“Please, Rafe, swear it.” The harder she had sobbed, the faster her blood had flowed from her body.
“I swear, Jaymi,” he vowed hoarsely knowing she was struggling to hang on. “I swear I’ll always watch out for her.”
There was no saving her.
Rafe had applied pressure on the wound. He held her. He screamed at her and demanded she live. And still, she had reached up with one hand shaking, touched his cheek and whispered, “She loves you, Rafe. She’ll always love you so much, just as I love my Tye. Give her a chance when she grows up.” Tears had washed her face as he rocked her, his own cheeks damp as he realized he was losing her forever. “Promise me. Take care of Cami.” Then Jaymi had looked over his shoulder and smiled before whispering, “Rafe, it’s Tye.” Her lips had trembled as such joy flooded her face, her dying gaze. “He’s finally come for me, Rafe. Tye finally came for me—”
And she had died. With the greatest joy that Rafe had seen on her face since the day she had married her precious Tye, he watched Jaymi slip from life as he screamed out her name.
But the sheriff hadn’t believed the men.
The sheriff and his deputies had arrived ahead of the state police. Immediately he and his cousins had been handcuffed and arrested as Jaymi’s murderers. And now they were trying to pin the five other murders that had occurred that summer on Rafe and his cousins.
The black-masked serial killer had been caught on surveillance taking Jaymi outside the pharmacy the night before. Her sister, Cami, had reported Jaymi’s disappearance hours later when Jaymi didn’t return to the apartment with the medicine she had gone for.
That morning when the pharmacist went to unlock the back door he had found the medicine, Jaymi’s key, and the door unlocked.
When he had pulled up the camera footage for the sheriff, they had seen the abduction, which had been taped just hours before Logan made that desperate 911 call. She had been taken at the same time witnesses had seen him and his cousins getting gas in town several blocks away.
Ryan Calvert, the recruiting officer who had taken an unusual interest in him and his cousins, had managed to get a copy of that security footage before the sheriff had gotten to it. Gunnery Sergeant Calvert hadn’t rushed to the jail to bail them out, or to hire the nearest lawyer. The minute he’d heard the report over his radio and remembered seeing the Callahan cousins in town as he drove to his hotel, he rushed to the combined truck stop/gas station and restaurant and made nice with the manager, Missy Derringer.
Thankfully, Missy was a friend. Perhaps not a friend that publicly claimed the Callahans, but a friend nonetheless. They did have a few, sometimes.
Being the owner’s daughter had helped. She’d quickly copied the security footage before her father could order otherwise and gladly gave it to the brooding Marine demanding it.
It hadn’t helped.
They were still sitting there in a damn jail cell two days later wondering how the hell it had happened.
And Rafe couldn’t get the memory of it out of his head.
The sight of that smile, so filled with love as she whispered Tye had come for her. It sent a chill up his spine, even now. The sense that she had only been waiting, always been watching for him to come for her had swept over him.
Jaymi had made Rafe swear he would protect Cami. She was sick, alone in Jaymi’s apartment, according to Jaymi’s friend and neighbor. Cami cried continually. She was begging for Jaymi, and Cami’s aunt and uncle were considering having her hospitalized due to the severity of the bronchitis.
Rafe could still hear Ryan screaming about a vagrant who had been found with Crowe’s knife in his side, his pants undone, and Jaymi’s blood on him.
Ryan was yelling furiously about taking his own samples to a Denver lawyer and having them analyzed. He was demanding the sheriff release his nephews now, by God, before he sued the county for an illegal arrest. “That f**king security tape is all you dumb shits need,” he raged. “Now let them the hell out now.”
Rafe shook his head.
He and his cousins knew Ryan Calvert was a Callahan, but no one else had, until now. Their grandparents had given Ryan up for adoption, when they couldn’t afford to feed their children any longer, long before Samuel, Benjamin, and David had really been old enough to understand their baby brother was gone.
Rafe didn’t know the whole story; he’d only just learned that the recruiter who had come to Sweetrock was actually the youngest Callahan son. Ryan’s search for his birth family had spanned more than ten years. His commitment to his nephews only grew stronger with the knowledge that his parents, as well as his brothers, were gone.
When his brothers returned, it was learned the child their parents had had so late in life, was dead, or so they believed, and their ranch supposedly sold and split between the Corbins, Raffertys, and Robertses. Their entire lives had been torn apart and all anyone cared about was convincing them to leave Corbin County and accept the losses.
And now that Callahan son was back and raising hell.
Ryan was screaming something about DNA, vagrants, serial murders, and alibis, and Rafe was wondering why he gave a damn.
Standing up, Rafe moved to the door, his hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans, his gaze focused on the night Jaymi died rather than at the stone wall across from him.
How was Cami? He had promised Jaymi he would look after her.
But how was he supposed to take care of her? He’d promised, but he had signed up for the Marines last week. He, Logan, and Crowe. They’d had enough of Corbin County for a while, they’d decided. Like their fathers before them, they thought the military seemed the best option.
For the same reason, perhaps. Because they were tired of the bullshit.
And it all went back to the three families who ruled Corbin County like their own personal little fiefdom.
Generations before, James Randal Callahan had acquired eight hundred acres of prime ranch land from the government as had his three partners James Corbin the First, Andrew Roberts, and Jason Rafferty.
At the time, the four men had been the best of friends as well as business partners. They had acquired the land they needed, the cattle and the horses, then they’d found wives.
They’d settled the land tucked between the rising mountains and proceeded to build a dynasty. But somewhere in those first years, something had happened to change those friendships and the wealth that first James Randal Callahan had brought with him. While the others had thrived, the Callahan family had slowly begun to wither away until Rafe’s grandfather had nearly died of some lung infection.