite daughters, but they married into the three richest families from here to Denver and past Aspen. Three supposedly shiftless, no-account brothers stepped in shit and came out smelling like a rose, as they say. Those families didn’t appreciate the defection of their daughters, they didn’t care for the bad blood that had been injected into their grandsons, and they sure as hell wanted to make certain that bad blood didn’t go any further. And there you have it, the reason why a whole community turned against three young boys. To ensure they learned their place and never aspired to step above it.” And there was the bitterness, just the thinnest vein of it, as he gave her the explanation everyone else accepted as well. “Now what the hell did Marshal Roberts want? Don’t make me ask again, Cami.” He rolled from her as he made the demand.
She sat up slowly, pulling the sheet around her breasts as she turned to stare down at him watching as he lounged back on her pillows, unashamedly naked. He didn’t even bother to pull the sheet around his hips as he watched her closely.
She hadn’t noticed his lashes before, she realized. They were thick, lush lashes women cried over because they didn’t have, surrounding the deep sapphire blue of his eyes.
And she had picked a hell of a time to notice it.
“I’m not certain what Marshal Roberts was after,” she finally said, trembling at the icy look in his sapphire eyes. “He made me very curious though about everything that’s happened.”
“Such as?” If possible, his voice and his expression were harder. Colder.
Cami swallowed with a hint of nervousness that she couldn’t hide. “Your parents’ deaths. Your uncles’.” She had to fight to hold back her tears at the next thought. “My sister’s.”
Pulling her knees up, she rested her chin on them as Rafe sat up slowly.
“Cami, you know those deaths were unrelated.”
She shook her head, her heart pounding in fear. “Your parents and uncle died on the same mountain road, on the same curve. God, Rafer,” her voice dropped further. “Do you realize it was the exact place your grandparents, JR and Eileen Callahan died?”
It was too much. There were too many Callahans to die in the same place, the same way, and nearly the same excuse used across three generations. And no one seemed to want to question it, or to see the trail of suspicion.
“Cami, stop this, baby.” His expression gentled slowly. “You’re letting that old bastard fuck with your head. You can’t do that.”
He wasn’t hearing her.
She could feel the danger that swirled around him. She had always felt it. As though some shadow haunted him and his cousins and refused to dissipate.
“Rafer, listen to me,” she whispered, almost terrified that someone else would hear her. “There are too many coincidences. You say you don’t believe in them, yet you’re just accepting three generations dying in the same place, as well as your uncle Clyde. Do you realize no one else has ever died in that same place in the history of that mountain road?”
“Cami…” She could see his refusal to listen to her in his expression, hear it in his voice.
“No.” She pushed her fingers through her hair with an edge of desperation. “You have to listen to me, Rafer.” She clenched at the strands of hair she held as she fought and failed to fight back her fear for him.
“Cami, he’s fucking with you, dammit!”
Rafer could feel the need to confront Marshal Roberts rising inside him with a wave of fury. He couldn’t believe that old bastard had finally figured out that Cami was more important to him than any other woman in his life had been. And to actually have the sheer nerve to come to her house and frighten her this way was unforgivable.
“He’s not fucking with me.” She lifted her gaze to him as he pushed her back to the pillows, propping himself up to stare down at her. “What about Jaymi?”
He could see the fear flashing in her eyes now.
“Cami, Jaymi was killed by a fucking lunatic, you know that.” He ached for her. Jaymi’s death had destroyed her, he knew that, but she had to realize—
“Did she tell you about the phone calls?”
He could feel his stomach clench with trepidation then. “What phone calls? Jaymi never mentioned any phone calls, Cami, neither did you.”
He watched her lips tremble, watched the misery that darkened her eyes.
“I’m getting them now.”
Fear tore a hole through his soul.
“What phone calls, Cami?” He could feel the rage beginning to burn in his stomach.
“The ones that warned her that if she didn’t stay away from you, that something would happen to her. She knew who it was. She knew the voice, but she didn’t put it together until the last social we attended with you, Logan, and Crowe. I heard her that night, telling him that she knew something. Then she went into her room where I couldn’t hear her. She wouldn’t tell me what it was, or who it was.” Her breathing hitched with tears, the sound of them breaking his heart. “Two days later, she was dead.” Her breath caught, and Rafe watched as she fought back her tears.
That wasn’t a coincidence, because Jaymi hadn’t been the only one of the young women who died that summer who had received such phone calls. And now, Cami was getting them?
“You were called?” he questioned her.
She nodded quickly. “I recognize the voice, Rafer, just as Jaymi did. I know that voice, but I can’t put a face to it. When I do—”
“When you do, you’ll tell me and I’ll fucking deal with it,” he informed her harshly, his hands moving to grip her shoulders imperatively as he made the order. “Do you understand me, Cami?”
“And if he decides to just kill you, Logan, and Crowe instead?” she asked tearfully, though she held the tears back. “What then?”
Rafe moved from her slowly, sitting up on the side of the bed and pushing his hands through his hair in irritation.
“That bastard is playing with both of us,” he finally gritted out as he gave his head a hard shake.
Marshal Roberts was a master at manipulation. He had known it all his life.
How many times had Clyde been lured away from the ranch because Marshal had called for some reason or another, and convinced him to meet him somewhere? How many times had the ranch been vandalized each time, and Roberts hadn’t made the meeting with Clyde?
It was a cycle. It had taken Clyde a few times to realize what his brother-in-law was doing. A few years to realize that the core of decency he thought Marshal had didn’t exist.
When Marshal couldn’t lure him away on his own, he’d found other means to pull Clyde, Rafe, Logan, and Crowe from the ranch.
It hadn’t been to protect them as Clyde had once mused. Fuck, no, Marshal had done it out of a vindictive desire to destroy the ranch and make them completely paranoid. If it had been to protect them, then the attacks would have come the times they had sat in the ranch dark, silent ranch house and waited, weapons ready, for the vandals to strike again.
“I want to know everything he said, Cami,” he finally told her. “And don’t leave anything out.”
He watched as she stared up at the ceiling.
“I can’t do a play-by-play,” she told him wearily as she turned her head to gaze back at him. “You don’t believe me, do you, Rafer?”
“I don’t disbelieve you,” he finally sighed. “But, Cami, you don’t know him as I do.” He shook his head at the lifetime of memories he had where Marshal Roberts and his deceptions were concerned.
“Rafer, he was trying to tell me something,” she whispered, and Rafer knew she truly believed that. “What else could it be?”
