“Promises, promises.” She handed him the carryall, swung her trench coat on and shouldered her purse and laptop. “Any more than three nights, and I’ll have to call Gunther to water the plants.”
Amusement warred with exasperation. “You get a death threat, and you’re worried about your plants?”
“My mother’s plants.” She dug out her iPhone and pressed the screen. “Very old and in some cases very rare. Gunther’s a good friend, and…” She regarded the screen. “This is the third time I’ve tried Daniel’s number. He’s not answering.”
Rogan made a motion that had Boris trotting to the side door. “A college-educated man, still technically within the confines of the witness protection program, gave you his number?”
She smiled at his tone. “Daniel’s not a complete ass. He used a cell to call me. I imagine he has several and ditches them as he sees fit. Still—” she dropped her phone into her purse “—he must have known I’d call back. He was trying to tell me something when we were cut off.”
“So you said.”
She caught his arm while he tucked a gun into the back of his waistband. “We have to make sure he’s all right.”
“I know.”
“You do?”
A smile crossed his lips as he scoped out what was visible—not much—beyond the front window. “If I didn’t know both of us better, I’d be offended by that.”
“Do you have a contact in Raven’s Cove?”
“Not yet. But give me a few hours and a break in the storm and I will.”
He felt the visual dagger she aimed at his back. “I’ve met that diabolical mind of yours enough times to know who it is you trust and therefore who that so-called contact will be. We’re heading north, aren’t we?”
He couldn’t resist. Turning his head, he brushed a kiss across her cheek, then let his lips stray to her ear. “North to Raven’s Cove, love. Into the heart of a three-hundred-year-old legend.”
* * *
A POSSIBLY NOT-DEAD CRIME lord, a phone call from Daniel, another from a potential killer, a death threat, a black feather and now a remote New England town complete with a legend. Why not? Jasmine wondered as they crossed the border from Massachusetts into New Hampshire. It wasn’t as if she’d had any plans for the weekend.
They were traveling in a fully equipped Ford F-350 truck. Rogan drove it with ease and seemed unfazed by the extreme weather that encompassed the whole eastern seaboard.
“We’ll be in Raven’s Cove in a few hours, right?”
“Give or take.” He reached out to turn down the volume on AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck.” “The town’s on a tricky point of land north of Portland and well off 95. Well off any of the state highways, for that matter.”
“So basically, right off the map. We’re talking paved roads here, I hope.”
“In the town proper.”
“Meaning you’ve either been there or you’ve done your homework. Oh, sorry, I mean research, because you don’t actually have a home, do you? Captain Ballard called you a rogue cop with links but no ties to anyone or anything, just an uncanny sense of when and where you need to be.”
She saw the beginnings of a grin in profile. “You want to know why I was in your condo tonight.”
“Why, how long, how you got in—though that one I can guess—who sent you and any other details you think might be pertinent to the fact that I’m sitting in your truck en route to a town where both a three-hundred-year-old legend and, apparently, Daniel live.”
His features remained inscrutable. “My uncanny cop sense tells me you’re pissed off about pretty much all those things.”
She regarded Boris, comfortably settled on the seat behind them. “Whether Wainwright’s dead or not, Rogan, Daniel gave his testimony. Threatening me won’t change what went down afterward.”
“I agree. Is there anyone else you can think of, besides Wainwright, who might want you dead?”
“Not unless one of the artifacts I’ve acquired has a curse from a vindictive witch attached to it.”
“I think we can safely rule that one out.”
“I don’t know.” She rocked her head from side to side to alleviate the tension knots. “A few of the witches I’ve heard about uttered some pretty nasty things before they passed on. For instance, one of them was caged and left hanging in the woods to die of thirst and/or exposure. When everyone was sure she was gone, the town magistrates had her buried, cage and all. Two nights later, the cage was back hanging from the tree. The following day, the man who’d buried her fell into a grave he’d just finished digging and broke his neck.”
“Let me guess. No one wanted to touch the witch’s cage and/or her remains again.”
“You’re making fun of the story, but within a month, all three of her accusers choked on their tongues while they slept.”
“Sounds more like poetic justice than a curse.”
The amusement that rose felt good. A little out of place, but good. “Okay, we’re way off topic, so last word on this particular witch. The inquisitor who’d passed sentence on her had a fatal accident exactly one month to the day after the so-called trial ended. His horse threw him into a ravine. He landed faceup, eyes open, staring at the bottom of her cage.”
“Or more likely his wife pushed him into the ravine after someone let it slip that he’d been—let’s keep it polite and say he’d been having an affair with said witch, whom he probably offed because she threatened to have a chat with his wife if he didn’t set her up in the seventeenth-century version of a Salem penthouse.”
“Cynic,” she returned on a laugh. “I should have known you’d reduce a perfectly good story to a case of sexual spite. I don’t suppose you could do the same thing with that feather I got. …” She moved a doubtful hand between him and the dash where the feather sat, saw the expression on his face and gave her fingers a resigned flick. “Nope, guess not. The feather’s real, and for reasons as yet unknown, so is the threat.”
Superbright headlights came toward them, the first they’d seen in thirty minutes. “The caller wants me to suffer the way he did before he died. Any way I look at it, the name that best fits that threat is Wainwright’s. He went to prison, he escaped, he crashed, he died. Allegedly.”
“Seven other people have been murdered since the crash.”
“Did they suffer beforehand?”
“From what we know, I’d say probably not.”
“So that honor’s reserved for me.”
“Brings us back to my question.”
“Have I pissed anyone off to the point where he or she would want me dead? Answer’s no. Now it’s your turn. Where, when, why, how, what?”
The grin he shot her disarmed but didn’t deflect. “Maybe I just wanted to see you again. We didn’t exactly part on the best of terms.”
“And maybe my mother will meet Bigfoot, but I doubt it.”
“Meaning you believe in witches and curses, but not myths and legends.”
“I believe in many things, one of them being your ability to circumvent. Why did you come to Salem?”
“Pretty sure I answered that. I thought you might be in danger, figured you probably were, in fact.”
“And the fortunate-timing thing?”
“Luck happens, Jasmine.” He kept an eye on the rearview mirror. “I wasn’t sent, although I did talk to Ballard’s replacement. She’s one of several cops being pressured about the validity of the coroner’s report regarding one Malcolm Wainwright.”
“Captain Ballard swore Wainwright died in that crash.”
“Yes, but Gus Ballard’s not here to stand by his conviction, and there are seven unexplained murders on the books.”
Since she couldn’t really argue, Jasmine moved on. “How did you know Daniel called me?”
“I didn’t. You just assumed.”
“But you knew he was in trouble.”
“At the risk of sounding uncoplike, duh.”
She slit her eyes at him. “How di
d you know he was in Raven’s Cove? Only his contact and one other person were supposed to possess that information.”
The grin hovering on his lips widened. “Ta-da.”
She hissed out her frustration. “I’ve got to stop being surprised. Okay, obvious next question. Why you?”
“Someone had to be the other. Better a mobile cop than not. In any case, with Wainwright’s now-alleged death, Ballard’s unswerving belief in it, plus a number of interdepartmental cost cuts, Daniel’s security-risk factor’s been dropped. He’s still officially in the program, but accessing his peripheral information isn’t as difficult as some of us think it should be.”
“In other words, money’s tight, something had to give and Daniel lost the coin toss.”
“Pretty much sums it up.”
“So you’re aware that Daniel’s contact is missing.”
“Yeah, I’m aware.”
“Is that why you showed up in Salem early? You were checking on him?”
Rogan squinted upward as the rain swept over them in sheets. “If I tell you Daniel’s contact lives in South Carolina, will that set off a whole new round of questions?”
“Maybe.” Leaning back, she studied him. “I’m not sure I trust you as a cop to tell me the absolute truth.”
“Probably a wise precaution given that we seldom tell it.”
That remark shouldn’t sting, but she knew she might have made another invalid assumption six weeks ago. He’d told her he cared, that he had feelings for her he’d never had for anyone else. Then he’d vanished.
From the driver’s seat, he slanted her an assessing look. “Are we done with the Q and A portion of our trip?”
“I’ll let you know when my head stops spinning and my thoughts make some kind of sense. I was planning to visit my mother in Washington next weekend, did you know that? She says the Olympic Mountains are beautiful in October.”
“They’re beautiful any time of year, and how would I know what your long-weekend plans were?”
“So you can’t read minds then.”
“Depends whose mind we’re talking about. I know you’re worried.”
“And here I thought I was hiding it so well.” She brought her gaze back to his face. “It was supposed to be done, Rogan, at least as done as it could be. Everyone except Daniel could go back to their lives. You, me, the cops from the safe house.” Curiosity sidetracked her. “How are they, by the way? I talked to Costello at the funeral. He said he took an early retirement and moved to Stockton.”
“Unfortunately, golfing and gardening can’t always fill the void in a cop’s life.”
“He could become a P.I.”
“I’ll mention that next time I see him. As for the others, Boxman’s taking a hiatus. He cited burnout coupled with a messy divorce as his reasons. Carla Prewitt’s on maternity leave, and Victor Bowcott’s thinking about transferring from San Diego to Buffalo, New York.”
“Victor…to Buffalo?” She stared, incredulous. “Why?”
“He didn’t say. Problem with Buffalo?”
“No, but come on, Rogan, Victor’s all about warm winters, not frigid ones.”
“Yeah? Interesting you’d know that.”
“What, you didn’t?”
“I’m not as well acquainted with him as you appear to be.”
She twirled a finger. “We lived together, remember? You, me, him and the others, for a month. Of course, it would have been longer in your case if you’d been there from the start like the rest of us were.”
“I came when the situation heated up and when the assignment I’d been working on prior to the heating ended.”
She let her mind slide back and amusement spike. “I honestly thought somebody’d messed up, that one of Wainwright’s henchmen had crashed our gruesome little party. One of his crazy, high-on-crack, South American mercenary henchmen. If Costello hadn’t recognized you, I might have tried to stab you with a kitchen knife. Oh, but that wouldn’t have worked, would it, because you never expose your back. To anyone.”
As the streaming rain turned into a near waterfall, Rogan switched the wipers on high. “Deal with the criminal element long enough, you’ll discover there’s always someone behind you. The trick is to make sure he or she doesn’t get a clear shot.”
Jasmine figured he’d mastered that trick in spades. Ballard had told her that Rogan appeared on scene whenever the danger peaked. After that, there were only two ways he’d leave. When the danger ended, or he was dead.
Determined not to dwell, she contemplated the barely visible road ahead. Then did a double take as she spotted the blurred headlights of an oncoming vehicle.
Unless the rain was distorting her vision, the driver had swerved over the centerline. And was headed straight for them.
Chapter Four
“I’m so sorry. Really, so very sorry. Don’t know how she got away from me like that.”
The driver, a fifty-something man in a wrinkled business suit, looked more baffled than shaken. He also smelled like a brewery. His female passenger remained in the car, arms tightly folded, eyes pointed straight ahead, tight skirt riding high on stockinged legs.
You just never know how a night might go, Jasmine thought with mild sympathy as the newly arrived highway patrol officers approached the woman.
Rogan had avoided both the head-on collision and the power pole that had appeared out of nowhere. The man in the silver Subaru hadn’t been so lucky. He’d sideswiped a tree, done a wobbly one-eighty and smashed the front end of his car into the pole’s now-dented base. All in all, the incident had cost them an hour and given Jasmine much more time to think than could possibly be good.
Not that her thoughts followed any kind of logical path, but then, considering the raven’s feather she’d received, she might have to get used to that.
With her coat and hair dripping, she headed back to the truck, tried Daniel’s number again and wound up tossing her phone on the dash.
“I sense irritation.” At a wave from the patrolman, Rogan got in next to her and swung his truck back onto the river that was the interstate. “Want to clue me in?”
Like the woman in the other car, Jasmine folded her arms and stared through the windshield. “Daniel did this kind of thing the whole time we were married, all two and a half years of it. He’d call me from wherever he happened to be, freak me out with stories about subversive activities, riots, roadside bombings or some vast grow-op he’d managed to unearth. ‘Just so you know, Jas,’ he’d say. ‘In case I don’t come home.’ He’s drawn to it.”
“To danger or the prospect of death?”
She started to say “both,” then shook her head. “Death and danger are your drugs, Rogan. For Daniel it’s the thrill of the hunt.”
“Like your mother.”
“Yes, except she’s chasing mythical creatures, not crime lords, terrorists and power-hungry third-world generals. I met Daniel while I was in college. The whole Bohemian-rebel-fight-for-a-cause idea intrigued me. It was challenging, and at the same time it seemed worthwhile. Then reality hit, and I realized there were less radical ways to make a statement than by jumping off metaphorical cliffs into the middle of international drug rings.”
“Jumping can work,” Rogan said.
The fact that she knew he was trying not to grin drew a warning sound from her throat. “You believe that because you’re all about shadows and intrigue.”
“You make me sound like a WWII spy.”
“There’s cause for comparison. Daniel has the pseudo-hippie vibe. You’ve got the mystery. Well, and the law.”
A blast of wind pummeled the truck as Rogan traded the interstate for a bumpy off-ramp. “Big gun doesn’t hurt, either.”
“No, it doesn’t, but I don’t think that’s my point.”
Despite the thickening shadows, she felt his eyes on her face. “What is your point? That under the surface I’m a lot like Daniel?”
“God.” She laughed. “You are so not. In fact, yo
u’re as unlike as two people can be, jumping-in tendency aside. You see and act. Daniel hears and reacts. You think. He emotes. You consider. He fixates. Still not my point, though.”
“And that is…?”
“More people are going to die. More than the ones who are already dead. I don’t blame Daniel for that, I’m just tired of being dragged back into a life I tried to say goodbye to three years ago. It stands to reason that I’ll know someone who gets killed before this ends. It could be Daniel, it could be a person I meet in Raven’s Cove, it could be Boris.” She ground her teeth. “It could be you.”
Using the mirror, Rogan eyed the German shepherd, curled up and sleeping behind them. “I trained Boris at the safe house. It’s his job to protect you, and you can believe me when I tell you he knows how to take down an armed adversary.”
“Yes, I’m sure you showed him the moves personally, and you could probably dodge a hundred bullets between you. But there’s always that random shot, the one fired by the guy you didn’t see. Maybe that shot kills you. Maybe it doesn’t, and you can get to a hospital in time. But it could also hit and not kill you right away, yet you know death’s imminent because there’s no one around to help you.”
His eyes flicked to hers. “You’re thinking about Dukes, aren’t you?”
“Partly,” she admitted. “Dukes was that teddy-bear uncle you automatically love. Captain Ballard said they never found his body.” Her heart gave a painful twist. “There were only two days left before Daniel’s court appearance. Forty-eight hours. Then the wind changed, a storm blew in, and Wainwright’s men came out of the night like cockroaches.”
“There were only twenty. And we expected them.”
“It didn’t matter, though, did it? Two police officers still died. And we’ll never know what happened to Dukes. Well, yes, we will, because—what was it you said to me when he didn’t come back? A missing cop is a dead cop. Which means Wainwright’s people took him, and whether he lived long enough to be tortured, or died before they could question him, he’s gone.” She pushed on her throbbing right temple. “This isn’t helping, is it?”
Raven's Cove - Jenna Ryan Page 3