PROLOGUE
For Immediate Consideration.
Corbin County, Colorado.
One Million in US Funds.
All expenses reimbursed.
Three Marks, plus Collateral at one hundred thousand per hit.
Deposit one third. One third at first hit.
Remainder upon Completion.
Immediate Reply Requested.
Ryan Calvert stared at the message for a long time, lips tight, jaw clenched in fury.
Son of a bitch.
He had to admit he had expected this sooner. Hell, years sooner.
His cover as an assassin worked perfectly.
He’d put out feelers twelve years before that he wanted any jobs going through Corbin County. He hadn’t expected them to take this long though.
What had tipped the scales?
Was it the Callahans’ return, or was it, as he suspected, one of the Callahans’ imminent marriage?
Nuptials would open a whole can of worms that he was sure someone in Corbin County didn’t want opened. After all, if one of the three Callahan cousins married, then that could mean possible heirs, and he was certain the barons wouldn’t allow that to happen.
That is, if it was the barons behind this.
He’d been investigating the situation since he’d first learned of his birth parents’ deaths and the situation behind his adoption.
He had arrived in Corbin County twelve years before, to find three young men—all orphans—who had been newly accepted into the Marines … and recently framed for the murders of twelve young women with whom they had been associated. They had barely gotten off.
“Is this what you’ve been waiting for, boss?” His second-in-command leaned back in his chair and stared at the message on the screen thoughtfully.
Ryan nodded, murmuring, “That’s it.”
The plans were already in place. Each year he’d had to refine them, tweak them a bit, but everything was good to go.
“Head back to the office,” he told the other man. “I’ll contact Stokesberry and send him the intel file we’ve put together.”
“You know Skye O’Brien is there, right?”
Ryan leveled his gaze on the other man. “Douglas O’Brien’s girl? The one Ferguson took in after her parents’ death?”
“Yep. She rented a place about four months ago. The one right beside Logan Callahan.”
Ryan breathed out heavily. He knew why she was there. She was investigating the person or persons who had targeted the Callahan cousins. Her foster sister had done the same and had ended up dead and the same fate might be in store for Skye O’Brien.
It has to end here, Ryan thought. Now.
The Callahans had stayed away as long as they could, they had done their best to sever their ties to Corbin County, probably telling themselves that their inheritances meant nothing to them.
In the end, it had mattered though. Their roots, and the inheritances their parents had lost their lives preserving.
“So much blood shed,” Ryan said. “If the barons were behind this, we would have found evidence linking it to them by now.”
“They’re puppets,” John said, shaking his head. “The ears we have in their homes are certain of it. Whoever’s behind it is in Corbin County, and they’re controlling those three.”
Ryan sat up straighter in his chair, tapped his fingers on the surface of the dark walnut desk, and pursed his lips thoughtfully.
“Make a list,” he ordered. “Give me suspects. I’ll contact the Bureau and tell them we’re a go. And make damned sure if O’Brien’s boss finds out she’s there, that she’s not moved. It’s time to shut this down and we’re going to need her.”
“Got it.” John nodded quickly, moving to the bank of computers and pulling up the required information. “The team is in place and ready. You’ve planned well, boss. We’ll find whoever is behind this now.”
All they had needed was the right time, and the right offer and here it was. He’d make sure that everyone involved burned because he had a debt to repay.
It was time to rain hell down on Corbin County, and he was just the man to do it.
With a little help when the time came.
CHAPTER ONE
He was just as handsome now as he had been in his picture twelve years before. Just as hard, just as tough, and giving just the same impression of a man a woman could depend upon.
A man a woman could find pleasure with.
For Skye O’Brien, the past six months had been an adventure in getting to know the man her foster sister Amy Jefferson had thought so highly of.
The man who had been the cause of Amy’s death.
Logan Callahan hadn’t wielded the knife that had slashed her throat. He had simply danced with a friend, maybe flirted a little.
The Sweetrock Slasher had taken care of the rest when he had raped, tortured, and murdered the laughing, caring young woman Skye had called “sister.”
But she could clearly understand now why Amy had risked so much for him and why, as a newly inducted FBI agent, she had begun investigating the deaths that had occurred around him twelve years ago. She had died before she could ever report what she had learned.
Logan wasn’t handsome in a pretty sense. He had that rough, tough, cowboy way about him that drove women crazy and no doubt had his ego stroked on a daily basis.
Broad shoulders, long, powerful legs. Big feet. Which made her wonder if what they said about big feet was true. And there wasn’t an ounce of spare flesh on that hard, corded body either.
Men, her mother had always laughed, were like fine, fine wine. They only got better with age.
In Logan Callahan’s case, it was true enough. At thirty-three, the small crow’s feet at the corners of his sexy, velvet green eyes added to his appeal. The few fine lines at his forehead and at the corners of his lips spoke of a man who hadn’t had an easy life, though she knew he’d made the most of the life he’d been given.
The gleam in those unusual eyes as he watched the women who stopped to chat, to smile, to entice, assured each and every one of them if he was of a mind to take them to his bed, then it would be an experience they would never forget.
They might not survive long afterwards, but while they were breathing, they would never forget it.
No doubt that knowledge was the reason he rebuffed each overture and flirtatious suggestion he dance with them.
After all, what man wanted to suffer the knowledge that his lovers would die simply because they were his lovers?