Secret Sins (28 page)

“Oh my God, Anna.” Skye was out the door, her long red-gold hair flying around her,
her eyes filled with tears and regret as she wrapped her arms around Anna for a fierce
hug.

Instinctively, Anna held on to the other woman, suddenly remembering how Skye had
always been into those hugs the year they had attended private school together.

Skye had been the big sister Anna had always dreamed of having. The fact that, more
than a month before, Skye had also faced the killer determined to destroy the Callahans
wasn’t lost on Anna. It was the reason her friend was here, on Rafer’s ranch, rather
than in town.

Thank God she was here, Anna thought silently. Otherwise, Skye would have gotten involved
in Anna’s problems and likely have been hurt or killed. Instead, she was safe and
sound, her fiancé, Logan, watching over her and their unborn child.

“It’s so good to see you.” Skye drew back, a tear tracking down her cheek as she stared
back at Anna.

Oh God, how she had missed Skye over the years. Missed her caring and warmth, her
friendship. They had reconnected over the years at odd times, and Anna had been overjoyed
when she’d learned Skye was living in Sweetrock.

Until she’d learned who Skye was living beside.

Until she’d learned who Skye was sleeping with.

Until she’d learned Skye was placing herself in just as much danger as Cami Flannigan
had.

As the six victims of the Sweetrock Slasher had twelve years before, and the four
who had died in the past six months.

She had placed herself in the path of a madman.

Just as Anna had managed to place herself there.

CHAPTER 16

Skye was outraged.

She was insanely furious.

Helping Anna into the house, she clasped the other girl’s shoulders and stared into
her pain-shadowed eyes. What she saw in Anna’s face was more than physical pain. The
soul-deep hurt reflected there made her want to smash faces. Old, stubborn, arrogant
faces such as John Corbin’s, and younger, stupid faces such as his son Robert’s.

“What have they done to you, Anna?” She sighed as she lifted her fingers and touched
Anna’s pale face.

“Completely trashed my life?” Anna suggested with a rueful smile. “It’s good to see
you again, Skye. I’ve been so worried about you since the attack. Are you sure you’re
okay?”

An assailant had managed to catch Crowe off guard and render him unconscious just
before Logan and Skye arrived at his mountain home. The second half of the team known
as the Stalker had been intent on killing her, and would have had it not been for
that lone bitch wolf Crowe had raised from a cub. She’d crashed through the window,
and they had thought, actually hoped, she had managed to kill the assailant. Instead,
he had disappeared, his identity once again uncertain.

“I’m fine,” Skye finally assured Anna, though she wanted to wail at that painful limp
and the knowledge of the wound her friend had sustained. With it, that glimmer of
hurt and betrayal in Anna’s eyes broke her heart.

Skye hadn’t seen Anna as often as she had wanted to over the years, but each time
she had, the other girl’s eyes had held just innocence and hope, despite the constant
rejections of her family.

That innocence and hope were slowly dimming.

Anna was more reserved than she had been as a teenager, but she was still the Anna
that Skye remembered, even several weeks before when they had met for lunch. This
woman facing her now was little more than a lost, lonely version of the friend Skye
cared so deeply for.

The most painful part was the fact that Anna probably thought she was hiding the lost
loneliness inside her.

“See, we told you she was doing fine.” Jack Thompson and his wife, Jeanne, moved to
them from across the room. “She’s so damned cute those bullets just couldn’t bear
to be the ones to hurt her, is what it was.

Jack swept Anna up in a tight hug before smacking a kiss on her cheek and winking
at her outrageously. Skye watched Archer subtly tighten.

How interesting,
she thought. Archer knew well that Jack was about as happily married as a person
could be—to his delicate little wife, Jeanne. The male animal subconsciously claiming
Anna was a different story though. Until she was fully his, Archer didn’t want another
man anywhere close to her.

God, it was so much fun watching these intensely hard, totally male creatures as they
fought and failed to remain distant and hard in the face of love.

“Jack, you’re outrageous.” His wife, Jeanne, laughed as he released Anna.

“Eh, you’re just jealous ’cause you want a hug too,” Jack accused her playfully.

“From her and Cami,” Jeanne declared as she glanced at Cami, who was currently being
hugged by her fiancé, Rafer.

“Cami’s busy,” Rafer drawled.

“You can get a room later, you wicked man.” Jeanne laughed as she released Skye and
stepped over to the couple. “For now, she owes me a hug.”

The next few minutes were taken up with greetings until the tall, black-haired, savagely
handsome Ivan Resnova entered the room by the glass patio doors that led to the pool.

Behind him, a young woman, perhaps sixteen or seventeen years old, glared at his back
while an older woman walking next to her glanced at the teenager with a firm look.

“Ivan, stop torturing Amara and introduce her to Anna. I know she hasn’t had a chance
to meet her yet.” Skye introduced them, “Anna, meet our wicked Russian busybody, Ivan’s
sister, Sophia. And his daughter, whom he currently believes he can still control.”
She snickered at Ivan. “Amara.”

“Sophia, Amara.” Anna shook each of their hands, impressed with their confident grips.
“It’s good to meet you.”

“It’s good to finally meet the terror of the Corbin family,” Amara quipped, laughing.
“Crowe makes you sound like a cross between an ogre and a troll.”

Anna turned to Crowe and lifted her brows mockingly. “I thought you already announced
both of those titles were yours?”

Everyone laughed but Crowe, who glared back at Anna instead.

Anna gave a mental shrug. She was damned if she was going to kiss his ass to make
him like her.

“And here I thought Daddy had possession of those titles,” Amara drawled, with only
a subtle hint of her father’s Russian accent.

As she came closer, Anna amended her first guess of sixteen or seventeen. Amara Resnova
was, at the very least, twenty-one, and she’d seen enough life to know, all the way
to her soul, that it didn’t welcome one with open arms.

With long, silky black hair and dark, intense blue eyes in a lightly tanned aristocratic
complexion, the younger girl’s facial features assured she would look far younger
than her age no matter how old she was. Amara was dressed in a thin peach-colored
chiffon skirt that fell just barely below her thighs and a matching sleeveless blouse
that showed a hint of midriff when she turned.

Her feet were pushed into tan leather thong sandals revealing delicate, peach-colored
toenails that matched her painted fingernails. A gold chain circled her neck and held
a small, poignant gold representation of the crucifix.

She was a very-well-put-together young woman, Anna thought, wishing she was that well
dressed and sophisticated herself.

The sound of the front door opening had everyone turning to the newcomer. The man
resembled Ivan so closely that Anna wondered if he had a twin.

“And this is Gregor.” He frowned intently as though some description eluded him. “He
is the brother of my father.”

“Ivan, your uncle. He’s your uncle.” Crowe rolled his eyes.

“This is what I keep telling you, Crowe. Do you forget?” Ivan asked, deadpan but for
the wicked glint of laughter in his eyes.

“He got you again, Crowe,” Sophia laughed before turning back to Anna. “Crowe seems
to keep forgetting Ivan has an excellent command of the American vocabulary.”

“I only forget because he continually insists on using that damned peasant accent,”
Crowe grunted. “If he wants to play dumb, then he shouldn’t get upset when others
treat him as though he were dumb.”

Dressed in a long, ankle-length white cotton skirt and matching sleeveless blouse,
her feet pushed into sandals similar to Amara’s, Sophia looked cool and playfully
flirtatious as she shot Archer a teasing grin.

“Crowe also forgets that Resnovas remember well their roots. We weren’t always suspected
international-crime figures.” Gregor moved into the room with a predatory stroll.
“It’s not that hard to remember how to speak as a peasant, especially when you remember
well what it’s like to be that peasant.”

He came to Crowe’s back and clapped him on the shoulder as he grinned at Anna. “Hello,
Ms. Corbin. I’ve heard quite a bit about you.”

“Don’t pretend much of it was good if it came from Crowe,” Anna stated.

“All good, and most of it actually did come from your cousin,” he assured her as he
shook her hand with a broad, calloused hand.

Anna crossed her arms over her breasts and shot Crowe a chiding look as Gregor released
her.

“He is a very bad boy,” Sophia sighed, though she slid Crowe a teasing, sideways look.
“They are all bad boys though, do you not agree?” The look she shot Anna invited feminine
secrets and an air of conspiracy against the males surrounding them.

“Just as the good sheriff is,” Gregor stated, his accent sensual and thick with Russian
influence. “I see he has managed to capture one of the most beautiful of the women
it’s been my pleasure to meet since I arrived.”

“Watch it, Romeo,” Crowe drawled mockingly. “Archer might seem like a man who will
tolerate your flirting with his woman, but trust me, he has ways of getting even.”

Archer shot Crowe a surprised look, as though he had no idea what he was talking about.

Of course he didn’t,
Anna thought mutinously. A man was only jealous or possessive when he acknowledged
he might not willingly allow a woman to leave his life.

Archer didn’t even appear to desire her anymore, let alone care if another man flirted
with her.

“Gregor is my head of security, and currently training several of Brute Force’s agents
in the job,” Ivan stated. “Archer was kind enough to provide a reference to Gregor’s
naturalization application.”

“No matter the crimes he’s suspected of,” Crowe muttered, then grinned at the glares
Ivan and Antoli shot him.

“We ignore him when he turns into a brat,” Sophia assured Anna with a grin that revealed
her pleasure in his smart-assed comments.

“Which means they ignore him often.” Archer chuckled as Crowe leveled a mock warning
look in his direction.

“One of these days we might be tempted to teach him the error of his disrespect.”
Gregor’s comment was more a warning.

“Ah, such children,” Sophia chided them before turning back to Anna. “Now I must see
to the snacks my nephew has requested for this evening. Excuse me, if you please.”

Giving Anna another quick hug, Sophia turned and swept from the living room to the
open kitchen, from which the most delightful scents were coming.

“Rumor’s rampant you brought the Resnovas here,” Anna stated, more than a little impressed.
“Where the hell did you meet them?”

“I was one of the agents with the FBI, assigned to protect Amara from the DC Vigilante
just before I took my leave of absence from the bureau.” Skye linked her arm with
Anna’s, then Jeanne’s, as Cami moved behind them and led them to the patio doors on
the other side of the room.

“She knows every damned FBI agent who’s walked through the front door,” Cami quipped.
“And there’ve been a lot of those.”

“She knew the CIA agent who slipped onto the property last week to talk to Ivan too,”
Cami pointed out.

Cami wrinkled her nose at the accusation. “A female CIA agent who flipped him on his
ass the second she saw him.”

Amara rolled her eyes at Cami. “She was just flirting with Dad. She has an odd way
of showing her affection.”

The younger girl moved past them as she headed for an outdoor television on the other
side of the patio, beneath a shaded pergola next to the newly installed pool.

“God, I love that pool,” Cami sighed as she stared at the glistening water.

“What an odd admission, considering you called the crew responsible for installing
it assholes and backwoods yokels with more inbred genetics than common sense,” Skye
pointed out with a laugh.

“Well, he implied Rafe didn’t have the money to have it installed, then once he found
out about Off Road Excursions and Brute Force Security Training he had the nerve to
imply Rafe, Logan, and Crowe didn’t have enough business sense to make them profitable,
and perhaps he should check with the Corbins for permission to build the damned thing,”
Cami sniffed. “A good businessman doesn’t give a damn as long as he gets paid.

Anna took a seat beneath the umbrellaed patio table a few feet from the door as Cami
and Skye chose their own seats, while still bantering back and forth.

Listening to their laughter, Anna stared around the well-fenced backyard wishing she
had the ability and the comfort to laugh and tease with the others.

Once, years ago, Anna had had that ability to tease and play. Then Skye had graduated
and Anna’s parents had moved her again, requiring yet another school transfer. After
that move, trying to fit in once again, then another move, Anna had finally just given
up. Skye hadn’t been there to ease her into the transition, and no one else had seen
the stomach-knotting nerves and dark loneliness Anna had dealt with.

“Anna, are you okay?” Skye reached forward, her hand covering Anna’s knee as she stared
at her in concern.

Cami was watching as well, her gaze concerned, her expression encouraging.

“I’m fine, Skye, Cami. I promise.” They were making her extremely uncomfortable now
as she reached up and scratched at her collarbone.

A move Skye watched worriedly. Anna was uncomfortable; she knew all the signs of it
and regretted it.