Archer’s hands tightened around the steering wheel, his knuckles turning white as his jaw clenched, the muscle there flexing rapidly before he spoke.
“Rafe, there was a yellow ribbon tied around her bed pillow,” Archer finally stated as he sliced a hard glare toward him. “I’m sure you know exactly what kind of response that news is going to raise when it gets out.”
Rafe froze.
A yellow ribbon around her pillow. It could only mean one thing and that simply wasn’t possible.
“He’s dead. Crowe killed him twelve years ago, Archer. Thomas Jones can’t be killing again.”
“Yeah, I know he’s supposed to be fucking dead,” Archer burst out furiously. “Son of a bitch, he’s a fucking nightmare for this town, Rafe. Do you think I wanted to see that goddamned ribbon and its perfect bow tied around the pillow on Cami’s bed? The one opposite the one she slept on. The one a lover or a husband would use.”
The yellow ribbon.
Thomas Jones had tied a yellow ribbon around a pillow of each of his victims’ bed pillows. Never the pillow they used. Always the pillow a lover would use.
Though all his victims hadn’t had lovers.
And only Jaymi’s pillow hadn’t had a ribbon tied around it.
There had been nothing that the FBI or local law enforcement could find to tie the women together or to explain why he had chosen the women he chose to kill twelve years before.
“We definitely have a problem,” Archer admitted. “More so than you know. Did she tell you about the phone calls she’s been getting? The ones threatening her if she’s sleeping with you?”
He was going to paddle her ass. As God was his witness, he was going to paddle that creamy little ass until it glowed. “She told me. I thought Marshal Roberts was fucking with her. He used to do that. All three of the barons used to do that, Archer.”
They would call suspected friends, lovers, associates, and threaten them anonymously.
Archer cursed under his breath. “Jack Townsend contacted me this morning as soon as he heard what happened. He talked to her yesterday. She told him she was getting phone calls similar to those her sister received before she was killed. Calls warning her to stay away from you or she would regret it.”
Rafe looked over at Archer slowly, mechanically. “Jaymi didn’t mention phone calls to me before she died. Cami was the only one who mentioned them.”
“To no one else either except Jack apparently.” Archer grimaced. “I checked. If Jack hadn’t told me about it this morning, then I wouldn’t have known. Evidently, though, Cami’s been getting them for a while now. At least since she was snowbound at the ranch with you. The calls have been warning her to stay away from you, and the caller is threatening to hurt her and you if she doesn’t keep you out of her bed. The same phone calls Jaymi was getting before she was killed.”
Murder raged through Rafe’s mind.
He couldn’t accept that Jaymi had been in danger simply because she had been sleeping with him months before the serial killer Thomas Jones targeted her.
“I hadn’t seen Jaymi for nearly two days before Jones killed her,” Rafe stated. “We’d talked on the phone a few times, but that was all.”
And she hadn’t seemed the least bit worried or concerned.
“And you and your cousin had no connection to the other women,” Archer asked as Rafe lied with the short shake of his head. “But here’s a connection between Jaymi’s and Cami’s attacks. Those phone calls.”
There was another woman who shared a connection to one of the Callahan cousins. One of the victims from twelve years back whom neither Archer nor any other law enforcement official was aware of.
Turning back to watch the road in front of them, Rafe remained silent.
Six women had died twelve years before. Each one had had a yellow ribbon tied around one of her pillows, except Jaymi. And Thomas Jones had raped, tortured, and stabbed each one of them to death during that bloody, horrendous summer that had nearly destroyed Rafe’s and his cousins’ lives.
For Jaymi, he, Logan, and Crowe had almost been there in time. They had almost heard her screams soon enough from their fishing spot to go racing for her.
Almost.
It didn’t count when it came to a knife and a young woman’s lifeblood.
Jaymi had taken her last breath in Rafe’s arms, and hours later he and his cousins had been sitting in a jail cell. They had been arrested for her and five others’ murders.
He would not allow that to happen to Cami now that he knew she was a target of what had to be a copycat killer. Someone determined to frame the Callahan cousins.
“She’ll be safe,” Rafe promised Archer. And he would make certain of it. Him, Logan, and Crowe. “Did you dust the house for prints?”
“Personally,” Archer told him. “I wasn’t trusting that to anyone else. I also called the FBI, Rafe. If Thomas had a partner, as the profile suggested twelve years ago, then he’s getting in the game again, and I want help on this.”
Rafe didn’t care who Archer called in as long as Cami was protected. The more the merrier as far as her safety was concerned.
“Look, Rafe, you know how this county is,” Archer began after a long moment’s silence.
“Yeah, everyone and his brother is going to be looking at us, believing the Callahan cousins did it. Because after all, there was no crime before we returned,” Rafe sneered.
He knew exactly how it worked.
“You’re being targeted, Rafe,” Archer snapped back at him. “The calls were a warning over you, and the attack was for the same reason, I believe. This isn’t something we can keep under our hats while we search for him. And it’s damned sure not because of whatever the hell you did in the military. This goes straight back to twelve years before.”
“I’m a fucking Marine, Archer; what the hell do you think I did?” he snarled. “For God’s sake, would you just pick up some speed here so I can get to her? Sometime this year would be exceptionally nice. You can question me later.”
If he didn’t get there soon, if he didn’t see for himself that Cami was safe and breathing on her own, then he was going to end up losing his sanity.
Rage was like an animal inside him, twisting and clawing in its desperation for freedom.
He shouldn’t have left her, he thought again. He should have heeded that warning itch at his back as he drove back to the ranch. The urge to turn back and slip into her house and into her bed had been nearly overwhelming.
He’d not ignore it again. Never again would he ignore that instinctive voice and blame it on his lust rather than that kernel of knowledge that something wasn’t just right. That his instincts had picked up something his conscious mind had missed.
Better yet, she was coming to the ranch, where he could make certain she was protected, ensure that no one ever got to her again, ever harmed her again.
“You were just a Marine, huh?” Archer snorted as Rafe flicked him a brooding look. “You know, Rafe, for ‘just a Marine’ your records are all but inaccessible.”
“And why would you want them to be accessible, Archer?” he asked smoothly.
“Let’s say there was a time or two the mayor was curious about your whereabouts,” Archer sighed. “I checked and all I could get was that you were a Marine. After that, forget it.”
The mayor was curious, his ass. Most likely, there was another crime they’d wanted to pin on Crowe and his cousins and they wanted to be certain where the cousins were.
“And you can forget it now,” Rafe assured the sheriff as he gripped the armrest of the door and all but tore it off in frustration. “Can’t you drive any faster?”
Rafe could have driven these mountain roads faster with a blindfold for a handicap.
“Rafe, I’m going to tell you now, you, Logan, and Crowe stay out of this,” Archer warned him as they neared the city limits and the hospital where Cami had been taken. “Take care of Cami and let me handle the rest.”
Yeah, that was what Archer’s father, Randal, had warned them of twelve years before, as the sheriff, when the first girl had been found in Corbin County at the base of Crowe Mountain.
Rafe, Logan, and Crowe had just so happened to have been in Denver with Ryan Calvert that week meeting
