Whether the Corbins, Rafferys, and Robertses liked it or not, Corbin County was growing. New blood was coming in. Technology was making the world a much smaller place, and Corbin County would be forced to change with it. Whether any of them liked it or not.
Besides, there were more important things in the world to worry about than these three young men. Men who had been unfortunate enough to have been born to an inheritance their families didn’t want them to have.
“Did you hear about Amy Jefferson?” Jaymi heard the question posed several tables over by one of the women who had volunteered to chaperone that weekend.
Amy, the daughter of Colorado’s state representative, had been found raped, tortured, and murdered. Another victim of a serial killer’s hunger.
“Poor thing,” Sara Keane, the wife of the pharmacist Jaymi worked for, said. “They said they found her in her car on the road at the base of Crowe Mountain. She was a mess, too. She had suffered badly the state police reported.”
That mountain belonged to Crowe Callahan and it was part of the inheritance he was still fighting the three families over. A mountain that had been in the Corbin family since before the county had first been created that went to the oldest child of the family, and if that child was a daughter, all that was required was that she have a child herself. And all the better if he were a son and carried the “Crowe” name. Bloodline was more important than name to the great-grandmother who had set the trust in motion. Bloodlines, and the family name that originated centuries before.
But the implications of the state representative’s daughter dying at the base of the mountain wasn’t lost on Jaymi. There were already those more than eager to pin those murders on the Callahan cousins.
She slid a look to Rafe to see him laughing with Logan. Cami had wandered away from the table, as she was prone to do lately, as though she couldn’t bear to be around Rafe for long. At the same time, she would catch little glimpses of him as if to be certain he was still there.
Teenage hormones, Jaymi thought sadly, weren’t being kind to her sister, and they boded ill for Cami’s future. A fascination such as the one she was showing for Rafe would only end up breaking her young heart, one way or the other.
It wasn’t as though Cami had a lot to hold on to in her young life. She had Jaymi, and sometimes, if their father wasn’t around, Cami had their mother. Unfortunately, their father was around much too often. Cami could do nothing right in his eyes. Just as Jaymi could do nothing wrong. And to preserve the peace in the house, Margaret Flannigan did whatever it took to pacify her confrontational husband. And that meant ignoring her youngest child.
Even the knowledge that his elder daughter was f**king the town’s ostracized bad boy wasn’t enough to tarnish Jaymi in Mark Flannigan’s eyes. As he explained it, grief had overtaken her and Jaymi was temporarily trying to find her husband after his death, in the arms of his best friend. And Rafe Callahan was taking advantage of it. “After all, wasn’t that what a Callahan was best known for?” was what her father was prone to say.
Mark wasn’t a father to his younger daughter, and that often seared Jaymi with guilt. She didn’t understand why, but she suspected. Cami would have been conceived during the year their mother was estranged from her husband. And Jaymi had always wondered.
“Do you think they were involved in it?” Jaymi heard Sara ask, and she knew who “they” were.
“Well, the FBI released their profile on the killer,” the other woman stated. “And they ‘did’ say they believed it was at least two men acting in accordance. I wouldn’t doubt it was three,” she concluded with an air of knowing importance.
At that moment, Jaymi’s cell phone began vibrating in her jacket pocket, causing her to flinch in fear.
Glancing at Rafe, she saw him and Logan talking to Cami, teasing her as they tried to draw her back to the group.
Pulling the cell phone free, Jaymi glanced at the number before moving a few steps away, then flipping the phone open. She didn’t know her caller’s identity, but the “unknown” caller was familiar.
“Go to hell!” she hissed into the line as she answered the call.
“My hell is a daily adventure into a torment created by man who is full of infinite cruelty and self-absorbed awareness. A hell created by Callahans. Do you really want me to show you my hell, Jaymi?”
She knew that voice.
Each time he called she tried to keep him talking longer, tried to figure out who he was. Because she knew that voice, had heard it before, and often. But not often enough to place it without seeing his face at the same time.
“Why would you care?” she asked, watching the crowd and trying to spot anyone with a cell phone. Anyone who could be making the call.
She saw no one.
She saw several teenagers texting. The Realtor Dave Stone was laughing into his phone, but he had a high, nasal tone, not a gentle saddened voice that echoed with grief.
“Why do I care?” the caller sighed. “There are so many reasons. I like you, Jaymi. You’re different than … Well, than most women, who lower themselves to f**k those bastards, I guess.” He paused as though he had said more than he intended to. “Don’t push me. Get your sister and walk away from him, Jaymi. Cut those ties now, before you force me to cut them for you.”
Jaymi glanced over at Rafe again. He, Logan, and Crowe were gently flirting with Cami, as she giggled and watched Rafe with complete female adoration.
“I’ll ask you again, why do you care?”
There was a moment of silence.
“Because I have to care,” he finally said sadly. “If I don’t, who else will? Who else will keep them from destroying families, lives, and morals, if not I?”
“They’re just men,” she whispered painfully, realizing in that moment what the Callahans had faced all their lives. “Not monsters.”
“But they attract the monsters,” he said, with grave certainty as though he truly believed monsters existed. “This is your last chance, Jaymi. I won’t tell you again. End this illicit relationship or I’ll end it for you.”
It was what he had said.
“End this illicit relationship.”
Who had she heard say that before? It stuck in her mind, the words and that grave, pain-ridden voice.
Who had called her relationship with Rafe illicit?