RAVEN'S HOLLOW

by Jenna Ryan

  Brady shrugged. “Fair’s fair. I had to euthanize a sixteen-year-old Lab late yesterday afternoon. I need some enjoyment. Having said that, I’ll do what I can to make Brick’s tow truck work for me. Just remember, hauling’s not my strong suit.”

  Ty’s scowl became a sneer. “Couldn’t get either one of the Majerki brothers to help you, huh?”

  Eli tossed the rag. “Is that the burning question, or would you rather have the details on my night at Bellam Manor?”

  Ty’s neck went red. “I don’t see a tail and long ears, so neither of the resident witches turned you into a donkey. Sadie’d say anything else was between you and her. Speaking of, is she someplace safe?”

  “She’s at the manor with Molly.”

  “Who’s not exactly a ninja. Do you ever think of anyone but yourself?”

  “About as much as you do. It’s covered,” he said before his cousin could protest further. “She’s safe.”

  “Guess I’ll have to take that on faith.”

  “Guess you will.”

  Ty showed his teeth. “Where’s the spike chain?”

  “Long gone, unless whoever planted it is a complete fool. Not very likely.”

  “Sloppy’s been known to happen in cases like this.”

  “Yeah? How many cases like this have you known?”

  His cousin moved a shoulder. “I poked into Laura’s death some after I came to the office.”

  “And?”

  Ty’s grin fell just short of feral. “If I told you that, you’d have nothing to challenge your slick investigative skills, would you?”

  “Sounds like he turned up a big fat zero to me.” Brady used the heavy lift chain to get Eli’s vehicle airborne. “Is a spike line what it sounds like?”

  “Pretty much.” Eli’s stomach clenched when the hoist bobbled and almost dropped his truck back into the bog. “Know anybody who has one?”

  “No, but Ben Leamer’s got a long, spiky, rake-like thing out at his farm.”

  Ty snorted. “Why would old Ben want to wreck Eli’s truck?”

  “Just answering the question.” Brady disengaged the safety chain. “Ben’s whatever-it-is is the only object I can think of that’s got the potential for a wicked bite.”

  “Unless you count Rooney’s signature tea.” Eli hopped onto the flatbed. “Let’s get this done, okay?”

  Leaving Brady to secure the front of the vehicle, he worked on the back while Ty strode around and did his best to be a complete ass.

  Would he be an ass if their situations were reversed? Eli wondered. And he had to admit that, yeah, he might.

  “Is this Sadie’s?” Fighting the door open, his cousin reached for a mud-encrusted black leather bag. “Unless I’m wrong and it’s yours, I hope there was nothing important inside.” He unzipped it to rummage through the contents. “Camera, lenses, iPad, shorthand notes—all dry and unbroken.” His smile could have cut glass. “Lucky her.” He kicked the dented door as closed as it would go. “Not so lucky you. Go long, Lieutenant.”

  Eli nabbed the bag halfway to the slimy water. “Nice of you to zip it back up.”

  “Nice isn’t what I’m feeling at the moment. In fact, what I’m feeling is in the mood to participate in one of those borderline legal fights Rooney is forever arranging behind my back. Problem is, we’re nowhere near Two Toes Joe’s bar.”

  Eli glanced into the camera bag. “Mud works for me.” He rezipped as he spoke and only looked down again when the teeth snagged. The corner of a folded paper stuck out, but it wasn’t until he drew the pull tab back and spied the red lettering that his blood ran cold.

  Ty’s voice faded to an irritating buzz. Freeing the caught corner, Eli removed a sheet of paper that ran a full two feet in length. The words slashed across it were like acid in his system.

  While the man’s away

  The monster can play.

  * * *

  “WHY DOES THIS monster hate me so much? Or at all? Because it can’t control the side of itself that’s got a weird obsession with me?” Sadie dipped under a low branch in the woods near Bellam Manor. “We need to find hawthorn leaves.”

  “Let me know when we do.” Eli held the branch up. “Jealousy’s not uncommon with a split personality, Sadie. One side often wants what the other side has.”

  “Yes, but that’s not the case here, is it? The nonmonster doesn’t actually have. He only wants.”

  “And the monster doesn’t want the nonmonster to get. Simple solution? Eliminate the prize.”

  Sadie studied Molly’s wish list for the séance. Bendable willow branches, wild lavender, fennel, thyme and rosemary from the old garden. “The writing didn’t change, Eli. The paper was long and folded, like the one Laura found in her gym bag, but the writing in my message was consistent. Creepy, but consistent. Theory?”

  “Cal’s trying to throw us off track.”

  Stepping into an overgrown herb garden outside the original Bellam graveyard, she snipped some thyme, sniffed the leaves and dropped them into a paper bag. “Then why did Cal tell us he was ambidextrous? He didn’t have to. Obviously, the police missed that fact during their investigation into Laura’s death.”

  “Obviously, the police were out of their depth and received very little peripheral help when it came to Laura’s case.”

  She tilted her head. “Hate to point this out, Lieutenant, but you’re not receiving any peripheral help, either. Or looking to bring any in as far as I can tell.”

  The gleam in his eyes made her breath hitch in a ridiculously exciting way.

  “One click of a computer key, and I have a wealth of information at my fingertips. The trick is to sort through the clutter until you hit pay dirt. The coroner’s report on Laura’s homicide said she was struck from behind by a left-handed person.”

  “Meaning she felt comfortable enough to turn her back on the killer?”

  “Or she was forced to turn it. Left-handed’s the gold, Sadie.”

  “Yes, I got that.” She sighed. “And now you’re going to ask me how many of the men I’ve interacted with between the Hollow and the Cove are left-handed. My answer is, not Ty.”

  “Not Brady, either.”

  She laughed. “Well, hell, Eli, I can hardly read what Brady writes with his right hand.” She paused midsnip. “Wait a second. Rewind. You think Brady could have a monster living inside him?”

  “Brady, Two Toes Joe, Brick from the tow yard, his brother, one of Ty’s deputies.”

  She cut a sprig of lavender, but instead of bagging it, she stood, twirled the stem in her fingers and strolled slowly toward him. “That’s quite the voice you have there, Lieutenant Blume. Of experience, I mean.” Touching her tongue to her upper lip, she dropped her gaze for a meaningful second. “It’s very—sexy.”

  His eyes caught and held hers. “You had to know my last relationship didn’t work out well on either side.”

  She hooked a finger in his waistband. “Gathered that.”

  “I almost hurt someone I cared about.”

  And tugged. “Almost being the operative word.”

  “I’m not going to do the same thing to you.”

  “I’m not going to let you do the same thing to me—whatever it is or was.” Reaching for his oh-so-tempting mouth, she asked, “Any more pointless objections?”

  “Yeah, but to hell with them,” he muttered, and pulled her so hard against him that she could feel every muscle in his body, from sleek biceps to tantalizing arousal.

  It felt good, she thought, as pleasure hummed through her veins, not to be balanced on the high wire of her nerves. If only for a few minutes, she wanted to let the heat build and the fever, which was a wicked blend of need and desire, take hold.

  The second Eli’s mouth captured hers, his tongue pl
unged inside to feast.

  He tasted like the night, like darkness and danger. The restless hunger that had been part of him for as long as Sadie could remember flowed out of him and into her. It made her blood pump and her skin tingle.

  She breathed in, then blissfully out. This was how she’d felt when they’d danced that first night in Boston. In that single heady moment she’d known with absolute certainty she wouldn’t be marrying Ty.

  Cupping her face in his hands, Eli deepened the kiss, then ran his fingers lightly over her shoulders and arms until they found her breasts. She moaned, and the moan became a low purr as his thumbs grazed the nipples under her T-shirt and bra. His lips moved from her mouth to her jaw and along the column of her throat.

  “Gonna melt in a minute,” she warned, but didn’t know if she spoke the words or merely thought them.

  “Already have,” he murmured against her neck.

  Letting her head bow back, Sadie savored the sensations sweeping through her. Desire mixed with the heat that spiraled upward from her belly. Breathless, she took a moment to revel in the kind of liquid need she’d never expected to feel. Wasn’t entirely sure she’d wanted to feel.

  She dug her fingers into his upper arms, felt lean muscle and hard bone and knew, knew she should push herself away. Should never have started this in the first place, because...

  When he took her mouth again, the thought simply turned to dust and scattered.

  He awakened every one of her sleeping senses. Wanting him even closer, she slid her hands upward, until her fingers were impossibly tangled in his hair. Rough bark scraped her back, and the first drops of rain hit her cheeks. She could feel him hard and pulsing against her. All she had to do was jump up, wrap her legs around his hips and let gravity and hunger take them down into the remains of the flower bed. The setting was perfect, and the thunder that rumbled over the hollow merely layered anticipation over desire.

  She spied it before she sank all the way into him. A misty shadow that wasn’t a shadow but a solid figure. Like the zealots from her nightmare, it wore a black cloak and held something in its hand.

  Dragging her mouth free, Sadie managed a breathless “Gun!”

  Eli reacted so swiftly she barely noticed the move. Shoving her to the ground, he pulled his Police Special and spun into a kneeling crouch.

  The figure’s first bullet struck the tree behind them. The second—no idea. The third blew one of the herb bags apart.

  Crawling to him, Sadie felt for Eli’s backup and tugged it free. There was a fence, a crooked line of pickets between him and the now-secreted shooter. Not much of a shield in her opinion.

  Flat on the ground, her breath held to the point of discomfort, she squeezed the trigger. The gun kicked pain up to her elbows, but she continued to squeeze off shots.

  She might have heard some thrashing at that point, and maybe she glimpsed receding black, but if she was honest, the whole thing had become a jumble of sight and sound. So she continued to pump out shots until she heard nothing but empty clicks.

  Before the last echo died, Eli was up and gone. Sadie dropped her face onto her extended arms and breathed. She heard the double tone from her phone but ignored it until her senses rebooted. When they did, she raised her head and scoured the nearby woods.

  There was nothing. No sound, no movement, no clue as to where Eli had gone.

  “Just once,” she muttered in frustration, “I’d like an easy answer.”

  She was debating her limited options when her phone beeped again. Preoccupied, she dug it from her jacket pocket.

  More raindrops plopped onto her head, and the thunder that shook the flower bed and grave markers was creeping closer. High in the trees, ravens cawed. One of them swooped in for a landing on a tippy picket.

  “Give me all the evil looks you want, pal.” She went to her message app. “After what I’ve gone through lately, I’m immune.”

  The bird cawed noisily, but Sadie didn’t hear it, or anything. The text message that appeared on the screen stopped her breath and sent a shaft of pure terror into her heart.

  I WASN’T SHOOTING AT YOU!

  Chapter Fifteen

  “People don’t vanish,” Ty maintained an hour later. “Outsmart other people, yes, but even on Bellam land, they can’t twitch up a broomstick and fly off into the ether.”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of jumping into a rabbit hole. Or a cave, like the one Sadie and I used to climb out of the bog.” Eli flicked through files in his cousin’s private office. “Don’t you have any maps that predate the nineteen fifties?”

  “The Chronicle might.” Sadie glanced up from her iPhone. “There are a lot of boxes in the basement. I can look tomorrow. We really should be leaving for the manor soon, if we want...” Pausing, she peered around Ty’s arm at the veterinary clinic across the street. “Orley’s pulling in,” she told them. “Back in a sec.”

  “Bad mood happening here, Sadie.” A scowling Orley climbed from her car. “Brady and I just chased down a deer with an arrow in its hind leg. We had to use a tranquilizer dart on it. The tranq worked, but naturally the deer toppled into a pile of dung and had to be worked on where it lay.”

  “Is it all right?”

  “It will be. Gorgeous animal. A buck.”

  “In that case, and given that you like animals a thousand times better than humans, how could saving a deer put you in a bad mood?”

  Orley bared her teeth. “I’m wearing my Gucci suede boots. I swear, if I find out who launched that arrow, I’m going to shoot him in the leg and leave him to bleed in the woods.” Her grimace morphed into a weary expulsion of breath when a truck creaked to a halt behind her. “Dr. Dolittle in the flesh.”

  Climbing from his truck, Brady shouldered his medical bag and picked up a crossbow arrow.

  “I hate hunters,” Orley muttered. “My dad hunts, so opposite sides of the fence there, but at least he knows you can’t kill an animal by aiming for the ass end. Any poacher worth his salt should know that, too.”

  “You can’t be sure it was a poacher, Orley.” Brady followed Sadie’s narrowed stare to the arrow. “What? I’m not the nitwit who pulled the trigger.”

  “Sorry, knee-jerk. Where was the deer?”

  Orley picked at one of her ruined boots. “In the hollow.”

  “Near Raven’s Bog?”

  “Within spitting distance. Why?”

  “Can’t write an article without all the facts.”

  Brady arched a surprised brow. “An arrow in the haunch of a deer’s newsworthy?”

  “It is today.” She wiggled her fingers. “Can I see the arrow?”

  “You must be having one very slow news day.” But Brady relinquished the metal shaft. “And here they come—the never-gonna-be Bobbsey Twins.”

  Sadie heard Ty’s snort of disgust at the same time Eli’s arm dropped across her shoulders.

  “Might want to keep that arrow away from your ex, sweetheart,” he murmured, “or it could wind up in an innocent back.”

  Ty sneered. “Now, why would I want to impale the town vet? Hand it, Sadie.”

  At a small nod from Eli, she complied.

  “Ah, right, got it.” Brady’s face cleared. “You think this is one of the arrows that was shot at you and Eli on Sunday night. Instead of hitting its intended target, it hit a deer.”

  “Always possible,” Eli agreed.

  “I want to talk to Cal.” Ty twirled the arrow. “Are you sure you didn’t get a disclaimer after the attack in the bog, Sadie?”

  Still out of sorts, Orley raised her gaze from her ruined boots. “Since when do would-be murderers put out disclaimers?”

  Sadie shrugged. “Someone in a black cloak and hood put one out earlier today. He was shooting at Eli and me near the graveyard
at Bellam Manor. Shooter rabbited. A few minutes later, I got a text. He said the bullets weren’t meant for me.”

  Orley snorted. “Sounds like someone’s head is seriously messed up. No offense, cous.”

  “None taken.”

  Brady ran a hand over his face. “What about the attack in the bog?”

  Eli watched Ty play with the arrow. “I think whoever was behind that wanted both of us dead.”

  “You’re not in the guy’s head, though, are you?” Ty looked up with a level expression. “You’re also not on your own turf, so maybe you’re reading the whole thing wrong, or at least coming at it from the wrong direction. I know the Hollow and the Cove. I know how the people here think, and what they think and why.”

  “Ty, Eli grew up here, too... Uh, right.” Palms out, Brady backed off. “You two hash it out. Triangles aren’t my...”

  “Eli, that’s Cal in the truck at the corner!” Sadie grabbed the wrist still draped over her shoulder. “What’s he doing here? No, wait, don’t spook... Why do I even talk?” she wondered, as first Eli, then Ty, then Cal bolted. “It’s like being in a Rambo movie. Séance starts at seven, Orley,” she called back as she ran for her Land Rover.

  Eli was already inside. “Forget it,” he said, and started to slam the lock down.

  But Sadie got the door open a split second faster and climbed in. “My vehicle, my decision. Go, or you’ll be fighting Ty for road space.”

  He slanted her a dark look but didn’t argue further. Couldn’t because Ty fishtailed his cruiser around the corner and set off after Cal with a screech of tires and a series of short bursts on the siren.

  Sadie gripped the dash with one hand and the side of Eli’s seat with the other. “Any chance you two could work together on this?”

  “Any way you know of to transmit that request to Ty?”

  “He has a cell....”

  “Any way that’ll work?”

  He had her there. She kept Cal’s gray truck in sight. “If we assume he’s heading back to the woods, you could take the Post Road and cut him off at the junction before the hollow. Then if Ty squeezes him from behind...” She made a dubious motion. “It could work.”