Son of a bitch.
She had actually found a way to erase the electronic files they feared he had. Not just the originals but also any hidden backups her father might possess.
Pride flooded his chest.
She’d done what he’d believed couldn’t be done. She had found the evidence that Wayne Sorenson was building to prove what Crowe believed could not be proven, because it hadn’t happened.
Wayne was trying to bring him and his cousins to trial for the murders of six young women they had slept with seven summers before. Six innocent young women whose choice to sleep with a Callahan had resulted in their horrible rapes and tortured murders.
“You’re certain this is all that’s left?” he asked, lifting the file.
“I’ve looked everywhere I could think to look,” she assured him, pushing slender, delicate fingers through her hair. She frowned thoughtfully. “His PC and laptop have been completely wiped. I’ve gone through every paper file myself and found nothing else. I’ve checked the house, the safe, this office, and every nook and cranny I could find. If there’s another file out there, then he’s far better at hiding it than I ever imagined.”
Taking a seat on her father’s bare, scarred desk, Amelia stared up at Crowe, her gaze somber.
“How did you find out about this file?” Shoving the folder and its contents into the small leather backpack he carried, Crowe narrowed his gaze on her, wondering what Amelia gained in betraying her father for the cursed Callahan cousins.
“By accident,” she admitted, her gaze now so innocent he almost felt like a pervert for all the things he’d done to her lush body in the past weeks. “I overheard him discussing it on the phone with Aspen County’s attorney. He’s still trying to tie Jaymi Flannigan’s murder to your cousin Rafe. He had to prove that Rafe knew she was considering a move to Aspen and leaving Corbin County to do it, though.”
“He was building a case that Rafe had killed her out of jealousy.” He nodded at his own deduction. “But none of us left the county that day. And we have witnesses.”
“Wayne’s trying to find someone to prove you were in Aspen and that your witnesses are lying.” She bit at her lip before thinning both angrily. “He and Sheriff Dunmore was discussing how they could prove Thomas Jones was actually trying to help Jaymi, rather than being responsible for killing her.”
Thomas Jones had killed her. There was no doubt about it.
Crowe, Logan, and Jaymi’s lover at the time, Rafer, had heard her screams and raced to her location. They’d arrived in time to see Jones shove that knife in her side before jumping from her body and attempting to escape.
“What ‘proof’ did you destroy?” What the hell could that bastard have managed to find that couldn’t possibly exist?
“Dunmore managed to convince a bartender to give the deposition you saw in the file, that you were indeed in Aspen. But he disappeared from town a week later, as Wayne’s deposition states.”
“Indicating that we possibly killed him as well to keep him quiet.” God help him. When would it end?
If it weren’t for the will their parents had left and the knowledge that if they left and turned their backs on the fight for what was theirs in Corbin County, then a serial murderer might acquire or inherit it, he and his cousins would have left years before now.
Amelia rubbed her hands over her face wearily before lowering them to her lap.
“There was a shoe belonging to another victim with Logan’s thumbprint. A newly discovered glove with Rafer’s fingerprints that, according to Dunmore, hadn’t been easy to transfer after the prints were acquired from elsewhere. I’d really be careful about dishes and utensils used in the café, bar, and restaurant here in town,” she suggested softly, her eyes gleaming with moisture. “Can’t we stop him, Crowe? I’d testify about what I heard.”
Crowe was shaking his head before the words were past her lips, reaching out for her as he stepped to the desk.
“Don’t even consider it.” Teeth clenched, denial raging through him, Crowe quickly pressed between her slender thighs, holding her in place before him.
One hand tangled in the silken strands of hair that fell down her back as the straining bulge of his erection was cushioned by the hot, feminine heat between her thighs.
“Hell no!” he snapped, glowering down at her; the need to take her, hard and deep, strained his patience. “You’ve taken enough risks in the past weeks. I’ll be damned if you’ll risk yourself that openly.”
“But he’s lying, Crowe!” she hissed back at him, her palms flattening against his stomach. “And you know he won’t stop. This has been going on for years, and it was only by chance that I found it.”