Ultimate Sins by Lora Leigh

over, all bets are off.”
    Without explaining the statement he left the house.
    The second he cleared the door, Amelia closed it behind him, locked it firmly, and set the alarm.
    Moving hurt, but she forced herself up the stairs to the balcony. Stepping outside she collected the key she’d always left hidden for Crowe before stepping back into her room and locking the door behind her.
    She’d tried.
    She’d tried so hard to ensure that Wayne didn’t carry out his threat to have Crowe arrested and imprisoned when he’d learned she’d helped Crowe destroy the files seven summers before. At the same time, she’d placed herself in danger more times than she could count by ensuring he could never again build another case against the Callahans. And all the while, she’d lived with the horrifying fear that Wayne or, God forbid, the monster trying to destroy the Callahans, would learn her greatest secret.
    Instead, she had begun to suspect the most horrific evil she could have imagined. And it had all begun with the lie she had overhead Wayne telling Archer Tobias. The lie that he had no personal involvement with Amory Wyatt.
    Six days later she learned the truth of the monster he was.
    Amelia had begun following her father the night she’d overheard him deny knowing anything more about Amory than his identity. That night, she’d waited and watched as Amory slipped into the house, then she’d tried to follow them after they left.
    She’d tracked their movements in a journal and took pictures with the small field camera she’d bought.
    She had gone to the scenes where many of the young women who had been murdered over the years had been found, and she’d stolen and copied files of the investigations from the sheriff’s and county attorney’s offices.
    But she had no more than her own gut-wrenching fear and suspicion.
    She hadn’t had any evidence. All she was the knowledge Wayne had lied about his whereabouts the night Katy Winslow had been killed.
    He hadn’t been at the house that night, and he hadn’t been ill as he’d told the sheriff when he was asked why he hadn’t answered his cell phone that night.
    Wayne had claimed he had taken cold medicine and hadn’t heard the phone.
    Somehow, though, he’d known she was following him. That she was trying to find even the smallest kernel of evidence that supported her suspicions.
    How had he known what she was doing?
    Was it the look on her face when he’d walked into her room and her head had jerked up from the computer?
    Had she looked as terrified as she felt when she looked up the stories of the young women whose deaths were attributed to the Slasher?
    Or had he been watching her as she had been watching him?
    Whichever, he’d paused, staring at her, then smiled with chilling evil. “Ah, Amelia,” he’d sighed. “And here I’d hoped to spare you.”
    Amelia had to cover her lips with her hands to hold back a sob as she fought against the memories of that night.
    She didn’t want to remember. She didn’t want to relive the hell she had visited until Amory Wyatt had carried her from the cabin and drove her to that mountain clearing below Crowe’s cabin.
    She didn’t want to remember.
    And now Crowe was making her remember. Even worse, he was making her agree to walk through hell for him again rather than running for the freedom she’d dreamed of.
    A freedom she knew she’d never realize until Wayne was dead.
    Yeah, she would play the game. And she would even play by his rules, if possible.
    And when it was done, she wondered, would she be free of the past, and the memories? Would she be free of them or would she only create another nightmare she didn’t want to face when morning came?
    Amelia had a feeling she was only going to create another nightmare.
    Especially if Wayne had his way. Or if—God forbid—he learned the one