Deadly Sins

by Lora Leigh

  Not that Chando seemed to be involved in the conspiracy, but he might get caught in the cross fire if it was proven the Barons were indeed involved.

  That wasn’t her investigation, though. White-collar crime wasn’t her forte.

  Throwing a cheery wave to Chando where he was playing bartender for the afternoon shift, Skye made her way to the back of the bar, where she and her two friends met for lunch once a week.

  “You’re running late again, Skye.” Anna Corbin’s smile was as quiet as it had ever been. Skye, Anna, and Amy had attended Brighton Preparatory School, an exclusive boarding school in Mensa, California, together. Anna had been painfully shy, but the confidence Skye had helped to build inside the girl since then had only strengthened.

  The other, Skye had only met after moving to Sweetrock. Several years older than Anna, Amelia Sorenson was the county attorney’s daughter and personal assistant. She was also the former best friend of Cami Flannigan, Rafer Callahan’s fiancée.

  Amelia was even quieter than Anna, always watchful and wary, and always paying close attention to anything Anna said.

  “I woke late,” Skye apologized as she slid in beside Anna, giving her an unobstructed view of Amelia’s face. The other girl didn’t seem nearly as prone to shush Anna if she thought Skye was watching. Besides, that put Skye’s back against the wall, where she much preferred it.

  The tavern was fairly empty at two that afternoon, with the lunch crowd having just returned to work. There were a few of the Corbin cowboys at the bar, but they were far enough away and Anna and Amelia met with Skye often enough that the cowboys no longer felt the need to sit directly behind them.

  “Now that you’re here, you can tell us exactly what the hell you were doing at Logan Callahan’s the night that poor girl was being kidnapped,” Anna whispered, her voice barely carrying the distance between them.

  “Anna, you agreed not to discuss him,” Amelia reminded her as she dipped her head toward her menu.

  “So I lied.” Anna rolled her eyes expressively as she shot the other girl a grin, causing Skye to turn her head to Amelia with a smile.

  “She worries worse than Granddad,” Anna said quietly as Amelia shook her head slowly. “He tried to make me stay home today. So did Amelia.” She nodded to the other girl.

  Skye lifted her gaze to watch Amelia under the cover of her lashes. She looked distinctly uncomfortable with the conversation.

  “I don’t want you hurt, Anna,” Amelia told her, her voice as low as the other girl’s. “And whoever killed Marietta Tyme won’t stop there. It never has.”

  Skye watched Amelia closely. “You’re talking about the Slasher? This is a copycat, right?” Skye highly doubted it, but if Amelia had information, then she would never give it to Skye if she appeared to know too much.

  “Who knows who the hell or what the hell it is.” Amelia wiped her hands over her face wearily. “I just prefer, if possible, that should he decide to pick on nosy women, then he doesn’t start with her.” She frowned over at Anna.

  “You never did answer the question,” Anna reminded Skye as she ignored Amelia’s concerns. “Why were you at that sexy Callahan’s house at three in the morning?”

  “Logan’s grandfather dropped a puppy off at his house several weeks ago and he can’t get rid of her.” Skye sighed. “He’s given the dog away to anyone who would take her, only to have them bring the wailing little baby back to him. He keeps her on the side patio. We were fighting over the fact that I can’t sleep because of the crying.” Skye was careful to make certain there wasn’t even a hint of a friendship between her and Logan. “When he refused to take care of her, I took her home with me, only to learn why he gets her back every time.” Skye pretended to shudder in horror before relating the destruction the baby had caused.

  “That sounds like Uncle Saul,” Anna said.

  She glanced at Amelia before playing with the edge of the menu uncomfortably. “Aunt Tandy hasn’t been herself lately,” she sighed. “She has periods where she’s really ill, lately. I heard Granddad talking to him about the pup. He said Logan caught him?”

  Skye grimaced. “Yeah, that one was a battle. Those two acted like snarling lions that night.”

  “They’re too much alike,” Anna sighed. “Gran’pa always says that.”

  “Funny, he says a lot, Anna, yet he refuses to have anything to do with his own grandson,” Skye pointed out.

  “It doesn’t confuse you any more than it does me, Skye.” Anna sat back and ran her finger along the edge of the menu as she frowned down at it for long seconds. “I’ve never understood why.” She finally lifted her gaze, staring back at Skye sadly. “There’s such a sense of pain and anger when they discuss the Callahans. But none of them will even try to fix what they broke.”

  “You need to let this go, Anna,” Amelia said with an expression that suggested it wasn’t the first time she’d given the warning.

  “Like you’ve let things with Cami go?” The sympathy and understanding in Anna’s tone went far beyond her years.

  “Let it go, Anna.” Weariness seemed to fill Amelia’s tone. “I don’t want to argue with you here.”

  What the hell was going on?

  Skye sat back in her seat and watched the two, rather like she’d watched Saul Rafferty and Logan fighting the week before.

  Anna almost glared at her before a frown snapped between her brows. “Speaking of Cami, where is she anyway?” she questioned Amelia.

  “She and Rafer left.” Amelia shrugged as the waitress brought their drinks and sandwiches. “I’ve not seen her since the night Lowry Berry was killed trying to rape her.”

  Amelia lowered her gaze to the sandwich, the look on her face making Skye wonder if perhaps she had tried to contact the friend she had once been so close to.

  She was preparing to question Amelia about the rumored friendship when she felt a distinct little vibration against her hip from her cell phone.

  “Just a second,” she told her friends with an apologetic smile. “I need to go to the ladies room.”

  Escaping quickly, she pushed into the restroom, pulled the phone free, and activated the app her foster brother had made for the security system they had installed in the rental. Her lips thinned, eyes narrowing at the sight that appeared on the screen of her phone. She had expected it, but she would be damned if she had been expecting who it was.

  Smothering a curse, she peeked out of the stall and made certain no one else was in the bathroom before moving to the wide window on the other side of the room. Looking out carefully, she gave her head a little shake before leaving the ladies room, turning in the opposite direction of the dining area and heading to the back office.

  She’d shared drinks with Chondo there one night after the bar closed. She knew there was a door in his office that wasn’t easily seen from the alley, or the road.

  Considering who was currently going through her home, she knew for a fact someone would be watching for her.

  Slipping out the door and into the narrow, enclosed patio of sorts, Skye moved quickly to the door of the small supply building next to it.

  The door was unlocked. Chondo used it often through the day and didn’t bother locking it until closing time. It was filled with boxes of liquor, restaurant supplies, and old equipment, making it easy to slip through without anyone outside catching sight of her.

  It was the perfect escape buffer. The loading bay in the back opened to a narrow alley and from there she was able to use the back alleys to sneak home.

  One of the first things she’d done when scoping out the town was to make note of any and all possible escape routes from each building that she knew she would be entering. She had used them several times, just to become familiar with them and ensure she had the best chance possible of escaping if she had to.

  If she had to. There was always a small chance she would have to considering the plan she had come up with after meeting Logan Callahan. She just hadn’t imagined it would
take her six months to convince him to kiss her.

  And after he had—

  She wasn’t going to think about that, not now. Her chances of ending up in his bed were about nil at the moment.

  She just might end up shooting him first.

  That was, after she convinced him to allow her to help catch a killer.

  And considering her talents, she knew he could use the help she could provide. She could do what he or his cousins couldn’t.

  Get information.

  Skye worked better at gathering intel. She could draw people to her, make them trust her, and manage to draw details and gossip around her like a magnet.

  Just as she had while in boarding school.

  The benefits of being raised by a state representative whose hunger for the governorship and the death of one daughter ensured his foster daughter attended those private schools.

  Not just one, but three. And surviving there had meant learning how to gain information and where and when to use it.

  She hadn’t attended just one private school, but three altogether. At the last one, she’d been a mentor for a new student, Anna Corbin.

  One of the benefits of attending public school? It was like pre-training for any job requiring covert specialties. Skye had learned how to sneak out of a room on the fifth floor, bypass securely locked doors and security cameras, only to slip back just as stealthily as dawn was making its way over the horizon.

  Her foster sister, Amy, had taught her all the tricks she could teach the young Skye as well. Then, after joining the FBI, she’d taught Skye a few more in the guise of teaching her how to escape, how to fight, and how to defend herself against every eventuality Amy could think of.

  In turn, Skye had taught the too-quiet, too-shy Anna Corbin the same tricks.

  Their friendship had been cemented through that year. Enough so that the information Skye had targeted the Corbin County native for, at the time, had been readily given. As well as information Skye had never imagined.

  Anna had no idea Skye’s foster family was then-Representative Carter Jefferson, just as no one at the schools had known.

  “Daddy Carter,” as Skye called him, had always been very careful about keeping their relationship hidden. To protect her, he’d always told her. To ensure she was never targeted or hurt because of him.

  A part of her had always wondered if he was ashamed of her, though.

  He and Momma Marla loved her, she had no doubt of it. They had doted on her even before Amy’s death. But Amy had never attended private school under any name but her own. She’d never had to pretend her parents were anyone but who they were, and she’d never had to visit her family at vacations only.

  Before Amy’s death, vacations had always been spent on the family estate and vacations to the beach were only during Christmas break.

  Using the back streets to slip home gave her plenty of time to think. Time she probably didn’t need, because Skye didn’t enjoy the suspicions she raised within herself whenever she remembered that past.

  Because thinking of the careful secretiveness that Carter had used in “keeping her safe” always made her think of her parents.

  Their deaths.

  The fact that they had died in the middle of a drug deal gone bad, and that their deaths had caused a brief investigation to focus on the Jeffersons.

  And the past wasn’t what she needed to focus on right now.

  Right now, she needed to focus on the fact that Logan Callahan had finally gotten suspicious of her. Suspicious enough to break into her house and begin searching for things he didn’t need to know existed.

  *

  Now Logan completely understood why her job description didn’t mesh with the woman he had been getting to know. Editor for instruction and design manuals, his ass.

  How could he have missed that she was FBI? It meant that as good as he was, Skye O’Brien might be better, which just burned him. But the woman was too smart, too intuitive, and, if he was guessing right, too damned good with electronic surveillance systems. Covert surveillance, to be exact.

  So covert that Logan couldn’t track down the system he knew was installed in the house she was renting from him. A system that he wouldn’t have known about if he hadn’t started his search of the house, and her secrets, in the basement. If he hadn’t seen the door to the box unlatched and pulled it open just to make certain everything was okay.

  Slipping through the house after she left for lunch with Anna Corbin and Amelia Sorenson, Logan had learned things about Skye that all his interactions with her in the past six months hadn’t even hinted at.

  She loved pictures. Family pictures. Pictures of friends and who he assumed were her parents as well as her foster parents were carefully packed in boxes in the basement.

  Several of the pictures had been taken out and looked at often, if the wrinkled state of the paper they were wrapped in was any indication.

  There were pictures of her as a gawky teenager with Carter Jefferson and his daughter, then a new FBI recruit, Amy Jefferson.

  The small album lying on the bed was filled with pictures of Amy from when she was a teenager to the year she died. All of them with Skye included, most of them showing just Amy and Skye.

  The album contained cards sent to her from Amy. Letters. Enough that Logan put it away with a mental note to return the next time Skye was away to go through it. He had a feeling that album would contain more information about Skye than she was ever likely to tell him.

  The pictures though—they were more than just years of Skye’s life. Part of them were years of his life as well.

  Not pictures of him, but pictures of a young woman he’d only known as a friend. One who had shared coffee with him, who had laughed with him. One who had died because of him.

  The anger that rose inside him was slow-burning, but once it reached critical mass, the searing pain of it tore through his heart.

  She had been lying to him all along.

  The secrets he’d suspected she was harboring and the ones he knew she was determined to hold back from him.

  She was Carter Jefferson’s foster daughter. The papers of guardianship he’d found in the album proved it.

  And she was the much loved younger foster sister Amy Jefferson had once mentioned.

  When Logan had first met Amy, who was three years older than he, she was like a damned goddess. Tall, her hair a sun-streaked caramel, straight and silky soft. She’d always laughed at him. She’d had nice legs, though. Toned, as soft as satin, with a pleasant strength to them that had enabled her to keep up with him when they went hiking.

  She’d actually danced with him at the weekend county social she’d attended when they first met. She’d thought it was amusing how everyone watched them.

  If only he’d known then why she had danced with him and why she had sought out his friendship. If he had known he would have stayed as far away from her as possible.

  Realizing who he was and hearing about the Stalker, Amy hadn’t told him what she was doing or who she was, and he hadn’t known until after her death.

  She’d lied to him just as Amy had and she hadn’t given a damn how he would feel if she managed to get her ass killed.

  Keeping his calm, keeping his head was nearly impossible now.

  Damn her. What the fuck was he supposed to do now? How was he supposed to deal with the fact that she was evidently determined to get into his bed for one reason only?

  To draw a killer to her.

  Just as Amy had become his friend to do.

  At the time, he’d been shocked that Carter Jefferson hadn’t blamed him for Amy’s death, though Logan had definitely blamed himself. Carter had even flown into Sweetrock to meet with Logan, his cousins, and their lawyer when the Barons had pushed to have the cousins jailed for Jaymi’s murder.

  With him, Carter had brought the file Amy had put together while investigating the murders. She’d taken what the profilers had put together and attempted to find a monste
r on her own.

  He’d found her instead.

  Logan had spent several hours, after learning about Marietta’s death, on the phone contacting the other two women he had been with since returning to Colorado.

  He had warned them of the danger, told them what had happened to Marietta.

  They were pissed, to say the least. That and terrified. Because the news stations were already carrying the story of the rebirth of the Sweetrock Slasher.

  Thankfully, for some reason, and Logan wasn’t certain why, neither his nor his cousins’ connection had yet been mentioned.

  Remaining silent rather than discussing the problem with Crowe on the other end of the communications earbud he wore, Logan continued to follow a white heavy electrical line from the electric box where he had found it in the basement through the house.

  He would lose it in one room, find it in another, tucked beneath a piece of carpet, the only sign being a frayed edge of carpet against the wall, a hint of wood shavings, no more than a speck that the sweeper had missed against another wall.

  He tracked the line through every damned room of the house until he came to the small suite Skye used to sleep in.

  The additional electrical line hadn’t been installed by a legitimate electrician, because Logan hadn’t received notice of it.

  Even with his knowledge of covert surveillance and electronics, he’d been unable to pinpoint any specific area that the electrical line had powered.

  But it was the memory of Amy, a friend he hadn’t intended to have, a part of his past he’d believed could never return to haunt him, that was twisting maliciously through his mind.

  He should have found the information while doing the background check on her. It should have been there somewhere.

  Unfortunately, Rafer hadn’t been able to escape Corbin County with Cami. Hell, Cami hadn’t been able to escape far, because Rafer had damned near gone crazy that first week when they had sent her to the Caribbean for fun and sun.

  She’d returned as white as she left, crying tears as Rafer gathered her into his arms at the private airport he’d had her flown into.

  Kneeling on the floor, Logan lifted the edge of the carpet where the slightest hint of upraised threads indicated it had only been loosened from the metal strip it was attached to.