by Lora Leigh
None of her clothes, or her shoes?
Nothing of the mementos bought for her through the years that she treasured so much, not even a picture of her parents?
“And don’t fool yourself into thinking I’m not well aware of what you were up to with that damned sheriff in town when you slipped off to the social weekend before last, either,” her grandfather informed her then, his tone brutal. “The reason you want to be back here so bad has nothing to do with your family and everything to do with whoring around with that son of a bitch. Stay the hell away from him.”
Shaking in fury, outrage, and the shattering of her heart, Anna didn’t bother to fight back her tears.
“Go to hell!” she cried out. “I’ll whore with whoever the hell I please. It would be a far sight better than trying to be perfect enough to be a part of this family. It’s pretty damned evident that no matter how anyone tries to love you, or hold onto you, the only thing you know how to do is turn on them.”
“I turn on enemies,” he told her with a cold smile as he finally rose from his seat. “Now make up your mind, little girl. Take your ass to France or get out.”
“Ah, least you’re allowing me a choice,” she sneered. “It’s more than you allowed Crowe, isn’t it?”
“At least I’m prepared to give you a choice,” he snarled back at her from the table, his arms crossing over his chest imperiously. “I don’t recall giving him one.”
The callous disregard in his tone was at odds with the look in his eyes, the turmoil and pain she could have sworn glowed within them.
She turned to her father again.
He was at the table, his palms flat against the top of it as he stared down at the circular glass top rather than at her or his father.
He wouldn’t look at her, refused to acknowledge her.
“Why, Daddy?” she asked. “Why are you letting him do this?”
Slowly, his head lifted. His gray eyes looked tortured, his face drawn and years older than it had been minutes before.
“It’s the only way I know how to protect you.” He turned and left the room.
“Make your choice, Anna,” her grandfather demanded.
She didn’t see anger in his gaze, though; rather, she saw a resigned misery, as though he had known this day would come, and still, he hadn’t been prepared for it.
Tears were soaking her face, she realized, running from her cheeks and dripping onto the silk cami she wore with her jeans and sneakers.
“I’ve made my choice.” She could barely force the words past her lips as she turned and walked from the kitchen.
Surely her father would stop her.
Her mother?
She had to force herself to walk across the wide, dark wood floor of the foyer to the front door.
With no luggage, no money, and no ID, she left the only place she had ever called home and stepped into the cool morning air as daylight filtered over the mountains.
A sob tore from her chest then.
Then another.
Moving down the steps, taking one step at a time, her heart broke into fragments. The knowledge that no one was going to stop her, that no one cared enough to stop her, destroyed her.
And, she realized, she didn’t feel any more alone now than she ever had.
But that didn’t mean she had to obey his whim.
Sniffing back the tears, though nothing could hold back the pain, she paused, trying to think, to plan.
Her purse, ID, and what little cash she had, along with the key to her safe deposit box, were in her room.
She had some jewelry she could sell, though only as a last resort.
With what she had, perhaps there was enough to get an apartment and pay the down payment and rent until she began working.
Making the decision quickly, she turned around the side of the house and ran to the heavy wood trellis that ran up to her bedroom window.
She didn’t have to obey anyone implicitly any longer. And she would be damned if she would just walk away with nothing that belonged to her.
Climbing swiftly up the trellis she slid the window open, thankful she’d forgotten to lock it the night before when she’d had it open, and slipped into the room.
Quietly, quickly, she rushed to the closet and found the stylish leather backpack she kept there.
It wasn’t big enough to carry much, but the essentials should fit. A couple of handfuls of silken lingerie, two sets of the vintage silk nightgowns and robes she so loved. Several changes of clothes suitable for the job she’d been hired to do, and a pair of flat-heeled business-type shoes. Several pairs of socks and stockings, the small box of jewelry.
There was a little room left if she really stuffed it so she threw in some jeans and T-shirts.
When she finished, the buckles were bulging and she was still leaving behind so much.
As she packed, holding back the tears was impossible.
It was killing her. Inside her chest she could feel her heart breaking, feel the hope she’d had when she’d first faced her father and grandfather drain away. The tears were impossible to hold back now.
She was stealing her own clothes, her own jewelry. She was being forced to walk out of the house that hadn’t been a home since she was nine years old.
And she couldn’t imagine anything that could hurt more.
As she pushed the window open again, the sound of her mother’s voice in the hall outside her door made her pause.
“How could you let him do this?” her mother cried out, her voice rough, almost unrecognizable.
She’d never seen or heard her mother cry, though. “You know what this could cause, Genoa. You have to do something. Please—”
Her mother’s voice broke as she began sobbing, the sound of her pain causing Anna to cover her lips to hide the sound of her own agony.
“Lisa, you know he had no choice. Neither of them did,” her grandmother protested.
“No, there’s always a choice,” Lisa Corbin cried out desperately. “This was the wrong one. Oh God, it was the wrong choice.”
Seconds later, her parents’ bedroom door slammed, cutting off the sound of her mother’s tears. But it didn’t stop Anna’s. Leaning against the window frame, her face buried against the sheer curtains, she couldn’t hold them back. The silent sobs shook her body, and the pain causing them ripped at her heart until she wondered if she were going to be able to leave. Or if she would beg, plead with her grandfather to change his mind and to let her do as he wanted. But leaving again would be like cutting her heart from her chest.
Hell, she’d prefer to cut her heart from her chest.
She had never had a home, she had no family. So she would make her own home, her own family, or, she swore, she would die trying.
*
Archer Tobias stared at the map on the wall in his study for long minutes before inserting the yellow, round-headed push pin he held into its proper position.
The pin represented the Slasher’s latest victim, Katy Winslow.
His grandfather had started this map fifty years ago, during his election campaign when he ran for sheriff of Corbin County.
Each pin represented a suspicious death, murder, or suicide in the County.
Katy’s pin was bunched in with more than a dozen others.
“A favorite killing ground,” he remembered his father saying as he stared at the map.
The red push pins represented a Callahan who had died, and each blue push pin represented the death of someone connected to the Callahans. The white-headed pins represented deaths that couldn’t be connected, but those bodies had been found on or near Callahan property.
For instance, Logan, Rafer, and Crowe’s parents and Crowe’s infant sister’s pins were all there. They had gone over a cliff during a winter snowstorm while on the way back from Denver. The boys had only been eleven and thirteen at the time. They had been with Rafe’s mother’s uncle, Clyde Ramsey, while the parents had made the trip.
There were ot
her colored pins on the map of Corbin County as well.
Green pins represented areas where marijuana had been found growing, pale blue marked burglaries, purple marked assaults.
Brown represented suicides. Black represented murders of those not connected to the Callahans.
The deaths of those connected to the Callahans threatened to outnumber them.
Bad luck, being a Callahan. Or knowing one.
Other than the Slasher, Corbin County wasn’t a place that drew much crime.
His eyes returned to Katy’s pin.
Why Katy? he wondered again.
Shaking his head, Archer turned and left the study, locking the patio doors as securely as he had the inner doors that led to the rest of the house, then setting the security system Crowe had helped him install in the spring.
Moving to the SUV he drove, the trip to the sheriff’s office was made in less than five minutes. His home only sat two blocks from his office, one of the older buildings behind the main street courthouse.
Pulling into his designated parking slot, he restrained a sigh at the sight of the County attorney, Wayne Sorenson, as the other man walked down the back courthouse steps and turned to head to the sheriff’s office.
The text the attorney had sent earlier that morning had sounded dire.
Must see you at nine. Imperative.
Shaking his head, Archer reached for the Stetson he’d laid on the passenger seat before exiting the vehicle. Settling the hat on his head, he adjusted it automatically while hitting the door lock to the SUV.
The warmth of the morning sun beat down on Sweetrock like a lover’s caress, stroking across the town with the promise of more heat to come. There were clouds building over the mountains above that promised rain in the valley though and a possible blizzard higher up.
The season might be summer, but the mountains paid little heed to the calendar.
It was the middle of August, but already the chill of an early winter was invading the temperatures at night, and the old-timers swore there was a hint of snow in the air.
They hadn’t had snow in Corbin County before October in nearly twenty-five years. The last time it had snowed that early, JR and Eileen Callahan had died on that mountain road.
He made a mental note to warn the Callahans to stay off fucking mountain roads this week.
Waving at the two old men sharing a bench across the street, Archer strode quickly to the white stone sheriff’s office and connecting jail.
Unlike many counties, Corbin County didn’t have a separate detention center. The six cells that had been built housed any overnight, and some monthly, prisoners. If more secure accomodations were needed, then there was the detention center in Montrose that they transferred the prisoners to.
Judge Pascal was firm, but he didn’t sentence a lot of jail time unless the crime really warranted it. Violent criminals he sent to Montrose, anyway, because Archer wasn’t comfortable keeping them in the lower security cells.
Stepping into the outer office he nodded to his model-turned-secretary.
“Mornin’, Madge,” he greeted her.
“Mornin’, Sheriff,” she drawled, a sure indication she wasn’t happy. “Attorney Sorenson is awaiting your arrival in your office.” She rolled her eyes in disgust. “He didn’t seem to want to sit out here and entertain me until you arrived.”
In other words, the other man had entered the office without informing Madge he would be doing so.
Archer’s lips quirked. That was Wayne; he didn’t stand on ceremony for any man—or woman.
Striding to the closed door, Archer pulled it open and stepped inside the overly scented room.
He didn’t know what scent Wayne was wearing, and though it was only slightly stronger than the scent he used to wear, still the stuff reeked.
“Archer, good to see you.” Rising to his feet from the chair that sat facing Archer’s desk, Wayne extended his hand as he smiled at him.
“Counselor.” Archer nodded as he drew his hand back. “How can I help you?”
Moving behind the desk, Archer removed his hat and laid it on the side of the desk before taking his seat and watching Wayne expectantly.
“Well, Archer, I had a call from the governor and Sweetrock’s mayor first thing this morning. Governor Ferguson was in Boulder and couldn’t find time, I guess, to actually travel to Sweetrock and grace us with his presence.” He snorted rudely.
Archer let a mocking smile pull at his own lips. Governor Ferguson was damned busy, he knew. Just as he had been damned busy from the moment he’d been voted in as governor. Chief among the jobs he’d set for himself was finding and identifying his only child’s killer, the Sweetrock Slasher. County attorney Sorenson had managed to make it onto the list of suspects. Not that Archer had informed him of that fact.
“I assume he wasn’t calling to invite us to dinner, then?” Archer wasn’t going to tell him either.
Wayne’s snort was heavy with sarcasm. “Nope, I reckon he wasn’t.” He chuckled then. “Though from what I hear about that man’s personal chef, I wouldn’t have minded.”
Archer let a chuckle rasp his throat, but it was a cursory one, intended only to observe the rules of courtesy.
“No, it wasn’t for dinner,” Wayne repeated as he sighed heavily. “It was more of a threat.” His gray eyes met Archer’s brown ones.
“A threat?” That didn’t sound like Carson Ferguson. “What kind of threat?”
“He’s threatening to send us ‘help’ if we don’t step up our efforts to identify and apprehend the ‘Slasher.’”
Archer grimaced at the news, though he’d known it was coming, still he maintained an air of surprise.
“Fuck, we don’t need this,” Archer murmured as he rose quickly from his chair and stomped to the door of his office. Jerking it open he found Madge. “I’m going to need coffee.” He sighed. “And fix it strong.”
“Try decaf,” she advised as she rose from her chair and moved around her desk. “It’s healthier for you.”
“Slip that crap in on me, Madge, and I swear I’ll fire you for real,” he growled.
“Instead of for fake?” Madge only chuckled. “I’ll have it in there in a sec, boss,” she promised.
Archer paced back to his desk and took his seat once again.
Wayne watched him with quiet sympathy. “It’s been damned hard on the Callahans.” He sighed. “And those girls.” Shaking his head, Wayne cleared the emotion in his throat. “Cami, Rafer’s fiancée, and my Amelia used to be damned good friends until I learned Amelia was getting mixed up with them.” He pushed his fingers through his brown-and-gray hair with a grimace. “Terrified the hell out of me. I may have even made her hate me, the way I jerked her home and forced her to disassociate with the Flannigan girl she was such good friends with.”
Wayne looked away for a moment, obviously torn about how he had handled the matter. Wayne’s sympathy and attempts to help the Callahans were one reason why Archer found it hard to believe he was a suspect.
“Ah, hell, it beat having her raped and murdered,” he bit out angrily on a hard breath. “But that’s neither here nor there. How are we going to handle this? We have to figure out who that bastard is and where he is or we’re going to have company. Something that hasn’t been accomplished in twelve years.”
Archer pursed his lips thoughtfully as he leaned forward in his chair, his arms bracing on the desk. “Well, Wayne, I’m not sure at the moment. I do know I don’t want ‘help’ invading my County.”
The FBI was, of course, already there and had been for a while now. Not that they were finding anything more than Archer had.
“My God, that’s the last thing we need,” Wayne agreed, his gray eyes darkening with anger. “It would become a three-ring circus. But if we don’t have any leads at all, then how will we stop it?”
“We’re just going to have to figure out a way to draw the Slasher out,” Archer stated. “I’m working on a few ideas. Give me a
few days and we’ll go over them and see what works.”
Wayne nodded, though he didn’t appear in the least relieved. “Let’s hope those ideas are at least working ideas,” Wayne grunted sarcastically as he rose to his feet. “Is that the best you can do, Sheriff?”
“Considering the girl we found the other night had no known connection to any of the Callahans, I seem to just be at a dead end,” he growled in frustration.
“No connection at all?” Wayne murmured, surprised. “But they’ve always been the Callahans’ past lovers.”
“Not this one.” Archer shook his head firmly as he lifted one hand to rub at his cheek thoughtfully. “Like many of the other women in Corbin County, she was polite to them, but that was it. She and her boyfriend had just rented an apartment in town and she was scheduled to start business courses in the fall. But she was definitely in no way connected to the Callahans.”
Wayne breathed out roughly before shoving a hand in a pocket of the summer-weight gray slacks he wore. “Let’s just get this done without any damned outsiders coming in,” Wayne ordered broodingly. “I really don’t relish that kind of hassle.”
Not that Archer did, either.
Archer watched as the County attorney left the office, the door slamming behind him. Almost immediately it reopened and Madge entered with an irritated look. “You know, he saw me coming with that coffee. He could have left the door open.”
The tray holding a thermal pot and a ceramic cup proclaiming FAVORITE SHERIFF thunked down on his desk as Madge straightened and propped her hands on her hips. “I don’t like your friends, Sheriff.”
“I never said he was my friend, Madge,” he pointed out with a grin.
She smiled back at him then, causing Archer to pause, his hand reaching for the cup. That smile was enough to make a grown man shudder in fear. The pure glee in her light blue eyes was enough to make him turn, tuck his tail, and run.
Hell, he pitied the man that ever married her.
“What is it, Madge?” he asked as she continued to stare down at him with that damned Mona Lisa curve to her lips.
“Well, you had a call while you were in your meeting,” she informed him.
“Did I?”
