“So it makes sense you’d marry a man who’d fill it up again.”
“Or bury the secret in his parents’ basement until we got back from our honeymoon in not-sunny Spain. Within days, a moving van carrying half a million books showed up on our doorstep, and it occurred to me there might have been one or two questions I’d neglected to ask.” Angling her beam upward, Jasmine sighed. “Like how many journalists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”
Rogan perused the overflowing phone desk. “You trusted Daniel to be truthful. Be glad he didn’t have a deeper, darker secret stashed in that basement.”
She didn’t realize he’d left the desk until she felt his knuckles graze her cheek.
“You smell like tropical flowers, Jasmine. I’ve never figured out which ones, but I’ve always thought I’d be able to pick you out of a crowd by your scent alone.” Easing her hair aside, he bared her neck. “Do you want me to make Boxman disappear?”
Did guns have triggers? “I don’t think…” she began, then caught her breath as he kissed the sensitive spot below her earlobe.
“I’ve missed you, love. You’re in my head every night when I try to sleep.”
Although her mind wanted to haze, she held tight to her last thread of reason. “Night turns to day, Rogan, every time. Moon and stars vanish and take you with them into the great unknown. The only time I knew you’d be there without fail was at the safe house. And even then I understood why you were training Boris. You’d leave, he’d stay, and that would be the end of it. It’ll be the end again when this mess we’re in now is sorted out. I’m not going to live my life on a carousel that you come to and go from whenever a situation requires your attention.”
Rogan didn’t push her, but he didn’t move away, either. “What about Boxman?”
“What about him? He’s here, we’re here, and our reasons all seem to be rooted in the growing possibility that Malcolm Wainwright didn’t die in that helicopter crash.”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?”
“Oh, God.” Suspicion at his cryptic tone had her turning to look. “What aren’t you telling me?”
He ran a light thumb across her cheek. “Boxman said Daniel’s contact sent him a text message yesterday.”
“And you don’t buy that because…?”
“Crocker’s dead, Jasmine. His throat was slashed. I found his body in the trunk of his car two days ago.”
* * *
IN THE TWELVE YEARS HE’D been a cop, Rogan hadn’t given a second thought to lying. It came with the territory, and most of the time that territory was a cesspool. So why did he feel like slime for not telling Jasmine the whole story?
She’d figure it out eventually, or see it for herself. In a town the size of Raven’s Cove, how could she not?
With annoyance beginning to rise and no answers in sight, he jogged to his truck, traded guilt for mistrust and moved on to Boxman.
Was the sergeant searching for a measure of off-duty glory, or something else entirely? Time would tell, he supposed, but with the stakes high and Jasmine’s life on the line, he didn’t plan to give anyone, cop or civilian, much rope.
The storm appeared to have taken root on the coast. Lack of light and power made it difficult to follow directions, but he reached his destination at last, parked and settled in to wait.
He’d left Jasmine sleeping at Daniel’s cottage. Boxman had grumbled, but agreed to spend the night in his camper. Boris would ensure he didn’t change his mind.
The passenger door opened while he was once again contemplating Jasmine’s feather. A man climbed in, soaked and cursing.
“Piece-of-crap night.” He started to rub his wrist, then flapped it forward instead. “Take us down to the water. Fishermen don’t care if the lights are powered by gas or electric. All they want’s the drink.”
As Rogan shoved the truck in gear, his companion sniffed once. And again. Then he grunted out a breath. “You brought her with you, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, I did.”
“Why?”
“Someone threatened to kill her. Slowly. He left that as a token.”
The man beside him sighed when he spied the feather. “You were right, then. Except now we’re talking local legend, or the borrowing thereof, to do the same job to Jasmine that’s been done to the others.”
“Daniel has two feathers.”
“And just how would you know that unless you’ve been talking to him? And if you have, you might’ve mentioned it before I spent half of this hellish night slip-sliding around town—and I mean that literally as you’ll see when and if the sun ever comes out—trying to locate him.”
Ignoring the question, Rogan pointed his truck down a steep hill. “Any luck?”
“None. Far as I can tell in my extremely limited time here, no one’s seen him for two days.”
Rogan wasn’t surprised. “He called Jasmine tonight, told her about his feathers and suggested she contact someone she could trust.”
His companion snorted. “Contact someone she could trust before, once again, his meddling got her killed. Bastard’s probably gone into hiding.”
“Odds are.”
“Could as easily be dead.”
“Also possible, but only if the killer’s working with a partner, which I doubt. That feather wasn’t on Jasmine’s door when she got home from work.”
The man pointed. “See that shack near the piers that shoot out from the dock? It’s called Two Toe Joe’s. Place smells like piss. Beer tastes like it. The oldest geezer on the planet parks his bony ass there every night. You got questions about legends and feathers, he’s your man. But you gotta keep his cup full, or his vocal cords dry up.”
Rogan parked, slid out and pocketed his keys. “You learned all that in one night?”
“What can I say? I look and sound like an old salt. Makes me a kindred spirit. Good thing, too. With a couple exceptions—the geezer being one of them—folks around here mostly avoid strangers.”
Rogan found that interesting, but again not surprising given the insulated nature of Raven’s Cove. It might have a legend, but as far as he could see, no one had thought or bothered to exploit it.
With the storm still venting its fury, they jogged through the rain to a wharfside bar not much better lit than Daniel’s cottage after Boxman’s discovery of a puny generator in the toolshed.
Twenty pairs of eyes turned when they entered. “Second visit to this sailors’ toilet in one night,” his companion muttered. “Gotta be a record that’ll stand for a good decade.” Raising a hand at the bartender, he headed for a table in the back.
The plank floors were sticky, the air foul, the walls covered with old nets, stuffed ravens and damaged lobster traps.
With more ravens inside them, Rogan noted and fought a grin. For what it was worth, the place had atmosphere.
“Rooney’s over there.” His companion gestured through smoke and a layer of something resembling dirty fog. “Send a mug to his table and we’ll go from there.”
“A mug of what?”
“Whiskey.”
Rogan cast the other man a look, but said nothing. Without appearing to, he eyed the cloudy beer that was plunked in front of him. “Send a mug of his usual to the old guy next to the woodstove,” he told the stone-faced server. He debated, then figured what the hell and swallowed a mouthful from his glass.
“Horse urine,” his companion remarked. “Gotta be.”
No argument there, Rogan thought. He let his eyes roam. “Doesn’t matter how you try to connect them, the feathers and the most likely suspect don’t jibe.”
“Sure they do, or could. Wainwright or his avenger is trying to throw everyone off the scent.”
“By using a little-known legend from a town where the person who should be his prime target has been living for eighteen months. Obviously, the killer knows Daniel’s here. Run the scenario. Daniel calls Jasmine to warn her. He gets cut off, but from her end rather than his. Now she has one fe
ather to his two. Means our killer’s threatening his ninth victim before he’s disposed of his eighth, a man who should have been his primary target from the start. Why?”
“Well—why not?”
Rogan smiled, kept his eyes moving. “You’re convinced the guy wants to hurt anyone and everyone who played a part in Wainwright’s takedown, including, but not limited to, Daniel.”
“What’s wrong with that idea? Sure, it’s not Wainwright’s style, but you and me agree he went up in smoke with his prison pals. Does it necessarily follow that his whatever you want to call him—successor, avenger—is going to do the same thing the same way he’d have done it?”
“No.” But it didn’t feel right. And where did Boxman fit in?
An uneven clomping sound penetrated the hum of gravelly voices and someone’s eerie fiddle. When the smoke and mist parted, he saw a mostly toothless old man with a big black mug beaming at him.
“Name’s Rooney Blume,” the man announced in a tone that sounded as papery as his skin looked. “My nose tells me you represent the law. Gift you sent tells me you got an interest in our legend.” At a nod from Rogan, his smile spread to ghastly proportions. He clomped closer, lowered his thin body onto a chair. “Well, then. My great-granddad times seven was among the first to settle in this town.” He eased his already empty mug forward. “Year after he got here, the evil came on him, and he started killing folks. Until one night he went to bed a man. And woke up a big black raven.”
* * *
THE MAN WHO WATCHED JASMINE through the cottage window hadn’t needed to follow her here. He’d known Rogan would bring her. Flies to the spiderweb, and it made no difference to him how many of them got tangled up and died. Only Jasmine mattered. Beautiful, long-limbed, raven-haired Jasmine, with her jewel-green eyes, her soft, soft skin and…
His muscles tightened as his body responded to her. He suppressed the heat with hatred. She wouldn’t do this to him, would not cost him his control, or anything else, ever again.
He was done with suffering. It was her turn to feel pain. To watch the life she’d been given slip away. To die.
Cold rain pelted him. His fingers curled. He wanted to do it now, while his fury was at its peak. But she only had one feather, and he had to see it through properly.
From feathery start to blood-soaked conclusion.
Chapter Six
The safe house, located twenty miles north of San Francisco, was foggy inside and out. Costello, the most experienced officer, was running the show, or so the handbill read, but Boxman challenged him at every turn and Victor Bowcott tended to direct his questions at Rogan.
The female cop, Carla Prewitt, ignored what she called the “big-boy ball games” and followed whatever advice suited her best.
Rogan prowled the floor like a restless wolf. Behind him, Victor and Donald Dukes played draw poker. Costello tapped his feet to Ravel on a tinny MP3, Boxman sulked and Carla studiously painted her nails.
Carla’s action was out of character, and it made Jasmine’s skin prickle. Why would the no-nonsense sergeant be drawing tiny black birds on her suddenly extra-long fingernails?
The moment the thought formed, the female cop looked up. Bloodred eyes laughed at her, at all of them. Then the fog turned black, thunder crashed, and Carla’s head burst apart.
A thousand ravens packing guns and rifles flew out. Dukes jumped up, waving his arms and shouting that the evil had gotten inside. Then he exploded, too. Costello and Victor dived for their guns, but there were ravens everywhere and now feathers raining down from the ceiling.
A moment later, the house went dark. The cacophony remained, but she could no longer see the one person she wanted. Until…
Hands gripped her arms. “I’m taking you out of here, Jasmine.”
Rogan. Thank God.
“You have to trust me.” He spun her around. His kiss was hot, hard and strangely erotic, considering the circumstances. “I won’t let them hurt you.”
She believed him, but had a difficult time holding the thought as bullets flew, ravens cried and bodies thudded on the floor.
Rogan kept her ahead of him, fired into the filthy fog behind them.
Lightning forked from the ceiling. He pulled her into the kitchen, toward the cellar door. But when he opened it, a huge raven blocked their path.
“I am only the messenger,” the bird croaked. “I can do no harm, cause no one to die.”
Rogan brought his gun level with the feathered chest. “Maybe you can’t harm or kill, but I can. Move.”
“You kill for love, not hate.” The raven stepped back. “Beware the one for whom the reverse is true. …”
The creature vanished with the last word. Fog rushed in, dense and dirty. Three feathers appeared in Jasmine’s hand. Fear churned in her stomach. She knew what they meant. She was going to die.
“No, you’re not,” Rogan said as everything, including them, started to dissolve. “But I swear to you, the person who wants you dead is.”
Once again, she believed him. And yet…
Out of nothing, the man-size shadow of a raven took shape, projected now onto an enormous white wall. Lightning speared through a nonexistent sky. While Jasmine watched, spellbound and terrified, the shadow raven split into two men. One grew larger, the other smaller. Still nothing more than a wall shadow, the larger man raised a gun, pointed it at her heart.
And squeezed the trigger.
* * *
“IT WAS HORRIBLE.” JASMINE shuddered away the remnants of her nightmare the next morning. “It had more Wonderland elements than Wonderland. When the man who’d made up the evil half of the raven went to shoot, you threw me down. I wound up on the floor in Daniel’s bedroom with Boris trying to pull me out of a tangle of sheets and blankets and Boxman banging on the outside door. He said I screamed, but I don’t believe him.”
“Neither do I,” Rogan said. “You only scream during sex.”
Leaving Boris with Boxman, they’d driven the treacherous mile from Daniel’s cottage to the edge of Raven’s Cove. A cockeyed sign stood next to the stone wall where Rogan parked his truck. It read Road Ends Here.
In leather boots better suited for hiking than last night’s stilettos, Jasmine walked to the edge and looked down. And down and down. “Anyone who doesn’t like a good cardio workout should not live in this town. How many feet above sea level are we up here?”
“Over four hundred.”
“So, not really a tourist-friendly place.”
She peered through the layers of fog that drifted over the terraced slope to which the town of Raven’s Cove clung. Rogan joined her. His presence would have distracted if she hadn’t been stunned by the hundreds of uneven stairs that led down to a rock-strewn beach.
“Nice location,” he remarked.
His easy tone brought a laugh to her throat. “Well, yeah, I guess. Navigable, too.” She widened meaningful eyes. “If you’re a goat.”
He set his head next to hers from behind. “I’m whatever I need to be, love. So are you. Come on. I want to have a chat with the chief of police.”
“That’s what Boxman and I thought you were doing last night.” She accepted the hand he held out in preparation for the downward trek.
The half grin appeared, but she was determined not to be swayed by it. Or not very swayed.
“Boxman’s not my superior officer, Jasmine. I don’t owe him any explanations.”
“Or anyone else, it seems.”
“Think need to know. And look at it this way. You’re here today. Boxman isn’t. If we’re lucky, a few minutes from now, you’ll know a great deal more than he does.”
“Only a few minutes if the police chief’s office is within thirty really scary-looking steps of our current position. People must break their legs every day around here.”
Part of a protrusion crumbled and Rogan tightened his grip. “Maybe they wear shoes with suction cups.”
“I want a pair.”
After al
most landing on her butt, Jasmine took her mother’s advice and stopped concentrating on the ground. Of course, her mother had spent three years of her childhood in Tibet. With a breath in and out, she opted to have faith and let her gaze wander through the uneven array of shops, stores and houses they passed.
She had to admit, the painted exteriors possessed a certain weathered charm. But there were gothic overtones as well, whispers of other times and places. In terms of the architecture, and even the structures themselves, Raven’s Cove bore no resemblance to a seaside village in England, yet it possessed a similar old-world feel.
It was also possible the witch stories she heard on a daily basis had affected her more than she’d realized.
“Why so quiet?” Rogan asked at length.
She glanced around as a chill snaked down her spine. “Maybe I’m too busy trying not to break my neck to make conversation.” Circling in place, she made a fluttering motion with her fingers. “Do you sense something strange?”
“Always. Relax, Jasmine. No one’s going to jump us.”
“That wasn’t my concern.”
“Or shoot us or stab us or push us down the stairs.”
“So you’ve grown a pair of eyes in the back of your head since Captain Ballard’s funeral.”
“If the idea makes you feel better, yes.”
Having no desire to pursue the matter, she flicked at the ends of his too-long hair. “Dukes told me you never let anyone holding sharp objects get close to you. Were you traumatized by scissors as a child?”
“Does having my sister play hairdresser with me while I slept count?”
“Seriously? You have a sister?” Delight blotted out nerves. “Older or younger?”
“One of each. And a brother. Much younger. What?” His lips quirked as he scanned the fog-shrouded buildings. “Did you think I was hatched?”
“No.” Her smile grew playful. “But Dukes did. He said you hunted like a bird, an eagle or a hawk. Eyes on the target, no deviation. Swoop in and strike. Carla agreed with the strike part, but she compared you to a cobra. Boxman liked the snake reference, especially the slithering aspect.”
Raven's Cove - Jenna Ryan Page 5