The fact that Crowe Callahan had kissed Amelia. That he had held her and made her want more. That he had filled her with such a hunger for him that she had told Cami she understood why the loss of the child Cami and Rafe had created had nearly destroyed her.
She could feel her hands shaking. She could feel something inside her stomach trembling, as though the tremors attacking her fingers had begun in her stomach and refused to dissipate.
As several firefighters, Archer, Jack, and Jeannie moved between Rafe, Cami, the Corbins, and Wayne Sorenson, Rafe quickly bent and retrieved the folded note from beneath his shoe.
Turning his back on the group, he held it between his fingers as he watched Cami expectantly.
Allowing Rafe, Logan, and Crowe to shield her, she took the note and slowly unfolded it.
Cami felt her lips tremble. Why, after all this time, was Amelia making contact?
“She’s going to try to slip to the house.” Cami frowned, confused. “Why would she have to slip over to see me?”
This was going beyond fear of gossip or of Amelia’s father being angry. It was going beyond the fact that the Corbins rewarded anyone who stood against the Callahans and punished those who stood with them.
And Amelia had signed the note:
Amelia was afraid of someone finding the note or learning she had written it.
Her twin. If anyone had ever been meant to be Cami’s twin, then it was Amelia. And to learn that at least something had survived the past three years and the horrible mistake Cami had made had tears wanting to fill her eyes again.
She hadn’t been this emotional since the first six weeks of her pregnancy. She had cried at everything then, and that was what she felt like doing now. Sobbing, because there was nothing that made sense anymore except the thought that she had to find an alternative to leaving her home if it was truly bugged. She wasn’t ready to leave. She wasn’t ready to leave the security and the memories of her mother yet.
“Crowe, get Tank out here,” Rafe muttered. “Get the house checked over for bugs, and until he gets here we need something that will generate a cover for anything said there.”
“She’ll be at the house tonight,” Crowe said quietly. “She’s going to end up endangering herself if she does that.”
Cami shook her head. “The fact that I was attacked in my own home and that whoever it was is trying to mimic Thomas Jones will keep her in. She wouldn’t risk herself like that.”
“You did,” Crowe pointed out.
She stared back at him, his expression and the somber tone of his voice instantly registering with her.
Amelia would be there to see him if she could find a way to slip past whoever was watching.
“Keep an eye out for her,” Rafe told him. “Unlock the back door and see if you can spot whoever’s watching.”
“If they’re watching, I’ll find them.” It was Logan’s voice, pitched low and filled with danger that had a chill racing up Cami’s spine.
There were rumors he, along with Rafe and Crowe, had trained as snipers in the Marines. That they were three of the military’s sharpest, coldest killers.
She could believe it. The lives they had lived hadn’t exactly been easy in Corbin County. That dark bitterness could have easily transferred into a rage that would see Rafe going after more than one target.
“Let’s go,” Rafe said, his voice carefully low. “I want to give Crowe time to meet the agent from our security company in Aspen to pick up some equipment we need.”
“And I want to make damned sure if she slips into the house that I’m there to greet her.” There was nothing welcoming in Crowe’s voice as he turned and began leading the way to the SUV they had driven to the ruined garage in.
“This is getting out of hand,” Cami protested as the fear still crawled through her system like a potentially killing virus. “What are they hoping to accomplish? Why do you and your cousins’ presence threaten them to the extent that they would go to these lengths?”
“We remind them of the past,” Crowe stated quietly. “And of a loss they don’t want to accept.”
“And you accept that?” she asked, more surprised than she would have thought she would be. “That’s not a good enough reason, Crowe, and it’s gone far enough.”
“Evidently it hasn’t gone far enough,” Rafe answered her, his voice cool. “They’re still pushing, Cami, and I have no intentions of leaving this county again. They’ll find out fast enough, they can’t run us off now any more than they could do it twelve years ago. The Callahans are home to stay.”
CHAPTER 22
Cami stood at the wide bay window of the breakfast nook just off the kitchen and stared into the backyard that night, her arms crossed over her breasts, her fingers curved over the balls of her shoulders.
And she waited.
Darkness had finally rolled in. That pure pitch dark that only came when winter was putting up its final battle before acceding to the coming spring warmth.
The back porch light was turned off. The house lights were out and Rafe, Logan, and Crowe were sitting at the breakfast table, their voices low, barely discernible amid the static pouring from the AM radio sitting in the center of the table.
Static, Rafe had explained, would cover their voices if they had somehow missed the bug that might have been placed within the house. Or not. Either way, he explained, it was insurance.
Her lips thinned. Insurance. Insurance against their conversation being overheard as they discussed the past and the possible reason why?
Why did the Corbins, the Raffertys, and the Robertses want the Callahans out of town so desperately?
Why did the citizens of Corbin County follow three families who had turned on their own grandchildren? Even more important, at the time they were the only grandchildren those families had.
Clyde Ramsey, Rafe’s uncle, had taken all three boys in. He had called each of them his boy and would stand in any man’s face, or woman’s for that matter, red faced, his gray eyes bulging, his heavy nose twitching, as he defended each of “his boys” against the dictates of crazy old men — Saul Rafferty and James Corbin — who thought they had to attack children for the fact that their daughters had had minds of their own and hearts of their own.
Clyde had been known to say often that he hadn’t approved of his sister’s choice of husband, but by God, his wife’s parents hadn’t cared much for him either. But they sure as damned hell, he’d claimed several times, had not disowned their beautiful little baby girl.
Saul and Tandy Rafferty, Logan’s grandparents, had doted on Logan, as long as his mother, Mina, had been alive. When she had died, Logan’s grandparents had joined the Corbins in attempting to take the inheritance that went to Logan on her death, just as the Corbins attempted to do with Crowe and Dale and Laura Ramsey had done with Rafe.
It just didn’t seem reason enough, though.
“Clyde knew something,” Rafe murmured. “He called before the accident, but I was on an operation and didn’t get back in time to return his call. At the time, I didn’t think a lot of it, but it was rare for Clyde to try to get hold of me while I was out of the country.”
