by Jenna Ryan
“Are you saying it was Brady who tried to kill Eli?”
“Hell, yes. And while my intention at first was simply to be rid of you, that plan changed when I realized what Brady was prepared to do to get you. I knew he’d bungle the whole thing and wind up in prison, so I decided to do it all. I’d kill Eli for him and you for me. Problem solved—at long, long last.”
“Who shot the crossbow arrows at us?”
“Oh, come on. My father’s a hunter. I’ll admit I hate that about him, but he insisted on teaching me how to handle a crossbow. I told you, my original goal was to frighten you into leaving the Hollow. Eli, too, if possible. The love thing was obvious, so I figured if you left together, the monster could go back into hiding.”
“When did it all become real for you?”
“When Brady went after Eli near Bellam Manor. The bullets he shot were meant to kill. I used the concerned citizen call about the injured deer to cover for him, when in fact I dealt with the problem all by my lonesome.”
Sadie stared. “Is this really happening?”
“Talking here, Sadie,” Orley warned. “Brady didn’t show up until I was almost finished. And I didn’t know what he’d done on the manor grounds until I spotted the cloak and gun in his truck. I talked to you a little while later, but it wasn’t much of a leap from the cloak and gun alone, given his rattled condition and my intuitive nature. I gave him the crossbow from the deer—call it a prop—got him to help me clean up the mess and off we went in our separate vehicles, back to the Hollow.”
“You make it sound like an average day at work.”
“Hardly average. I still had a séance to rig, and a locket to steal and decimate. The last two things were easy enough, but my fingers were crossed big-time during the séance. Storm helped, and we all know how old the manor’s window latches are. To be honest, I wasn’t sure every last candle would blow out when the window burst open, but what do you know, they did. I took it as a sign that I was meant to succeed.”
“Yes, you’re a lucky monster, aren’t you? Still, you know as well as I do that nothing, not even luck, lasts forever.”
“Shut up, Sadie. This conversation is over. I’m going to kill you and Eli and give Brady an airtight alibi for the time of the murder. Ty’s off on a phony emergency call, and sooner or later, Eli will come looking for you. He’ll see your body, rush in and whack, whack, end of problem.”
Keep her talking, Sadie’s instincts whispered. She took a cautious step back. “What about your car?”
“It’s well hidden. Unfortunately, Brady’s truck isn’t, so—time we moved this party along.”
Panic spurted through Sadie’s veins. “It won’t work, Orley. You got lucky with Laura. This is far more complicated.” At Orley’s fierce look, she gestured behind her. “You can’t carry Brady out of here.”
“I’ll hide him and his truck. Convince him to let me handle everything once it’s over.”
“And let him go right on thinking he’s a monster.”
“It’ll keep him in line and indebted to me. One lovely side effect of ketamine is that when a person wakes up after ingesting it, he or she has no recollection of what transpired. Brady invented the monster, Sadie, not me. Remember that. And stop backing away. One step more or less won’t make you a smaller target.”
Sadie edged sideways instead. The ground was growing increasingly slippery as it began its descent to the murky water of the bog.
“They’ll trace the gun, Orley.”
“Well, duh.” One of her cousin’s feet slipped, but she seemed not to notice and wagged the barrel instead. “This is a .45, if you don’t know weapons. It belongs to Ben Leamer. I lifted it the day we met Hezekiah’s effigy in the corn maze. Let me tell you, that message you got about not waking the monster came as quite a shock to me.”
Sadie fought to hold her balance in the mud. “I’m sure I’ll sound obvious, but if you really loved Brady, you wouldn’t be doing this.”
“If I did nothing, I’d be Molly.” She raised the gun. “Time to die, cou—”
As Sadie had hoped, the slippery ground took Orley’s feet out from under her. She landed on her hip and lost her grip on the gun.
The instant she fell, Sadie bolted. Away from the bog and into the heart of the fog-shrouded woods.
She didn’t know if Orley was behind her or not. She only knew this was very much her nightmare. A deadly pursuit through the hollow by a person whose sanity had deserted her.
She should have called Eli, asked him to come to Ben’s farm with her. Or let Jerk follow her as he’d been instructed to do. Instead, she’d driven straight into a trap. Yes, she was fit, and she could run. But Orley was hell-bent on killing her, and of the two of them, her cousin knew the hollow best.
Because of that, Sadie had no choice. As much as she hated the thought, she circled back toward the bog, where the ground was slick and balance an ongoing issue. If she could reach the cave she and Eli had used, she might make it back to the road. Road, Bronco, escape.
A sketchy map formed in her mind. So did a picture of Eli’s face. But he wasn’t here. This was between her and Orley.... And where was the stupid cave entrance?
She wove a haphazard path through the hollow. Were those Orley’s footsteps behind her? Was she shouting at her through the fog? Sadie thought she glimpsed a light, but she couldn’t be sure and didn’t dare slow down to look.
The ground beneath her oozed and almost sent her sliding into the weeds. Determined not to die, she hung on and kept going.
Unlike the shouts, there was no mistaking the thwack of three bullets as they struck a tree directly ahead of her.
Orley would want her to stay visible. Fine. As long as she avoided any direct moonbeams, she’d still present a difficult target.
She hoped.
Sadie’s heart hammered louder in her chest. Two more bullets zinged past. Did they come from the same direction as before? Her instincts said no. She had a split second to glimpse the movement, but no time to react as Orley flew out of the darkness and tackled her to the ground.
“Black belt,” her cousin grunted, and attempted to work Sadie onto her stomach.
“D.C.,” Sadie panted back, and swung the flashlight she still held hard into Orley’s ear.
Orley howled and grabbed a handful of Sadie’s hair. Ignoring the pain in her skull, Sadie took aim at her cousin’s face, then used her fingernails to rake her cheek. When Orley jerked upright, she punched her in the throat and kicked free.
Unfortunately, by the time she scrambled to her feet, Orley was on her knees with the .45 aimed at her head.
“You, Cousin Sadie, are so dead.”
A single shot rang out. Freezing, Sadie squeezed her eyes shut and waited for the rush of blackness. To her astonishment, it didn’t come. Although her pounding heart drowned out almost every other sound, she thought she heard someone calling her name.
Inching her eyes open, she spotted Orley on the ground. Her left arm was outstretched, and she lay facedown in the mud.
Then suddenly, Eli was spinning her into his arms. Before Sadie could utter a sound, he crushed his mouth to hers and for a blissful moment made all her fears disappear.
If the kiss had never ended, she might have been able to erase everything that had come before. Unfortunately, as she’d told Orley, nothing lasted forever. When Eli raised his head to search her face, the horror flooded back in.
She breathed out slowly. “I don’t want her to be dead.”
“I know. I’m sorry, sweetheart, I have to...” Framing her face with his fingers, Eli kissed her again, long and deep. “You don’t have to look.”
“Yes, I do.”
He wasn’t rough, but Sadie suspected he wanted to be. He knew, and so did she, that Orley would have shot her in a heartbeat if El
i’s bullet hadn’t struck first.
The groan that emerged from her cousin’s throat told Sadie she was alive. The blood on her jacket suggested she might not remain that way for long. With her emotions reeling, Sadie walked around to kneel beside her.
“I aimed for her left shoulder,” Eli said. “If she’s tough, she’ll make it.”
Sadie thought of Orley’s confession and worked up a faint smile. “Trust me, Lieutenant, she’s tough. She’s also determined.” As her eyes came to rest on her cousin’s face, she sighed. “And very, very sick.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Being a journalist, Sadie knew she’d put all the bits and pieces in order at some point—but she doubted it would happen any time soon.
Ty showed up within ten minutes. Using his two-way, he relayed a message through Ben Leamer’s hired hand to the Raven’s Cove paramedics. It took a great deal of time and effort, but eventually, Brady and Orley were admitted to the Raven’s Cove Hospital and placed under county guard.
By midnight, everyone at Two Toes Joe’s Bar had heard some version of the story. By morning, Sadie figured, very little of the factual account would remain. How could it in an area so steeped in lore and legend?
As the tale began to build, Rooney plunked himself between her and Eli and looked grimly from one to the other. “If I’m kin to a murderer, I need to hear the details.”
Sadie shook her heard. “You’re a Blume, Rooney. Orley and I are Bellams. You’re not kin to a murderer. I am.”
“Think intent,” Eli told her. “He’s talking about being related to Brady. It’s a fine line between actual and attempted murder.”
She sent him a grudging smile. “You’re just trying to make me feel better.”
“Is it working?”
“Not really.” She made herself go back. “In the bog, Orley talked about the night Laura died. Apparently, while Laura was braiding my hair—babysitting me—right outside the window, Brady was watching her do it. Talk about creepy.”
“It’s contemptible,” Rooney spat. “My great-grandson was a Peeping Tom in high school.”
Sadie patted his arm. “He was a lot of things, Rooney, in school and out, but not a murderer. Not even a wannabe twenty years ago. The night Laura died, he was watching her and drinking the coffee that Orley drugged after she ‘accidentally’ bumped into him at the café. In went just enough ketamine to put him under. Orley hid, waited through a few sips outside my parents’ house, then moved in and guided him to an empty lot. A few more sips, and he was out for the night. Knowing that Laura would head back to the Cove as soon as my parents came home, she went to the road that led out of town and waited again.”
Rooney gripped his cane a little tighter. “So it was Orley who got Laura to stop, then made her go into the hollow.”
“It wouldn’t have been an easy drive,” Eli remarked. “But at the point of a gun—Orley’s father’s gun, we’ll assume—the difficult became much more possible.”
“That’s the backstory, Rooney.” As she leaned over to kiss his wrinkled cheek, Sadie whispered, “I’ll leave the telling of the present-day version in your capable hands.”
“Let’s call that our cue to leave.” Before his great-grandfather could object, Eli stood and drew Sadie to her feet. “Unless you want to stay and help him rearrange the facts to suit.”
To grin and mean it felt wonderful—until she saw Ty swaying in his chair across the room while Molly nudged a boilermaker toward him.
“What the...?”
“Let it go, Sadie.” Eli set an arm over her shoulders to keep her moving.
“But Ty doesn’t drink. Molly knows he doesn’t drink.”
“Molly’s not Orley, and Ty’s a big boy.”
“I know, but—”
“With a badge.”
Shaking it off, Sadie gave his stomach a poke. “Speaking of, Lieutenant, how is it you managed to find me in the hollow?”
He dropped a hard kiss on her lips. “I knew she had you. I called the Chronicle and your assistant told me you’d taken your copy editor’s Bronco to Ben Leamer’s farm.”
“Which explains how you located my vehicle, but not how you found me.”
“If I say I used my instincts, are you going to go all Raven’s Tale on me and suggest I might have been channeling Hezekiah?”
“I would,” she teased, “except that Hezekiah wouldn’t be tuned in to me so much as my Bellam blood, which would mean I’d have to have been channeling Nola—and I really don’t want to go there.”
His lips quirked. “In that case, I used criminal logic. Orley murdered Laura in Raven’s Bog and got away with it. It stood to reason she’d use the same location again.”
“I was looking for the cave when you showed up and shot her.”
“I accessed the hollow through the cave.”
“Spooky, isn’t it?” She caught the hand that dangled over her shoulder and linked their fingers. “As tragic as all of this is, what say we ditch this town, go back to Bellam Manor and make love until Rooney’s birthday?”
For an answer, he motioned her ahead of him through the crowd. Sadie took a last bemused look at Molly and Ty, then gave up and stepped outside.
On the dock, she turned to regard Eli. “Brady said he wasn’t the monster right before Orley knocked him out. I know you sort of talked to him at the hospital. Did he give you any details?”
“He only drank a small amount of the tea she brewed for him tonight. There were traces of the tranq she used on the lid of the teapot, and an album filled with computer-altered photographs on the floor. Brady suspected she’d been doping him, so he let her think he was going to settle in for the night with the tea. As soon as she left, he went across the hall and searched her apartment.”
“And, lucky for me, found what he was looking for.”
“He claimed he was horrified. But under Orley’s eagle eye he’d already consumed enough of the tea that he was also disoriented and starting to slide under.”
Letting her head fall back, Sadie breathed in the ocean air. “Instead of submitting, he fought the drug’s effect, took the Hollow Road and tried to stop her from killing me.” She shuddered. “Before the paramedics arrived, Orley told me she murdered a girl named Lisa Johnson right after Brady’s senior year.”
“Heard that. Brady took Lisa to our senior prom.”
“Worse and worse. Orley also swiped a pair of Brady’s shoes and muddied them up the night she shot at us with a crossbow. Her father’s weapon again. Brady must have thought he was going crazy—or, well, crazier.” Bringing her head up, she met Eli’s eyes. “Is that why he tried to kill you in the woods near the manor?”
“In for a penny, in for a pound. I don’t imagine he thought he had much to lose at that point.”
“So how will Rooney spin it in terms of our conjoined legends? Obviously Brady was Ezekiel, and you were Hezekiah.”
“And you were Nola. Not sure how he’ll work Orley in. As an even darker version of Ezekiel maybe.”
Sadie summoned a half smile. “Orley’s not a Blume, Eli. She’s my cousin. I honestly can’t believe I’m talking about her like this. My own cousin tried to kill me. Legendwise, she’d have to be Sarah.”
“There’s a Sarah Bellam?”
“In history, yes. In the family archives, not so much. Sarah was Nola’s sister. Pretty sure sanity wasn’t her strong suit. Oh, and as long as we’re tidying this up, Orley also told me that in the process of searching for various chain saws to use on the fallen pine, Brady snuck into the maze and pinned the envelope I found to Hezekiah’s cloak. As soon as he saw me go in, he loaded up the chain saw he’d come to borrow and left. He made the call that scared the living hell out of me while he was driving away. That was the same day Orley stole Ben’s gun. As for the spike strip,
she made that herself, because, well, hey, who hasn’t watched cop shows on TV? We both know the rest of the story. And what we don’t know really doesn’t matter since we’re standing here together—with no idea where our lives are headed, but still—standing.”
Catching her arm, Eli swung her around and trapped her between the outer wall of Joe’s Bar and his body. “We can work on the where, when and how, Sadie. But the with who’s not open for debate.”
“No?” Hooking her arms around his neck, she stared into his eyes. “Then I guess it’s a good thing I love you, Lieutenant Blume. Be warned, however, I’m still a Bellam female. Very high-risk as relationships go.”
“Still a cop on this side, Sadie. That’s an even higher risk.”
She ran a teasing finger over his cheek. “Leaving us with the rather intriguing where, when and how.”
Lowering his head, he covered her mouth briefly with his. “Raven’s Cove hasn’t had a police chief of its own for quite some time. Could be an interesting change of career.”
“Okay...” Sadie drew the word out while she played with the ends of his hair. “In that case, and while we’re on the subject of interesting, why don’t we see what kind of magic we can conjure between us? Think ravens, Eli, and you and me soaring through an autumn night sky. Picture the fog being sucked down into the hollow where it belongs. Then imagine us above it all at Bellam Manor, making love under a gorgeous harvest moon.”
He grinned. “I don’t have to imagine, Sadie. We’re halfway there, and I haven’t even formed a thought yet.”
“Which in noncryptic language means?”
Only his eyes moved, first to the soft orange moon overhead, then toward the Hollow Road, currently shrouded in layers of filmy white.