by Jenna Ryan
“He wanted to trade punches on the Hollow Road.”
“What he wanted was to show you that he’s as good a cop as you are.”
“Ty knows he’s a good cop. As much as it pains me to say this, he’d have been a decent husband, too.”
Now her smile blossomed. “Every part of you just clenched up. But you can relax. Bellam females, from Nola to now, have had a notorious lack of success where relationships are concerned. Ask either of my parents which one of them screwed their marriage up worse, and they’ll both tell you it was my mother.” Leaning forward, she regarded the bruised sky. “Aw, see what you’ve done? It’s starting to rain again. You rattled my concentration with that ‘decent husband’ remark. Now my mind’s stuck in the bedroom.”
“Pretty sure we were talking about you and Ty, Sadie.”
“Yes, but I’m in your truck, post-Boston, and I have all these sexual vibes jittering around inside me.”
His lips curved, but the gleam in his eyes smacked of danger. “Is that how you see us? As opposing masses of barely controlled vibes?”
“I used the word jitter, Eli, specifically because jitters are in fact controllable. By women, anyway.”
“Is that your opinion of all men, or just me?”
“Oh, I have a much higher opinion of you than I do of most men.” Her smile teased him now. “You charmed me in Boston, Eli. The bigger miracle is that you also charmed my aunt, who’s as practical as Molly and wouldn’t know a jitter if it bit her. She thought you were hot, and I was insane not to jump you.”
“Yeah, well, that same aunt told me that you were her favorite niece, and if I so much as made you frown, she’d turn me into a jackass.”
Sadie waved off the remark. “She uses that threat on men all the time. It’s a private joke. In her opinion, there isn’t a male alive who needs a hit of magic to become a jackass. It’s a natural condition.”
He grinned. “I could refute that, or shut up and drive. I’ll go with the easier option.”
“Making you the smartest jackass in the class. Turn right,” she said without looking. “Follow the so-called road as far as you can, and I’ll do what I can, sans spell book, to keep the ground underneath us as navigable as possible.”
“Appreciate that, sweetheart. While you’re at it—” he nodded through the windshield “—you might want to tell that moose thirty feet in front of us to move along.”
* * *
HE’D EXPECTED HER to jolt. Instead, the smile that lit every one of her features had his brain blurring with lust.
“She’s gorgeous.” Clearly captivated, Sadie scooted forward in her seat. “The size of them never fails to amaze me. This one’s bigger than most males.”
Noting a movement, Eli gestured. “This one has a calf.”
“Really? Where? Oh, it’s gorgeous, too.”
He reached into his waistband. “Don’t know about baby, but Mama moose is a hell of a lot more than gorgeous.”
“The word you’re looking for is dangerous. But only if she sees us as a threat.” She made an uncertain motion. “Then again, it’s mating season, so that could be a problem if there’s a horny male in the vicinity. Present company excluded.”
“Funny.” But when he started to open the door, she caught his arm.
“Eli, you are not going to shoot that magnificent creature.”
He half smiled. “I thought we agreed I wasn’t the biggest jackass on the planet. I only want to move mother and child along before a hormonal bull shows up and sees my truck as a worthy opponent.”
“What makes you think...? Oh, never mind. Just do it.”
Four harmless shots later, Mama moose, having carefully considered her options, nudged her calf along and clomped into the woods behind it.
“Huh.” Sadie sat back. “Bear would have been more fun.”
“Proof that you’ve never ventured into the high Rockies. No encounter with a grizzly could ever be called fun.”
She waited until he slammed the door, then reaching over the console, grabbed a handful of his hair and yanked his mouth onto hers. When she drew away, her gray eyes glittered. “I love a man who can transition from back alleys to the backwoods without missing a beat.”
He’d figure out what she’d said, Eli reflected, when the flames at the back of his throat subsided and his heart—which had missed several beats—kick-started again.
A blast of wet wind bore down on the truck. Releasing his hair, Sadie dropped back into her seat. “Looks like my focus is shot, Lieutenant. Good thing we brought our rain gear.”
Rain gear, right. Eli struggled to think past the need currently blasting through his bloodstream. The road they were on ended two miles from Kilgore’s cabin—as the raven flew.
Given that Sadie had long since mastered the art of a guileless expression, he could only speculate as to what was running through her mind right now. Probably nothing his male pride wanted to hear. Happy enough to let it ride, he flicked on the wipers and upped the volume of Whitesnake on his iPod.
By the time they ran out of drivable track, the shadows between the trees made gloomy afternoon feel like weird twilight.
“Rooney says the north woods are even more haunted than the hollow.” Sadie zipped herself into a bright yellow raincoat. “I’m curious to know what that means.”
“It means he’s got a friend with a still in the area.”
She pulled on a pair of rubber boots. “Eli, Rooney doesn’t need to come all the way out here for his whiskey. Ben Leamer—” she caught his level look and ramped up her smile “—has a refreshment stand in one of his barns. Kids get a free bottle of fruit juice with the price of admission.”
“Uh-huh. Does Ty know about this stand?”
“No need.” She scooped her hair into a ponytail, popped a ball cap on her head and pulled up her hood. “He doesn’t have any kids. Ready?”
He’d leave it alone, Eli decided. Rooney had survived without his help for more than a century. If they didn’t stop the person threatening her, Sadie might not make next Friday.
Over his dead body, of course, but his darker sense didn’t think that would be much of an issue in her stalker’s mind.
Rain continued to fall in miserable wind-driven sheets. When the ground gave way and almost sent Sadie into a rocky chasm, Eli barely managed to catch her.
Rebalanced, she exhaled. “Imagine how bad this would be if my mind wasn’t holding back the worst of it.”
“Given the strength of those gusts, we’d probably be landing in Oz about now. Keep to the right,” Eli told her. “The path’s higher there.”
Not that it made much difference since calling the ground a quagmire would have been a generous description.
“We should have hired a helicopter to drop us onto Cal’s roof.” Sadie began the tricky descent into a wide gully. “Between last night’s storm and this one, if he’s home and dry, I say Laura’s ex isn’t the person who threatened me.”
But still worth the trip in Eli’s estimation. As far as he could tell from the information on file, both Cal Kilgore’s mother and his grandmother had alibied him for the night of Laura’s murder. Although similar, their stories hadn’t quite jibed in terms of where he’d been on the property and what they’d believed he was doing.
The points were small, but interesting when added to the fact that Cal had personally delivered three shipments of hardware to Bangor this fall. In other words, a guy who seldom surfaced had passed through Raven’s Hollow as many times in one month as Brady had seen him in the last fifteen years.
“Do you remember what Kilgore looked like?” he asked Sadie from behind.
She shoved through a tangle of branches. “I remember him as tall, with long, stringy brown hair that he wore in a ponytail.”
“Wh
at about his features?”
“Sorry, all fuzzy. Guess the guy didn’t do it for me when I was seven. The story I heard is that Cal’s mother left the Hollow when she was found to be in possession of a stolen cameo pendant. She used to clean houses part-time. She claimed she accidently dusted the cameo into the pocket of her apron. The owner didn’t press charges, and a few weeks later, Mrs. K just sort of faded from sight.”
“What about Grandma K?”
“Molly said she died in her sleep while watching the Shopping Channel.”
“Wouldn’t anyone?”
Sadie hopped over a deep crevice. “Molly also said that Grandma Kilgore and Rooney used to share a corner table at Two Toes Joe’s Bar on Saturday nights.”
An image he did not want to see slid through Eli’s head. “Okay, you need to stop right there.”
“Sundays at Joe’s were reserved for Rooney and Ben Leamer’s sister.”
“Any time you wanna stop.”
“Rooney and Ben’s sister used to hold hands between drinks. Oh, and there was also—”
“Sadie.” Snagging her collar, Eli brought her to a smooth halt. “Shut up.” To make sure she did, he tipped her head back and set his mouth on hers.
Bad idea, he realized instantly. The taste of her simply blanked his mind. Fortunately, it also set off about a thousand warning bells. With the last of them clanging loudly, he reeled in an urge to take her on the forest floor, and while he could still form a rational thought, he murmured a quiet “Got to stop doing that.”
He nudged her ahead of him on the path, where they carried on in silence for several minutes. He figured she was channeling her mental energy upward rather than cursing him, because with every step they took, the wind gusts grew more fitful and the rain slowed from a downpour to a steady drizzle. He sensed he should be grateful.
“You’re welcome,” she called over her shoulder. Boosting herself onto a fallen tree, she swung her legs over and hopped onto a weedy slope. “Cal’s cabin’s dead ahead. I don’t see any chimney smoke, but there might be a light—”
It was as far as she got. Metal glinted in one of the windows. Eli heard the sound of glass breaking and glimpsed a long barrel through the scrub. He shoved Sadie to the ground a split second before a hailstorm of bullets erupted.
* * *
SADIE COULDN’T SEE or think or feel. She could only breathe in shallow gasps. It was better than being shot, she supposed, but barely.
The initial barrage of bullets stopped at twelve. Although half of them came from Eli’s Police Special, he kept her firmly beneath him during the entire exchange. When the last echo subsided, the weight on her rib cage lifted, allowing her to draw her first desperate breath.
“Are you hit?” Eli yanked her zipper down and pulled her top up. “Talk to me, Sadie. Where’s the wound?”
With black spots still swimming, she sucked in more air. “I’m not...” The word hurt dissolved when she saw the blood on her raincoat. “Eli, stop. It’s not me, it’s you. You’re the one who was shot.”
He frowned, glanced down—then shoved her under him again as five more bullets zinged through the low leaves.
She wriggled out far enough to shout, “Cal, stop shooting. It’s Sadie Bellam and Eli Blume. We’re not here to—whatever you’re thinking. We need to talk to you!”
“Get off my land,” a man’s voice bellowed back. “I protect what’s mine.”
“You must have known the guy, Eli.” She wriggled out farther. “Say something buddylike. Then roll over so I can look at your shoulder.”
“It’ll keep.” He stilled her busy hands. “You sound friendlier than I do. Identify yourself again, and mention Laura.”
She raised her voice. “Cal, I’m Laura’s cousin Sadie, from the Hollow.”
“I don’t care if you’re General Lee come back from the dead. I want you and your pal to haul your trespassing butts off my land, or else I’ll shoot ’em off.”
“O-kay,” Eli said in a tone that fell somewhere between enlightenment and anticipation.
“We’re trapped, and you’re bleeding.” Sadie yanked his T-shirt down. “It’s just a graze, but there’s nothing okay about any of this.”
“His accent’s wrong.”
“I—” she thought for a moment “—didn’t notice that,” she realized, and replayed the shooter’s warning. “Mississippi?”
“Or Louisiana.”
“So, not Cal, and not friendly. But in Cal’s cabin with a gun.”
“Rifle.”
“Aimed at our trespassing butts.”
“And where’s Cal?” Eli wondered aloud. “Alive, dead or somewhere in between?”
“I see two grazes, Eli, one on your shoulder, another on your upper arm.”
His eyes remained on the cabin. “They’re scratches, Sadie. I’ve had worse.” He shifted his weight. “I need to get down there without him seeing me. Can you keep him talking?”
She could argue, Sadie supposed, or accept and deal as he was apparently doing. Gnashing her teeth, she glanced one last time at his injuries before switching her attention to the cabin. “Not sure how long he’ll want to chat.”
“Do what you can.” Reaching into the top of his boot, he drew a second gun. “You’ve got fifteen shots. Brace when you squeeze the trigger. This thing has a wicked kick.”
“That’s so reassuring.”
“Have you ever fired a gun before?”
“Only in my dreams at an unpleasant boss. Better for all concerned if talking works.”
Pressing a hand to her neck, Eli cautioned her to keep low, then vanished into the underbrush. And people called her a witch?
“We’re not here to hurt you,” she shouted downward. “We just want to talk to Cal.”
A bullet clipped the trunk of an elder behind her and sent bits of bark flying.
“I don’t give a damn who, what or why, lady. Ain’t no one in this foxhole but me and Old Faithful, and we’d as soon kill you as look at you.”
“Like I haven’t figured that out,” she muttered. Double-handing the gun, she braced her arms on a rock and tried again. “Look, you’re in Cal’s Kilgore’s cabin. How were we supposed to know he’d moved?”
“Well, you know now, so beat it and let me be.”
He released three more shots, one of them so close to her cheek she felt the air move as it whizzed past.
Fighting to keep her voice even, she countered, “If we leave, do we have your word you won’t shoot us in the back?”
She swore she heard him snicker. “Yeah, sure, you got my word. You want me to give it in your language, too?”
Sadie opened her mouth, closed it again. Her language?
She glimpsed a movement through the foliage. A second later, three rapid-fire shots exploded. Glass shattered, wood splintered and someone—not Eli, she prayed—gave a short, sharp cry.
Her arms ached from holding them over a rock. Lowering her forehead to her wrists, she counted to five, heard nothing except the wind in the trees. She had to believe Eli had made it inside. But had he done so safely?
Raising her head, she started to call out. She actually had Eli’s name on her lips when the underbrush rustled behind her. Rolling sideways, she snapped the gun up. But had no time to fire as a large black mass leaped at her.
Chapter Eleven
Eli distracted the shooter by tossing a stone through one of the side windows. He fired as he ran along the porch, then kicked at the latch of a rickety-looking door.
Inside, the man with the rifle spun, ready on the trigger. Anticipating him, Eli used a branch he’d snagged in the woods, knocked the barrel away, then grabbed the tip and yanked.
When the rifle clattered, the shooter stumbled backward, smashing a table and landin
g on the floor, where he thrashed his arms like an addict in the throes.
A fist plowed into Eli’s bad shoulder, but once he had the guy on his stomach, it was over.
“Kill me!” his prisoner ordered. “You kill me now, I don’t care how. I ain’t gonna rot in one of your stinking prisons.”
“Wanna bet?” Holding him down with a knee in the small of his back, and his gun pressed to a grimy nape, Eli batted aside an erratic arm and found a lamp cord. The struggle that followed had him longing for a pair of handcuffs and uniformed backup. However, despite his throbbing shoulder, the guy, who had a good thirty years on him, was trussed and turned inside a minute.
“Kill me,” the man demanded while Eli wound a second cord around his feet. “I got a right to die with dignity.”
The words registered as much as the ravings of a junkie ever did. It wasn’t until his gaze landed on the big, round table near the kitchen that those white-noise ravings gave way to a sharp click.
There were two bowls. Two bowls, two mugs, two plates.
Like a solid blow to the midsection, the truth stripped the air from his lungs and turned everything inside him to ice.
The shooter wasn’t alone.
Cursing his lack of forethought, Eli grabbed his gun and, shoving in a fresh ammo clip, ran back to where he’d left Sadie.
* * *
THE BLACK MASS would have landed on her if the ground hadn’t been sloped and relatively free of obstructions. Sadie reacted quickly, but he still managed to pin her hips.
She heard snarls like those of an enraged bull. That he wasn’t actually a bull only made its way into a side pocket of her brain. The rest was more concerned with gaining her freedom and, barring that, figuring out how to shoot him before he tore her apart.
With Eli’s gun still tightly clutched, she used her other hand to scoop up a handful of mud and pebbles and fling it in his eyes—wherever they were.
A floppy hood covered his head and obscured his features. Her mind immediately conjured Ezekiel’s face, but that was her nightmare. The man on top of her wasn’t Ezekiel Blume, and waking up wouldn’t save her from whatever horror was in his mind.