Midnight Sins (65 page)

hair in frustration. “I didn’t say I knew why,” she

admitted. “But as you said, why give a fuck who you

fuck? Why call Jaymi and threaten her? Why do the

same with me? And why resurrect a monster? Unless

there were two killers and one of them has decided to

start killing again.”

Her gaze met Rafe’s, and she saw the suspicion

her questions had raised, but she also saw doubt.

The cousins didn’t want to accept that Jaymi could

have died because of her tie to Rafe, but Cami had

accepted it a long time ago. She had simply believed

the past was dead.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t dead.

She could feel it, like a chill racing across her

flesh, like the whisper of unseen force at her ear.

There was so much more going on here than

three families’ disowning their grandsons because of

who their fathers were and because the boys’

mothers refused to love anyone else. No, there was

something more sinister, and she had a feeling that

finding the answers to the questions she had raised

could be a long time coming. And asking those

questions where other ears could hear would be more

dangerous than she might have anticipated.

As she began to turn and move toward the

counter and the coffee left in the pot, one of the cell

phones in the center of the breakfast table began to

vibrate imperatively.

Rafe’s hand flashed out, gripping the phone and

flipping it open before hitting the call button in a

seamless move as he brought it to his ear.

“Yeah?” he answered quietly, and waited a

second, a frown brewing between his brows.

“How long have you been there?” His voice

seemed to harden, his sapphire eyes gem bright and

just as hard as he listened.

Pulling her gaze from his, Cami moved to the

coffeepot and refilled the empty cup she had set in

front of it earlier.

“Stay in place until daylight, then head to Cami’s,”

he said. “Crowe or Logan will have breakfast for you.”

Rafe listened again before grunting mockingly.

“Not in your dreams, Tank,” he replied to whatever the

other man said. “I’ll be sleeping.”

Perhaps Tank wanted Rafe to fix breakfast.

“We’ll talk tomorrow,” Rafe told him before

flipping the phone closed and staring back at Cami.

“Tank’s at Amelia’s. No one is moving in or out, but he

saw Amelia in her upstairs bedroom window as she

closed the curtains. She’s not showing up tonight.”

It was still early.

She would show, Cami knew, but it wouldn’t be

until late. Very late if Amelia followed the time line

they’d had when they were younger.

Amelia had always been very adept at slipping

out of her father’s house and slipping into Cami’s.

“She has the key to the basement door,” Cami

told Rafe quietly as she set the coffee cup back on the

counter. “I never had the lock changed, just in case

she needed someplace to run to.”

Rafe leaned forward. “Cami, what was the secret

you were keeping for Amelia?”

Closing her eyes, she lowered her head, her jaw

clenching painfully.

Had it just been this morning? Had she told Rafe

they had lost a child and in the next second been

forced to face yet another emergency?

There had been no chance to rest, to find peace

or a few moments to discuss much of anything that

had happened three years before.

“Cami, the time to keep secrets is over,” he

warned her, his voice low yet hard. “Why did Amelia

go from the rebel with a cause to that staid, silent

wraith of a young woman we saw today? What did her

father learn when he read your diary?”

She was careful to keep her gaze down, but from

the corners of her eyes she watched Crowe. Closely.

And he was consciously not looking in her direction.

“Cami, I have to agree with Rafe,” Logan stated,

his gaze compassionate but just as determined as his

cousin’s. “We need to know now. She’s passing you

notes that she can’t sign in her own name, and coded

with a message that only you would understand that

she needs to meet with you. Something’s wrong here,

and it’s affecting more than just those in this room at

the moment.”

But it affected one of them more than the other,

and obviously, that one hadn’t trusted his cousins with

the information.

“Cami.” Rafe’s tone was warning. “I won’t beg for

the information. What I’ll do is start asking questions

around town; is that what you want?”

Cami flinched.

Crowe lifted his head then, his gaze slicing

across the room to her, obviously aware she was

watching him from the corners of her eyes.

She watched as he drew in a deep breath and

gave a short shake of his head before he said, “She

helped me break into the courthouse the month we

were home on leave that year. She stole her father’s

key, slipped inside with me, opened the safe, and I

took the file he had been putting together on us. We

wiped the computers, made certain there were no

copies, and then I took her home.”

Cami swallowed tightly.

Amelia had told her about it several nights later,

after Crowe had disappeared into Crowe Mountain

once again. Excited, nervous, her emerald eyes

sparkling with what Cami knew was a surfeit of pure

sexual arousal, Amelia had told her exactly what had

happened before he took her home. Crowe was

leaving quite a few details out of the story.

“Hell.” Logan blew out a hard breath as frustration

creased his face. “Now he’s blackmailing her.”

“And no one cared to tell us.” Crowe directed the

accusation at Cami.

“Perhaps someone thought you’d be man

enough to at least pay attention to any changes in her

after your little escapade,” she shot back. “Tell me,

Crowe, did you even bother to question why Amelia

married so quickly? Or why she changed so

drastically?”

His lips thinned. “I didn’t know until today.”

Cami’s jaw tightened as her lips pursed for a

second in an attempt to hold back her anger.

It didn’t work.

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” she charged

roughly. “Did you even give a damn after you charmed

her out of what you wanted and left her watching for

you every damned day?”

His eyes narrowed.

“Cami,” Rafe warned, “let it go for now. We’re all

less than calm, and there’s no sense in fighting

among ourselves.”

She let her gaze connect with Rafe’s, the need to

continue the accusation straining her patience.

Because she knew how Amelia felt where Crowe was

concerned.

Like Rafe for Cami, Crowe had lit a fire inside

Amelia that even the knowledge of the repercussions

if anyone learned what she had done couldn’t cool.

Amelia knew that Crowe was even more forbidden to

her than to any other woman in the county, with the

exception of the current Corbin princess, Ann.

And someone had found out. The wrong person

had found out, and it had destroyed Amelia’s dreams.

Her father had somehow found the diary that

Cami kept hidden in a box of letters and cards tucked

in the back of her nightstand behind books,

mementos, and a picture of her with her mother and

Jaymi.

Cami had never learned how he had found it.

What she learned, though, was the price she and

Amelia both had paid for the discovery.

The price they were still paying.

“I hate this fucking county,” Logan breathed out

roughly as silence filled the room. “Wayne Sorenson

always was a Corbin lapdog. It’s a shame his

daughter is paying for his lack of backbone.”

Wayne Sorenson was particularly cruel. Amelia

hadn’t just betrayed him; she had broken the law. He

had the proof of it in the journal Amelia’s best friend

had recorded the events of the night in. Amelia and

Cami would stay away from each other, Amelia would

marry the man Wayne had been shoving down her

throat, and she would become the perfect daughter. If

she didn’t, he would ensure that she was arrested for

breaking into the courthouse and interfering in an

investigation against suspected criminal elements.

There was nothing he could do to Crowe,

because for some reason Cami hadn’t mentioned his

name. It was a habit she had taken as a teenager.

She never wrote their names. She called them

instead by the predatory nicknames she had given

them. Rafe was the wolf, Logan was the tiger, and

Crowe was the lion, the king of the jungle, simply

because he seemed to be harder than the other two.

There was no way Amelia could deny Cami had

written about her, though. Her name was there, written

in bold black, and the act had been described in

exacting detail.

“I’m getting a shower and heading to bed,” Cami

told the cousins. “This hasn’t been my best day and I’d

just as soon go to sleep and forget it happened for a

while.”

She could feel the heaviness weighing her soul

down as guilt bit at her hard and deep.

She hadn’t just lost everything she had held dear,

but she had also managed to strip every shred of

Amelia’s freedom. Because if she hadn’t returned

home and done exactly what her daddy wanted, then

he would make certain her prints were found inside

the safe and the county attorney at the time would

have arrested her and made certain she spent time in

prison. Then her father had upped the ante. She

would do what he wanted, or he would take Cami’s

journal and implicate her in the crime as well. He

might not be able to arrest Crowe, but Wayne could

destroy both her and Cami’s life.

Wayne Sorenson had tied his daughter’s hands,

hobbled her, blindfolded her, then shoved a dagger

so deep inside her heart that Cami knew her friend

would never recover.

Moving through the house and up the stairs,

Cami told herself she would make it up to Amelia one

of these days. It was one of those promises Cami

made almost daily and one she knew she couldn’t fix.

She’d lost so much simply because of the county she

had been so determined to stay in. She hadn’t wanted

to move to Denver, but Aspen was just small enough

that she could never live there without running into her

parents.

If her mother ever recovered from the stroke

she’d had, if she ever left the nursing home—

Unfortunately, she had seemed more than content

exactly where she was. Away from her husband.

Still, if not her parents, Cami would end up