3

CHAPTER 2

Two weeks later

“I’m not going back to college.”

Anna tried to ignore the four sets of shocked gazes that stared back at her as she stepped into the kitchen and walked to the coffeepot.

She’d made her declaration, and now she was going to make her stand.

“I didn’t hear you right,” her father replied coolly. “I could have sworn I just heard you say you were throwing away thousands of dollars already paid, on tuition alone, to one of the finest colleges in the state of California.”

“Not to mention one of the most secluded, out-of-the-way colleges on the face of the planet,” she retorted. “One I first begged you not to send me to, and have since demanded to be able to leave for another.”

“And that doesn’t count the apartment, furnishing it, clothing and food allowances—”

“Oh yeah, and that’s so much money in that dried-up little corner of the world,” she snorted. “Especially considering your so-called apartment is one owned by the school itself.”

She would have given her father’s argument much more respect if it weren’t for the fact that the college she was attending, as exclusive and high-priced as it was, was little more than a home for wayward children who gave little respect to the fact that their parents only wanted a future for them.

It was all but a prison.

And why was she there?

She hadn’t figured that one out yet.

She was three years through a four-year program, and she still couldn’t make sense of her family’s choice for that college.

What she had done, though, was cram those four years into three, and had the degree she had been sent there to attain in business management and consulting.

“Not to mention the fact that Jacques Dermonde’s offer of a position at his company in France is dependent on the completion of those courses,” he continued.

“And it also doesn’t take into account the fact that I hated France when we visited it, and no consideration is given to the fact that I’ve said countless times that I refuse to work there. Especially for a man who forced his daughter into marriage with a man twice her age, and considers women no more than children who have to be controlled and fondled as he pleases.”

And what had ever made her parents believe she would allow herself to be controlled by anyone, besides themselves? And only then because of her love for them.

Pouring a mug of coffee she turned back to her family and felt her stomach clench in dread and trepidation.

This wasn’t the reaction she had expected.

There was no warmth, amusement, or even resignation in their gazes. For a moment, before she could turn her head away, Anna was even certain she’d seen rising fear building in her mother’s eyes.

“Lisa.” Her gran’mama, Genoa Corbin, addressed Anna’s mother as she rose slowly to her feet, reaching for the cane that sat by her chair. “You and I should let John and her father handle this.”

Lisa rose to her feet and Anna noticed her mother’s hands shaking.

“Yes, run away, Momma. This is, of course, the Middle Ages rather than the twenty-first century and I’m certain none of your business,” Anna retorted painfully.

“Have some respect for your mother, Anna,” her grandfather snapped, slapping her emotions with the brutal chastisement. “I raised you better than that.”

“Did you, Grandfather?” Straightening her shoulders and lifting her chin in determination, she faced him squarely. She hadn’t called him Gran’pop for several years now, for a reason. “You raised me to stand up for myself until I was nine, then you shipped me off and never did more than let me know which exotic location we’d be vacationing in during my breaks, despite my pleas that I be allowed to come home, just for a little while.”

“And here you are! Just look how you’ve repaid me for that,” he accused her, his tone forbidding and bleak.

“Anna,” her father snapped. “Stop acting like a spoiled brat. You will return to school today.”

“No, Father, I won’t. I’ve had the dean’s letters to the ranch collected before they ever left the school for the past three years. You’ve only been sent what I wanted you to see. I graduated before showing up here last week. I won’t be going back. If you and Grandfather won’t let me work with you here on the ranch, then I’ll find a job in town.”

“No one will hire you,” her father promised her.

It wasn’t just anger that made her father’s voice hoarse, vibrating with a rough, dark emotion. It was indeed fear, just as it had been in her mother’s eyes.

“They already have,” she stated quietly, clasping her hands in front of her. “I’ve been hired as assistant to Mikhail Resnova at the Sweetrock offices of Brute Force.”

She could have cut the tension in the room with a butter knife as pure terror seemed to flash in her father’s eyes.

Brute Force was her cousins’ business. Rafer, Logan, and Crowe Callahan were equal partners along with Ivan and Mikhail Resnova in the security venture.

“What are you scared of, Dad?” Forcing the question past her lips was one of the hardest things she had ever done. And she wouldn’t have asked if it weren’t for the fact that she knew he was frightened of something.

“Of your determination to ruin your life and your future,” he stated, his voice still hoarse. “I can’t believe you pulled this, Anna.”

But there was more. She knew there was more. She could see it in his eyes. Just as she could see the fear and desperation in his expression.

Anna shook her head. “Working on the family ranch, or for my cousins in town, is not the destruction of my life or my future,” she informed them. “And neither will any other dream I have. Dreams I deserve, Dad. I don’t deserve to be locked up in a college for wayward children, nor have I deserved to be separated from my family since I was nine years old.”

She’d hated that. She still couldn’t forget it. Nothing could ever hurt her as much as being taken from her family had broken her heart.

She’d been jerked from the home and the family she loved, and placed in private schools. She had called home when her fear of the dark had overwhelmed her, and they had refused to come get her.

She had cried, she had begged, she had demanded, and still they had refused.

“I’m tired of begging,” she told them when neither man spoke. “I’m not going back, and I refuse to beg further. I haven’t been a part of this family since I was nine years old, and I refuse to give you the courtesy of having any say in my future any longer. I’m staying in Corbin County, whether you like it or not.”

“No, you will not.” It was her grandfather who rose to his feet. “Fine, you’ve graduated without telling us, but that doesn’t mean you’ll work for anyone in this County or in the state of Colorado without my permission. You can take the job in France or you can leave with nothing but the clothes on your back and see how easy it is to feed yourself with nothing more than that. And don’t expect that no-account cousin of yours to do anything but laugh in your face. Because, by God, he hates us all.”

And if it had been only anger in his gaze, something other than that flash of terror that filled his eyes, then she could have hated him. She could have allowed the years of desertions, the dark, lonely nights and even more desolate days to feed the anger growing inside her.

She had no friends but one. She hadn’t had family to depend upon. She’d just been alone in one private school after another, with each move, each year until she swore she couldn’t bear another.

If she had seen disinterest or just anger in her family’s eyes, in their faces, then she could have hated them as she wanted to.

That wasn’t what she saw, but it wasn’t enough to hold back her own anger.

“Disowning another grandchild, are you, Grandfather?” She gave a facsimile of a mocking laugh, but nothing could cover the pain spilling from her. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

“If that’s what I have to do,” he snarled.

“Dad!” Her father’s tone was a shocked warning as he spoke to his own father.

“She’s been pushing for this for years,” her grandfather snapped. “She’s been begging for it. Always fighting over the fact that we preferred to meet her for a nice vacation rather than having her come here. Always running her mouth about her lack of family. Her lack of consideration in everything we gave her—”

“What did you give me?” she cried out painfully. “An education? Clothes? That’s all you gave me.”

“And just exactly what did you think we owed you?” he growled back.

“You owed me a family,” Anna yelled with overwhelming fury, so filled with pain and anger she was shaking now. “You owed me the same love and devotion you gave me before I turned nine. That was exactly what you owed me. That, or to tell me what the hell I did to make you hate me so much.”

The tears fell then. They filled her eyes, blurred her vision, and ran until she wondered if she would ever be able to stop them.

“Why?” she sobbed desperately. “Why do you hate me?”

“God, Anna, we don’t hate you.” Her father came out of his chair in a burst of anger so ferocious even Anna stepped back. “Why can’t you just accept that we’re doing our best to protect you?”

She shuddered, shaking with her sobs as she faced him.

“Because I don’t need to be protected from living. I need a life, Dad,” she cried, the pain building, burning inside her until she was terrified it would consume her. “Is that so hard to understand?”

“Then get out there and get you a life.” Her grandfather waved his arm to the door. “But don’t expect it to be easy. I promise you, no one in Corbin County will dare help you. Especially Crowe Callahan.”

“Like no one helped him, Rafer, and Logan?” she sneered back at him. “I always thought he must have done something so vile, so unforgivable, to have been denied your love. But that’s not the truth, is it, John Corbin? What they say in town, that you punish him because you can’t punish his mother for leaving and allowing herself to die in that car accident all those years ago, is true.”

His face spasmed with pain. An agony unlike any she had ever seen filled his face.

“And if she had done as I asked, then she would be alive now,” he stated, his voice hoarse as another sob shook her body. “I won’t make that same mistake with you, Anna. You can start packing for France, or you can be cut out of our lives just as easy as David Callahan’s little brat was.”

Pain filled his voice and struck at her heart, but it was too late to back down. She had made her stand, just as her grandfather had now done.

“Is this how you feel as well, Dad?” she asked bitterly. “Would you cut me out of your life so easily?”

His jaw tightened as he refused to speak.

As far as Anna was concerned, that was answer enough.

“I’ll get my things and leave.”

“No you won’t.” The fury in her grandfather’s voice made her pause. “You haven’t bought a damned thing you call your own. Everything you have someone else has bought for you. You can leave this house the same way you came into it, with nothing. You should be thankful I let you have the clothes on your back,” he reminded her. “That’s all you leave with and you can count yourself lucky that I’m allowing you that much.”

Her chest tightened, her heart constricting until she was certain she would die from the agony tearing through her.

This was her grandfather.

She’d loved him all her life.

He’d spoiled her when she was a child, swore he would protect and love her, then he had sent her away, swearing it was for her own good.

He’d lied to her, cheated her out of a childhood, and now, he was attempting to cheat her out of the rest of her life.

“Daddy?” she asked. “Are you going to let him do this?”

Not even her purse? Or the car they had bought her for her sixteenth birthday?

The one she had so rarely gotten to drive?

None of her clothes, or her shoes?

Nothing of the mementos bought for her through the years that she treasured so much, not even a picture of her parents?

“And don’t fool yourself into thinking I’m not well aware of what you were up to with that damned sheriff in town when you slipped off to the social weekend before last, either,” her grandfather informed her then, his tone brutal. “The reason you want to be back here so bad has nothing to do with your family and everything to do with whoring around with that son of a bitch. Stay the hell away from him.”

Shaking in fury, outrage, and the shattering of her heart, Anna didn’t bother to fight back her tears.

“Go to hell!” she cried out. “I’ll whore with whoever the hell I please. It would be a far sight better than trying to be perfect enough to be a part of this family. It’s pretty damned evident that no matter how anyone tries to love you, or hold onto you, the only thing you know how to do is turn on them.”

“I turn on enemies,” he told her with a cold smile as he finally rose from his seat. “Now make up your mind, little girl. Take your ass to France or get out.”

“Ah, least you’re allowing me a choice,” she sneered. “It’s more than you allowed Crowe, isn’t it?”

“At least I’m prepared to give you a choice,” he snarled back at her from the table, his arms crossing over his chest imperiously. “I don’t recall giving him one.”

The callous disregard in his tone was at odds with the look in his eyes, the turmoil and pain she could have sworn glowed within them.

She turned to her father again.

He was at the table, his palms flat against the top of it as he stared down at the circular glass top rather than at her or his father.

He wouldn’t look at her, refused to acknowledge her.

“Why, Daddy?” she asked. “Why are you letting him do this?”

Slowly, his head lifted. His gray eyes looked tortured, his face drawn and years older than it had been minutes before.

“It’s the only way I know how to protect you.” He turned and left the room.

“Make your choice, Anna,” her grandfather demanded.

She didn’t see anger in his gaze, though; rather, she saw a resigned misery, as though he had known this day would come, and still, he hadn’t been prepared for it.

Tears were soaking her face, she realized, running from her cheeks and dripping onto the silk cami she wore with her jeans and sneakers.

“I’ve made my choice.” She could barely force the words past her lips as she turned and walked from the kitchen.

Surely her father would stop her.

Her mother?

She had to force herself to walk across the wide, dark wood floor of the foyer to the front door.

With no luggage, no money, and no ID, she left the only place she had ever called home and stepped into the cool morning air as daylight filtered over the mountains.

A sob tore from her chest then.

Then another.

Moving down the steps, taking one step at a time, her heart broke into fragments. The knowledge that no one was going to stop her, that no one cared enough to stop her, destroyed her.

And, she realized, she didn’t feel any more alone now than she ever had.

But that didn’t mean she had to obey his whim.

Sniffing back the tears, though nothing could hold back the pain, she paused, trying to think, to plan.

Her purse, ID, and what little cash she had, along with the key to her safe deposit box, were in her room.

She had some jewelry she could sell, though only as a last resort.

With what she had, perhaps there was enough to get an apartment and pay the down payment and rent until she began working.

Making the decision quickly, she turned around the side of the house and ran to the heavy wood trellis that ran up to her bedroom window.

She didn’t have to obey anyone implicitly any longer. And she would be damned if she would just walk away with nothing that belonged to her.

Climbing swiftly up the trellis she slid the window open, thankful she’d forgotten to lock it the night before when she’d had it open, and slipped into the room.

Quietly, quickly, she rushed to the closet and found the stylish leather backpack she kept there.

It wasn’t big enough to carry much, but the essentials should fit. A couple of handfuls of silken lingerie, two sets of the vintage silk nightgowns and robes she so loved. Several changes of clothes suitable for the job she’d been hired to do, and a pair of flat-heeled business-type shoes. Several pairs of socks and stockings, the small box of jewelry.

There was a little room left if she really stuffed it so she threw in some jeans and T-shirts.

When she finished, the buckles were bulging and she was still leaving behind so much.

As she packed, holding back the tears was impossible.

It was killing her. Inside her chest she could feel her heart breaking, feel the hope she’d had when she’d first faced her father and grandfather drain away. The tears were impossible to hold back now.

She was stealing her own clothes, her own jewelry. She was being forced to walk out of the house that hadn’t been a home since she was nine years old.

And she couldn’t imagine anything that could hurt more.

As she pushed the window open again, the sound of her mother’s voice in the hall outside her door made her pause.

“How could you let him do this?” her mother cried out, her voice rough, almost unrecognizable.

She’d never seen or heard her mother cry, though. “You know what this could cause, Genoa. You have to do something. Please—”

Her mother’s voice broke as she began sobbing, the sound of her pain causing Anna to cover her lips to hide the sound of her own agony.

“Lisa, you know he had no choice. Neither of them did,” her grandmother protested.

“No, there’s always a choice,” Lisa Corbin cried out desperately. “This was the wrong one. Oh God, it was the wrong choice.”

Seconds later, her parents’ bedroom door slammed, cutting off the sound of her mother’s tears. But it didn’t stop Anna’s. Leaning against the window frame, her face buried against the sheer curtains, she couldn’t hold them back. The silent sobs shook her body, and the pain causing them ripped at her heart until she wondered if she were going to be able to leave. Or if she would beg, plead with her grandfather to change his mind and to let her do as he wanted. But leaving again would be like cutting her heart from her chest.

Hell, she’d prefer to cut her heart from her chest.

She had never had a home, she had no family. So she would make her own home, her own family, or, she swore, she would die trying.

* * *

Archer Tobias stared at the map on the wall in his study for long minutes before inserting the yellow, round-headed push pin he held into its proper position.

The pin represented the Slasher’s latest victim, Katy Winslow.

His grandfather had started this map fifty years ago, during his election campaign when he ran for sheriff of Corbin County.

Each pin represented a suspicious death, murder, or suicide in the County.

Katy’s pin was bunched in with more than a dozen others.

“A favorite killing ground,” he remembered his father saying as he stared at the map.

The red push pins represented a Callahan who had died, and each blue push pin represented the death of someone connected to the Callahans. The white-headed pins represented deaths that couldn’t be connected, but those bodies had been found on or near Callahan property.

For instance, Logan, Rafer, and Crowe’s parents and Crowe’s infant sister’s pins were all there. They had gone over a cliff during a winter snowstorm while on the way back from Denver. The boys had only been eleven and thirteen at the time. They had been with Rafe’s mother’s uncle, Clyde Ramsey, while the parents had made the trip.

There were other colored pins on the map of Corbin County as well.

Green pins represented areas where marijuana had been found growing, pale blue marked burglaries, purple marked assaults.

Brown represented suicides. Black represented murders of those not connected to the Callahans.

The deaths of those connected to the Callahans threatened to outnumber them.

Bad luck, being a Callahan. Or knowing one.

Other than the Slasher, Corbin County wasn’t a place that drew much crime.

His eyes returned to Katy’s pin.

Why Katy? he wondered again.

Shaking his head, Archer turned and left the study, locking the patio doors as securely as he had the inner doors that led to the rest of the house, then setting the security system Crowe had helped him install in the spring.

Moving to the SUV he drove, the trip to the sheriff’s office was made in less than five minutes. His home only sat two blocks from his office, one of the older buildings behind the main street courthouse.

Pulling into his designated parking slot, he restrained a sigh at the sight of the County attorney, Wayne Sorenson, as the other man walked down the back courthouse steps and turned to head to the sheriff’s office.

The text the attorney had sent earlier that morning had sounded dire.

Must see you at nine. Imperative.

Shaking his head, Archer reached for the Stetson he’d laid on the passenger seat before exiting the vehicle. Settling the hat on his head, he adjusted it automatically while hitting the door lock to the SUV.

The warmth of the morning sun beat down on Sweetrock like a lover’s caress, stroking across the town with the promise of more heat to come. There were clouds building over the mountains above that promised rain in the valley though and a possible blizzard higher up.

The season might be summer, but the mountains paid little heed to the calendar.

It was the middle of August, but already the chill of an early winter was invading the temperatures at night, and the old-timers swore there was a hint of snow in the air.

They hadn’t had snow in Corbin County before October in nearly twenty-five years. The last time it had snowed that early, JR and Eileen Callahan had died on that mountain road.

He made a mental note to warn the Callahans to stay off fucking mountain roads this week.

Waving at the two old men sharing a bench across the street, Archer strode quickly to the white stone sheriff’s office and connecting jail.

Unlike many counties, Corbin County didn’t have a separate detention center. The six cells that had been built housed any overnight, and some monthly, prisoners. If more secure accomodations were needed, then there was the detention center in Montrose that they transferred the prisoners to.

Judge Pascal was firm, but he didn’t sentence a lot of jail time unless the crime really warranted it. Violent criminals he sent to Montrose, anyway, because Archer wasn’t comfortable keeping them in the lower security cells.

Stepping into the outer office he nodded to his model-turned-secretary.

“Mornin’, Madge,” he greeted her.

“Mornin’, Sheriff,” she drawled, a sure indication she wasn’t happy. “Attorney Sorenson is awaiting your arrival in your office.” She rolled her eyes in disgust. “He didn’t seem to want to sit out here and entertain me until you arrived.”

In other words, the other man had entered the office without informing Madge he would be doing so.

Archer’s lips quirked. That was Wayne; he didn’t stand on ceremony for any man—or woman.

Striding to the closed door, Archer pulled it open and stepped inside the overly scented room.

He didn’t know what scent Wayne was wearing, and though it was only slightly stronger than the scent he used to wear, still the stuff reeked.

“Archer, good to see you.” Rising to his feet from the chair that sat facing Archer’s desk, Wayne extended his hand as he smiled at him.

“Counselor.” Archer nodded as he drew his hand back. “How can I help you?”

Moving behind the desk, Archer removed his hat and laid it on the side of the desk before taking his seat and watching Wayne expectantly.

“Well, Archer, I had a call from the governor and Sweetrock’s mayor first thing this morning. Governor Ferguson was in Boulder and couldn’t find time, I guess, to actually travel to Sweetrock and grace us with his presence.” He snorted rudely.

Archer let a mocking smile pull at his own lips. Governor Ferguson was damned busy, he knew. Just as he had been damned busy from the moment he’d been voted in as governor. Chief among the jobs he’d set for himself was finding and identifying his only child’s killer, the Sweetrock Slasher. County attorney Sorenson had managed to make it onto the list of suspects. Not that Archer had informed him of that fact.

“I assume he wasn’t calling to invite us to dinner, then?” Archer wasn’t going to tell him either.

Wayne’s snort was heavy with sarcasm. “Nope, I reckon he wasn’t.” He chuckled then. “Though from what I hear about that man’s personal chef, I wouldn’t have minded.”

Archer let a chuckle rasp his throat, but it was a cursory one, intended only to observe the rules of courtesy.

“No, it wasn’t for dinner,” Wayne repeated as he sighed heavily. “It was more of a threat.” His gray eyes met Archer’s brown ones.

“A threat?” That didn’t sound like Carson Ferguson. “What kind of threat?”

“He’s threatening to send us ‘help’ if we don’t step up our efforts to identify and apprehend the ‘Slasher.’”

Archer grimaced at the news, though he’d known it was coming, still he maintained an air of surprise.

“Fuck, we don’t need this,” Archer murmured as he rose quickly from his chair and stomped to the door of his office. Jerking it open he found Madge. “I’m going to need coffee.” He sighed. “And fix it strong.”

“Try decaf,” she advised as she rose from her chair and moved around her desk. “It’s healthier for you.”

“Slip that crap in on me, Madge, and I swear I’ll fire you for real,” he growled.

“Instead of for fake?” Madge only chuckled. “I’ll have it in there in a sec, boss,” she promised.

Archer paced back to his desk and took his seat once again.

Wayne watched him with quiet sympathy. “It’s been damned hard on the Callahans.” He sighed. “And those girls.” Shaking his head, Wayne cleared the emotion in his throat. “Cami, Rafer’s fiancée, and my Amelia used to be damned good friends until I learned Amelia was getting mixed up with them.” He pushed his fingers through his brown-and-gray hair with a grimace. “Terrified the hell out of me. I may have even made her hate me, the way I jerked her home and forced her to disassociate with the Flannigan girl she was such good friends with.”

Wayne looked away for a moment, obviously torn about how he had handled the matter. Wayne’s sympathy and attempts to help the Callahans were one reason why Archer found it hard to believe he was a suspect.

“Ah, hell, it beat having her raped and murdered,” he bit out angrily on a hard breath. “But that’s neither here nor there. How are we going to handle this? We have to figure out who that bastard is and where he is or we’re going to have company. Something that hasn’t been accomplished in twelve years.”

Archer pursed his lips thoughtfully as he leaned forward in his chair, his arms bracing on the desk. “Well, Wayne, I’m not sure at the moment. I do know I don’t want ‘help’ invading my County.”

The FBI was, of course, already there and had been for a while now. Not that they were finding anything more than Archer had.

“My God, that’s the last thing we need,” Wayne agreed, his gray eyes darkening with anger. “It would become a three-ring circus. But if we don’t have any leads at all, then how will we stop it?”

“We’re just going to have to figure out a way to draw the Slasher out,” Archer stated. “I’m working on a few ideas. Give me a few days and we’ll go over them and see what works.”

Wayne nodded, though he didn’t appear in the least relieved. “Let’s hope those ideas are at least working ideas,” Wayne grunted sarcastically as he rose to his feet. “Is that the best you can do, Sheriff?”

“Considering the girl we found the other night had no known connection to any of the Callahans, I seem to just be at a dead end,” he growled in frustration.

“No connection at all?” Wayne murmured, surprised. “But they’ve always been the Callahans’ past lovers.”

“Not this one.” Archer shook his head firmly as he lifted one hand to rub at his cheek thoughtfully. “Like many of the other women in Corbin County, she was polite to them, but that was it. She and her boyfriend had just rented an apartment in town and she was scheduled to start business courses in the fall. But she was definitely in no way connected to the Callahans.”

Wayne breathed out roughly before shoving a hand in a pocket of the summer-weight gray slacks he wore. “Let’s just get this done without any damned outsiders coming in,” Wayne ordered broodingly. “I really don’t relish that kind of hassle.”

Not that Archer did, either.

Archer watched as the County attorney left the office, the door slamming behind him. Almost immediately it reopened and Madge entered with an irritated look. “You know, he saw me coming with that coffee. He could have left the door open.”

The tray holding a thermal pot and a ceramic cup proclaiming FAVORITE SHERIFF thunked down on his desk as Madge straightened and propped her hands on her hips. “I don’t like your friends, Sheriff.”

“I never said he was my friend, Madge,” he pointed out with a grin.

She smiled back at him then, causing Archer to pause, his hand reaching for the cup. That smile was enough to make a grown man shudder in fear. The pure glee in her light blue eyes was enough to make him turn, tuck his tail, and run.

Hell, he pitied the man that ever married her.

“What is it, Madge?” he asked as she continued to stare down at him with that damned Mona Lisa curve to her lips.

“Well, you had a call while you were in your meeting,” she informed him.

“Did I?”

“Uh-huh.” She nodded. “Miss Lonhorne called. She told me to tell you that you’re going to be hearing from her lawyer. It seems she found another of her expensive purses, a Choo, I believe, clawed up, and used as a litter box. She’s none too happy. Perhaps you should contact that lawyer of yours now.”

Snickering, she turned and left the office as Archer sat back in his chair in disgust.

Dammit, he’d told Marisa not to bring that crap to the house. His cat, a chocolate-brown Maine Coon cat with the temperament of a rabid lion, hated her. Archer had warned her Oscar would shred anything she owned that the cat found lying around, but she’d refused to listen.

She’d demanded he get rid of the cat instead, so she could move in.

When Archer had refused, she’d arrived with her luggage anyway, and decided she was going to fight Oscar for her place in his life. She’d then thrown the cat’s pillow out of the bedroom, locked the door on him at night, and thought she would get away with it.

Chuckling, he made a note to call his lawyer and let her deal with Marisa, if she ever actually decided to sue. Until then, he needed to talk to the coroner and wanted to head back up the mountains to where Katy Winslow’s body had been found.

There had to be something, somewhere, that would give him a lead on the Slasher and the partner he had to be working with. The FBI hadn’t changed their profile, but they agreed the man killing the young women had changed after the death of the assailant who had attacked Rafer Callahan’s fiancée, Cami Flannigan.

The FBI had yet to take over the case, though, because the minute they had tried to do so in the past, the killings had simply stopped. Of course, it had also coincided with the Callahans’ departure from the County.

It had been Archer who had gone to the agency when the first victim in twelve years had turned up the summer before. The FBI was here, not that he knew who it was or where that person was, but he’d bargained for just that. An undercover agent rather than having the case taken over by the agency might give them a greater chance of finding the bastard.

Opening the door and peeping in, Madge stared at him with a frown. “You have a call on line two from Lisa Corbin. She says it’s urgent.”

A frown furrowed his brows as well as he picked up the phone and pressed the button to line two as Madge stepped back and closed the door.

“Lisa, is everything okay?” He didn’t know her well, despite the years he’d spent vacationing with her family. What he did know was that she was Anna’s mother, and despite the distance he’d always seen between them, he’d always sensed the love she felt for her daughter.

“No, it isn’t. You said if I or Anna ever needed anything, you’d be there for us,” she reminded him.

Archer tensed, dread suddenly striking his chest as he felt the flesh down his spine begin to crawl in warning.

“What do you need?”

As he listened, disbelief, fury, and some dark, unknown emotion began exploding within him.

“I’m going for her now, Lisa,” he promised as he rose from his chair and jerked his hat from the side of his desk. “Don’t worry, I’ll watch out for her.”

* * *

Lisa hung the phone up slowly before wrapping her arms across her stomach and releasing the sobs she’d been fighting to hold back.

Again.

“Not again,” she sobbed painfully as she felt her husband’s arms wrap around her, felt his tears against her cheek as they held each other. “Oh God, Robert, please, please don’t let me lose my baby again.”