He had made no mistakes, and he wouldn’t make any.
Replacing the drugged cloth in the Baggie, then sliding it back into his pocket, he lifted her to her feet and roused her enough to convince her to attempt a shuffling walk as he kept her tucked to his side.
Moving her to the front door, he glanced back before opening it, checking that the other man had already disappeared as planned.
The boss was gone, out the back door that had been unlocked just as he had known from an earlier visit that it would be.
He’d planned everything to the last detail.
Moving from the house to the large black 250 King Ranch crew cab pickup parked on the street in front of her home, he congratulated himself on a job very well done.
Unlike Thomas Jones twelve years before and Lowry Berry last month, he wouldn’t screw up.
He wouldn’t allow anyone to interfere in what he had been promised once the Callahan cousins were imprisoned or out of Corbin County.
He would have preferred dead, but his boss wasn’t willing to go that route. Yet.
He knew people, he thought as he helped Marietta from the porch to the sidewalk, then down the flight of cement steps to the passenger side of the truck. He knew people well, and he knew the thought of killing his enemies was constantly in his boss’ mind.
He hoped his boss let him help.
He wanted to help.
He would make certain it hurt them really bad.
Until then, he had Marietta. And before long, he would have another; he knew he would. He had the three picked out. The lovers Logan had taken, the whores who had been willing to settle for a one-night stand rather than holding out for a commitment.
Strapping the nearly unconscious woman into the passenger seat, he touched her cheek gently before closing the door and loping around the vehicle to the driver’s seat.
Ah yes, he was being watched.
Clete Olen was standing in his window across the street, obviously watching closely.
He ignored him.
Witnesses. There were several neighbors watching from their shadowed porches. After all, it was a nice summer night and this was one of the safer neighborhoods.
Pulling into the street, he chuckled at the thought of it.
The Neighborhood Watch hadn’t helped Marietta much. This was the last time they would see her, and they didn’t even know it.
He wondered if Logan Callahan even had a clue that the lovers he had tried so hard over the past six months to slip out with weren’t hidden after all.
He knew each one of them, where to find them, and exactly how to strike.
Now he just had to be patient.
Hours later
Her screams echoed through the dreamscape of a forested night, filled with agony and rage as they penetrated his senses. Logan could feel the terror as it tore through him, the knowledge of what he was hearing and whose screams it was.
It was a dream. The same dream. And he couldn’t escape it.
The knowledge that he would never be able to save her was replayed through his soul, nearly breaking it now as it had then.
Because he couldn’t save her.
No one could save her.
Jaymi.
His cousin’s lover.
His friend.
Logan could feel his feet pounding across the uneven terrain as he, Rafer, and Crowe fought to reach her, though a part of him knew they would never get there in time. Fate had already delivered the deadly stroke of destruction and now all that was left of it was the memories and the nightmares.
Blood raced through his veins, pounded through his heart, and adrenaline poured into his system as rage began to eat at his senses.
The sound of her agony penetrated the darkness. He could hear Rafer curse ahead of him, the sound of his voice broken, enraged. Logan couldn’t hear Crowe, but then he and Rafer never heard Crowe. Their cousin was as silent as the night itself, bearing down and promising death.
Twelve-year-old memories surged through Logan’s sleeping mind, bathing the night in a bloody hue. Time seemed to be locked in slow motion as blood spilled from the deep, gashing wound the monster had sliced into Jaymi’s side.
She wasn’t crying, though. Instead, she was looking over Rafer’s shoulder, whispering, “Tye’s come for me, Rafe. He’s here. Tye’s here.”
Her deceased husband.
In her pain and fear it was the man she had cherished above all others whom she had conjured up to take her from the reality she was suffering.
Rafer was screaming as he fought to hold the wound closed, to push her blood back inside her body, begging her to hold on.
Begging her not to leave him.
After all, who else would ever accept him as she had? Who else would look beyond the ravages of the cousins’ past and see more than three cursed young men?
As Logan crashed through the night after Crowe and the serial killer who had made Jaymi his sixth victim, he could feel the sorrow, the grief, and the horrifying knowledge of what this night could bring creeping through him.
Each of the six women who had been killed throughout the summer had been tied to the cousins. Each of them had either slept with one of them or was sleeping with one of them at the time of her death.
Logan had lost two past lovers, Crowe had lost three, and now Rafer had lost the woman who had helped him find a measure of peace in the past year.
As Logan reached Crowe, crouched in the dirt next to a mountain trail, his cousin’s hands and face stained with blood, he drew to a stop. Chest heaving for breath, failure thick in his senses, he watched the tears that welled in Crowe’s eyes as he lifted them to him.
“Damn. Damn. He got away.” Crowe’s breaths heaved as harshly as Logan’s now while his voice filled with pain. “Fuck him. Damn him, he got away.”
Logan stared at his cousin’s hands as he turned them up. They both stared at the blood before Crowe lifted his face to Logan, a tight, savage smile contorting his expression. “He’s carrying my f**king knife buried in his gut,” Crowe snarled. “He won’t live much longer.”
Jagged blade, sharp and deadly, Crowe’s knife was meant to kill, and he had ensured that it had served its purpose.
They were too young for this, was a hazy thought. Yet here they were, and there was no escaping.
“Jaymi’s dead.” Logan helped him to his feet as Crowe staggered, his gaze bleak as he leaned heavily against Logan for precious minutes.
Grief tore at Crowe’s voice as well. “Fuck. Logan, we’re all screwed tonight.”
They hadn’t been fast enough. They hadn’t saved Jaymi, and now they would be lucky if they could save themselves.