“Answer me, damn you.” Rafe could himself begin to lose his control, fury building, burning.
Evidently Archer saw something in Rafe’s eyes, that killing rage Rafe could feel beginning to burn inside him. It convinced the sheriff to start explaining fast.
“She’s alive. Bruised, scared to damned death, and suffering a concussion, the doctor thinks, but she’s alive. She was still unconscious the last I saw her, but before she passed out she was asking for you,” he sighed.
“We’ll follow you and the sheriff, Rafe,” Crowe told him as he pulled his keys from his pocket, his attention focused on getting to Sweetrock, rather than the sheriff or any other questions he might have. “We’ll bring her back to the ranch.”
“Now, hold on,” Archer began to protest.
“Argue on the way to the hospital,” Rafe suggested as he strode to the sheriff’s vehicle. “I don’t have time for this; let’s roll out.”
He was jerking open the passenger side door and sliding into the passenger seat as he pushed aside a clipboard, a book of tickets, and several other packets that lay there.
“I didn’t invite you to ride with me,” Archer informed him, though he slid into the driver’s seat and put the vehicle in gear.
Behind them, Crowe and Logan threw dirt and gravel as Crown’s Denali tore from the drive and raced ahead of them.
“I’m going to give those bastards a ticket,” Archer muttered.
“Wait until we get to the hospital,” Rafe suggested. “But tell me what happened.”
Archer pulled out onto the main road and laid his foot to the gas to catch up with Crowe and Logan.
“She was attacked last night just after arriving home from the social,” Archer told him. “Her alarms went off, alerting her neighbors and calling nine-one-one. When I got there, she was leaning against the bottom of the staircase. It looks like he hit her in the head several times, and he has a hell of a fist if her head is anything to go by. She was displaying signs of a concussion, a severe one if my guess is right. Her dress was ripped down the front and she kept saying your name. It took me forever to figure out she was asking for you rather than accusing you. Just before she passed out, she said she had to ‘warn Rafer.’”
She was asking for him. She was trying to warn him, of something.
His pride had done this. If he had gone with her as he’d intended, followed her home, and slipped in the back door, then he would have been there for her. She wouldn’t have been hurt. He would have made certain of it. He would have never allowed some bastard to lay the first hand on her.
“You should have called me sooner.” His fists were clenched at his knees, the need for blood pounding through his veins. “Waiting wasn’t a good idea, Archer.”
The sheriff should have called immediately. They’d be discussing that when Archer wasn’t driving and Rafe wasn’t desperate to get to Cami.
“I’ve been a bit busy, Rafer,” Archer informed him mockingly. “There was a friend to get to the hospital for X-rays and MRI. There was a crime scene to process. All those sheriffy little things that take up so much damned time.”
“You could have saved close to thirty minutes by simply calling me.”
“I had to make sure you had the camera proof that you were here when she was attacked,” Archer stated. “I wasn’t certain and I had to be certain that the cameras on the outside of the house were cameras or really the birdhouses that were built around them. I’ll need your permission to have the security consultants copy the digital and send it to me.”
“Get a fucking warrant,” Rafe snapped. “Fuck the bastards that don’t want to believe what’s right in front of your eyes. Do you think I’d fucking hurt Cami, Archer? I thought we knew each other better than that.”
Archer’s hands tightened around the steering wheel, his knuckles turning white as his jaw clenched, the muscle there flexing rapidly before he spoke.
“Rafe, there was a yellow ribbon tied around her bed pillow,” Archer finally stated as he sliced a hard glare toward him. “I’m sure you know exactly what kind of response that news is going to raise when it gets out.”
Rafe froze.
A yellow ribbon around her pillow. It could only mean one thing and that simply wasn’t possible.
“He’s dead. Crowe killed him twelve years ago, Archer. Thomas Jones can’t be killing again.”
“Yeah, I know he’s supposed to be fucking dead,” Archer burst out furiously. “Son of a bitch, he’s a fucking nightmare for this town, Rafe. Do you think I wanted to see that goddamned ribbon and its perfect bow tied around the pillow on Cami’s bed? The one opposite the one she slept on. The one a lover or a husband would use.”
The yellow ribbon.
Thomas Jones had tied a yellow ribbon around a pillow of each of his victims’ bed pillows. Never the pillow they used. Always the pillow a lover would use.
Though all his victims hadn’t had lovers.
And only Jaymi’s pillow hadn’t had a ribbon tied around it.
There had been nothing that the FBI or local law enforcement could find to tie the women together or to explain why he had chosen the women he chose to kill twelve years before.
“We definitely have a problem,” Archer admitted. “More so than you know. Did she tell you about the phone calls she’s been getting? The ones threatening her if she’s sleeping with you?”
He was going to paddle her ass. As God was his witness, he was going to paddle that creamy little ass until it glowed. “She told me. I thought Marshal Roberts was fucking with her. He used to do that. All three of the barons used to do that, Archer.”
They would call suspected friends, lovers, associates, and threaten them anonymously.
Archer cursed under his breath. “Jack Townsend contacted me this morning as soon as he heard what happened. He talked to her yesterday. She told him she was getting phone calls similar to those her sister received before she was killed. Calls warning her to stay away from you or she would regret it.”
Rafe looked over at Archer slowly, mechanically. “Jaymi didn’t mention phone calls to me before she died. Cami was the only one who mentioned them.”
“To no one else either except Jack apparently.” Archer grimaced. “I checked. If Jack hadn’t told me about it this morning, then I wouldn’t have known. Evidently, though, Cami’s been getting them for a while now. At least since she was snowbound at the ranch with you. The calls have been warning her to stay away from you, and the caller is threatening to hurt her and you if she doesn’t keep you out of her bed. The same phone calls Jaymi was getting before she was killed.”
Murder raged through Rafe’s mind.
He couldn’t accept that Jaymi had been in danger simply because she had been sleeping with him months before the serial killer Thomas Jones targeted her.
“I hadn’t seen Jaymi for nearly two days before Jones killed her,” Rafe stated. “We’d talked on the phone a few times, but that was all.”
And she hadn’t seemed the least bit worried or concerned.
“And you and your cousin had no connection to the other women,” Archer asked as Rafe lied with the short shake of his head. “But here’s a connection between Jaymi’s and Cami’s attacks. Those phone calls.”
There was another woman who shared a connection to one of the Callahan cousins. One of the victims from twelve years back whom neither Archer nor any other law enforcement official was aware of.
Turning back to watch the road in front of them, Rafe remained silent.
Six women had died twelve years before. Each one had had a yellow ribbon tied around one of her pillows, except Jaymi. And Thomas Jones had raped, tortured, and stabbed each one of them to death during that bloody, horrendous summer that had nearly destroyed Rafe’s and his cousins’ lives.
For Jaymi, he, Logan, and Crowe had almost been there in time. They had almost heard her screams soon enough from their fishing spot to go racing for her.
Almost.
It didn’t count when it came to a knife and a young woman’s lifeblood.