RAVEN'S HOLLOW (18 page)

Astonishment simply robbed Sadie of thought. “You’re not serious,” she managed. Yet even through a curtain of shock, Orley’s gleaming eyes told her she was. Serious and deadly. She’d murdered their cousin Laura twenty years ago.

And would, without qualm or hesitation, murder another of her cousins tonight.

Chapter Twenty-One

Waving the gun like a pennant, Orley forced Sadie to stand. “I can’t say I’m impressed. You’re supposed to be a crack journalist, someone who sees what others miss. How did you miss what’s inside me?”

It amazed Sadie that her temper would rise with her fear. “You weren’t a story to be dissected and probed. You were just my cousin with an attitude.”

“And a gun.”

Wisdom elbowed temper aside. “And that.” Although she couldn’t see it succeeding, she went with a rational approach. “Oh, come on, Orley, why would I think you had a monster inside you? We’re family. I’ve always seen you as one of the most stable people I know. I think of us as friendly rivals.”

“Excellent. Shot to the heart. Applause, applause. Won’t work, of course, but marks for effort. See, here’s the thing. While I do in fact like you much better than Laura, I don’t like you enough to let the man I’ve wanted—since I was five years old—” she enunciated the last six words “—destroy his life and my dreams, which I swear are going to come true as soon as you’re gone. Brady thinks he has an alter ego. He believes that alter ego is murderous. But like most of us, he doesn’t relish the prospect of spending the rest of his life behind bars. So—self-preservation mode.”

Sadie heard her through an ever-increasing shriek of denial. Orley had killed Laura two decades ago when they were seventeen. Killed her because Brady had wanted her. Really? Seriously?

“This is sick, Orley. This is totally sick.”

“This is necessary.”

An incredulous laugh emerged. “You think making Brady believe he has a monster inside him is necessary? You think that’s love?”

“Don’t psychoanalyze me, Sadie. Brady’s the one who decided he had a slice of Hezekiah Blume in his soul, not me. I just went with it.”

“Why? Because it worked for you?”

“Yes. And the only thing I’ll say in my defense is that it’s not what I had in mind the first time I drugged him.”

She adjusted her grip on the gun she held—in her left hand! The irony of that observation struck a note of absurd humor and had Sadie closing her eyes for a moment.

“Ah, there. You see it now, don’t you? But give yourself a break, cousin. You weren’t looking for a left-handed woman. Surprise again.” Orley’s smile stretched wider. “I worried about the chop to Laura’s skull after I’d done it. Then it occurred to me. Given the phone calls she’d surely have mentioned to someone, and the obsessive notes that would undoubtedly turn up at some point, no one would be thinking ‘female killer.’ Plus, there was Cal. So I relaxed, played the sorrow game and kept a close eye on Brady.”

Impossible images swam in Sadie’s head. “You found out that Brady wanted Laura, so you murdered her. Simple as that.”

“Murdered her after she broke up with Cal.” Crouching, Orley set her fingers on the pulse point in Brady’s neck. “Until then, she was unattainable. I could deal with that. Dumping Cal was her fatal mistake. Brady started thinking he could have her, and—well, that wasn’t going to happen. So—desperate-measures time.”

“You worked at the veterinary clinic in high school.” Sadie forced herself not to look at the gun, not to appear to be looking at anything while her mind raced. “You had access to sedatives and anesthetic.”

“The doc at the time didn’t keep accurate supply records. Neither did his assistant. All brilliant me had to do was read and learn and come up with a dosage that would work on humans.”

“A dosage of what?”

“Ketamine. Street name, cat tranqs. It causes all sorts of nasty problems—hallucinations, confusion, agitation and, of course, unconsciousness. I slipped it to Brady from time to time, hoping I could scare Laura into leaving town. I tacked on a threat to a larger-than-life love note Brady gave her. Just intercepted it before she was aware and turned Brady’s love note into a monster’s portent of doom.”

“That’s why the writing changed,” Sadie murmured.

“That’s why. Didn’t have the desired effect, of course. Laura’s senior year loomed, and she had a brand-new family that she liked. All I had left was death.”

“Right. Death. With no second thoughts. No remorse. Nothing.”

Orley leaned in to stage-whisper, “We weren’t friends, Sadie, only unfortunate relations. I never liked her, or Molly—or people in general for that matter. In your case, all was well enough while you were engaged to Ty. Oh, Brady saw and Brady wanted, but lucky you, Ty got there first. A long courtship blossomed into an engagement. Then, uh-oh, wedding in Boston. Chance meeting with Eli. Next thing I knew, Ty was unengaged, and Brady’s hopes were soaring. Damn. Time to start plotting again. Here’s the kicker, though, cousin. Who should appear on the very day that Brady worked up the nerve to make an anonymous phone call to your office but Eli Blume?”

Sadie struggled to keep up. “Are you saying Brady sent me that animated e-card?”

“Yep. It was his way of testing the water. Far as I can tell, the dead raven on the doorstep was more of a gift gone wrong. He meant to leave a live raven in a gilded cage. But the raven got loose and flew up into the porch rafters. Brady tried to flush it out with a gunshot—and, well, I guess the bird wasn’t where he thought, and it plopped down dead at his feet.”

“Why did he leave it there?”

“I imagine killing it rattled him. Plus, he still had a message to write. So in he went, home you came and uh-oh, gotta run. If my deductions are correct, and I’m sure they are, he ‘borrowed’ one of Ben Leamer’s old trucks for the occasion. You know Ben. He’s got a barn full of the things. Talk about your perfect setup. FYI, the call Brady made to you that day was his last. I used the same freaky computer voice to do the rest.”

Sadie stared. “How do you know all this?”

“I get him to talk. After I drug him and before he goes under, I grill him. Sometimes he slips away before I get everything, but mostly I can eke out the details. I’m a very clever Bellam, Sadie. And Brady’s mind has always been wonderfully malleable.”

“Is that what you call it?”

“You think he’s unbalanced, don’t you?”

“I don’t know what I think at this point. Maybe unbalanced. Or maybe confused—because he thinks he’s got a homicidal maniac living inside him!”

“Don’t take that tone with me,” Orley warned. “Remember who’s holding the gun here. Any imbalance in Brady’s personality is a result of him being totally repressed. Fortunately, I haven’t got a repressed bone in my body.”

“Okay, wait.” Hands raised, Sadie took a step back, both physically and mentally. “Backtracking here. You’re telling me that, being repressed, Brady had to resort to weird tricks to get my attention, whereas you, who aren’t the slightest bit repressed, have no problem approaching anyone.”

“I’m way ahead of you, Sadie. You’re wondering why I didn’t just let Brady know I wanted him instead of going all extreme killer.”

Anger seeped through terror. “It would have been a saner option. Not to mention kinder, and—brass tacks here—less of a risk to your own—” she almost said “stupid” but swallowed that and left it at “—life.”

Closing the gap between them, her cousin tapped Brady’s gun to Sadie’s chest. “You see, now, that’s why I like you so much better than Laura. You’re mere seconds away from death, and here you stand, totally pissed off at me for not telling Brady how I felt about him.”

“Thereby avoiding the ‘seconds away from death’ part,” Sadie said through her teeth.

Orley’s features hardened, and this time when the gun struck Sadie’s collarbone it stayed put. “I did tell him, in every way I could think of. I even lowered my career goals so I could be his assistant. I tried to seduce him at high school dances, went for it again at college and twice more after we came back to the Hollow. Every damn time I came on to him, he got awkward and flustered and insisted we were friends. Best friends but—and this part was strictly between the lines—friends without benefits.”

He hadn’t wanted her. A very small part of Sadie actually felt sorry for her.

Orley shook back her hair. “Didn’t matter what he said, what he felt then or what he thinks he feels now. He’ll be mine after tonight, I’ll make sure of it. Just know this. He wanted you more than he wanted Laura, and I still did everything I could not to kill you. For some reason, he refused to be deterred by Eli. Guess he got tired of backing down. He wanted you to be his and Eli to be gone.”

“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.