The door was almost closed, the keys ready to shove into the lock.
There was no warning.
There was nothing to alert her.
One minute she was filled with righteous indignation over the treatment her sister had received for as long as she could remember, and the next second, everything was black.
* * *
The lone dark figure, black mask pulled over his face, his eyes filled with sorrow, looked up to the camera that was almost hidden above the door.
He knew what would be seen later. Rich, sapphire blue eyes.
Picking Jaymi up in his arms, he turned away and laid her carefully in the backseat of the stolen pickup before tying her hands snugly behind her back. Her ankles were secured with another length of rope and gray tape placed over her lips.
He stared down at her, just for a second, before reaching out and pushing her hair back from her face.
He’d tried to warn her, he really had.
She’d pushed too far, though. When she had begun calling his phone, he knew she suspected. He should have known she would catch on quickly, she was really smarter than the others. Smarter, and with the clear advantage of having known him most of her life.
With a last pang of regret he closed the door to the back of the king crew cab pickup before moving to the driver’s side and getting into the vehicle.
He stayed on the back streets, easing through them and making his way to the end of town before pulling the mask off and driving the speed limit the rest of the way.
He didn’t have far to go. There was a small gravel and dirt road that led to where he’d told the other man to meet him. Once there, he would turn her over to the killer whose lust for blood made him exceptionally easy to use and to control.
The man wasn’t good for much else but killing. He’d fried his brain with too many drugs years before, and existed on autopilot until he scored the next fix. Give the man a fix and he obeyed every command given and didn’t remember a second of it the next morning.
For the first time since the killing had begun, he knew he wouldn’t be participating. He usually took that first taste of them, raping them while they still had some fight to them. But he couldn’t, not with Jaymi.
He couldn’t hurt her himself.
He couldn’t stay and watch her be hurt.
He’d have to trust the drugs to have done the work this time as efficiently as they had the past five times.
Jaymi would be the last nail in the Callahans’ coffin. Once her body was found along with another, more significant piece of evidence, the Callahans wouldn’t be able to excuse their way out of murder.
There was no way to save her. There would be no way to save the Callahans. And the truth of the events that began this tale twelve years ago would continue to rest in peace along with the bodies of the grandparents that had set the events in motion.
He’d killed them. He’d been forced to kill their sons and their sons wives that snowy day as they returned from Denver. He hadn’t wanted to, but he’d had no choice. What they had been doing, and what they had found in that safe deposit box no one had known JR and Eileen Callahan had rented, could have destroyed them all.
Him included.
He couldn’t let it happen. He couldn’t let them destroy everything he had killed the cousins’ parents for.
And it could have ended there.
It should have ended there.
And it would have, if only Jaymi hadn’t realized who was calling. And if he wasn’t certain she would figure out he was killing as well.
All for the greater good, of course, he told himself as he had been telling himself since that first life had been taken. It was all for the greater good.
But this time, with this woman, he knew the lies were catching up with him.
It wasn’t for the greater good.
It wasn’t for his own good.
It was for the good of a man that only gave the orders and refused to bloody his hands.
It was for the good of a family that would throw him to the wolves if it meant saving their own asses.
And he had no intentions of taking that fall.
At least, not alone.
CHAPTER 2
Rafe sat in the jail cell, silent, staring unblinking at the stone wall across from him, trying to ignore the blood that stained his clothes nearly two days after Jaymi’s death. The sheriff refused to allow them to change clothes or shower. Swabs had been taken for DNA. But despite the tech’s request for the clothes, it had been refused. Sheriff Tobias commented that he needed to wear Jaymi’s blood a while longer to realize what he had done to her.
He could hear his recruiting officer in the sheriff’s office yelling. Ryan Calvert had a strong, booming voice. It carried through the jail and caught attention, but for Rafe, Logan, and Crowe there was very little that could penetrate their shock, even now.
“I know I killed him.” Crowe repeated again. “I put that knife straight inside his kidney. It was a kill blow.”
At twenty-two Crowe shouldn’t even know how to make a kill blow with a hunting knife.
But he had. Unfortunately, the blow had come too late.
They had come too late.
Rafe was yanked back, hours before, to the memory of Jaymi’s screams echoing through the forest, jerking the cousins awake as they camped at the side of the lake and sending them crashing through the forest to find her.
They had followed the glow of a fire higher up Crowe Mountain. Followed her screams which were agonized and enraged. They had rushed into the clearing as her attacker’s knife plunged into her side.
Crowe hadn’t been able to save her.
After the black-garbed figure had jumped from her, his pants still pushed below his hips his round eyes filled with fear as he ran. Crowe had crashed after him, tackling him to the ground as Rafe ran for Jaymi. He’d been aware of Crowe struggling with Jaymi’s attacker. Crowe’s knife had gleamed in the moonlight before a high-pitched scream had sounded and the assailant had managed to grip a stone and slam Crowe in the head with it, before escaping.
The knowledge of her death shadowing her gray-blue eyes, Jaymi’s last thoughts were of her sister. She was sick. “Take care of Cami,” Jaymi begged, crying. As he held her, as her blood soaked into his clothes and Logan made the desperate 911 call.
“Please, Rafe, swear it.” The harder she had sobbed, the faster her blood had flowed from her body.
“I swear, Jaymi,” he vowed hoarsely knowing she was struggling to hang on. “I swear I’ll always watch out for her.”
There was no saving her.
Rafe had applied pressure on the wound. He held her. He screamed at her and demanded she live. And still, she had reached up with one hand shaking, touched his cheek and whispered, “She loves you, Rafe. She’ll always love you so much, just as I love my Tye. Give her a chance when she grows up.” Tears had washed her face as he rocked her, his own cheeks damp as he realized he was losing her forever. “Promise me. Take care of Cami.” Then Jaymi had looked over his shoulder and smiled before whispering, “Rafe, it’s Tye.” Her lips had trembled as such joy
