RAVEN'S HOLLOW (7 page)

He gave the screen of his iPhone a final tap and looked up. “I should have come here with you.”

The beginnings of a smile touched her lips. “Did Ty say that?”

“Yeah, but the thought had already occurred.”

“In that case, Lieutenant, listen up and pass this on. I am not a maiden in distress, and I don’t want or need you or Ty or even Orley dogging me everywhere I go.”

“Sadie, Laura—”

“Didn’t realize her life was in danger. At best, she was probably thinking pest. Believe me, I’m thinking something very different.”

Pushing off from the Land Rover, Eli advanced on her. “Did you tell that to the guy who called you in the maze?”

“No, but I didn’t go, ‘Eek,’ and faint, either. I took a self-defense course while I was in D.C. Don’t,” she warned, and drilled a finger into his chest when his advance brought him to within a foot of where she stood. “I’m not in the mood to fend off all the sexual vibes that bombard me whenever I make the mistake of touching you. I have work to do at the
Chronicle
. Stuff to approve, printing presses to swear at....”

“I get the picture, Sadie. I also still owe Rooney a canine favor.”

His eyes glinted just enough to have hers narrowing in suspicion. “Why are you being so agreeable all of a sudden?”

“Maybe I’m just giving you credit for being able to handle yourself in any situation.”

And maybe Rooney would breeze through another full century of life, but Sadie doubted it.

Keeping her finger on his chest, she nudged him back a step. “Let’s do it this way. You can follow me to the Hollow in your truck. We part company and maybe, maybe,” she emphasized, “meet up again at Rooney’s favorite dockside haunt around dinnertime.”

“It’s one plan,” Eli acknowledged. “But if you’re up for it, I have an alternative.”

“Does it involve you playing watchdog as part of some clever plot to circumvent me?”

“No, it involves you and me making what will undoubtedly be a messy trip into the north woods.”

Her laugh was mostly disbelief. “You want to visit my great-grandfather? Now? In the middle of hell week?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of us having a chat with Cal Kilgore.”

“Ah, right. Laura’s former boyfriend.” Her gaze traveled northward. “Directions to the cabin would be an easy get. Not sure how happy he’ll be to see us. Howard Hughes was a party animal compared to Cal after Laura died.” Mistrust crept back in. “At the risk of sounding contrary, why do you want me to go with you? Or is this part of that clever plot I mentioned before?”

In spite of the finger still pushing into his chest, Eli caught and raised her chin. “What this is, Sadie, is me being impressed.”

“By what?”

“You. Back on the Hollow Road, you told the rain to stop falling.” A smile appeared as he kissed the tip of her nose. “A few seconds later, it did.”

Chapter Ten

“I hope you realize, even my formidable strength of will won’t hold the rain back indefinitely.”

“Just do your best for as long as you can, and I’m good.”

No, he wasn’t, Sadie thought with a flicker of amusement. But then she wouldn’t be, either, if it was her vehicle taking a beating instead of his.

There’d been details to deal with before they headed north. First and foremost, she’d wanted to check on her cleaning man, Bobby. He’d lost his cell phone but was otherwise unharmed. Next, she’d contacted Molly and asked her to feed Cocoa in the event that she and Eli didn’t make it home as planned. She’d attempted to call her great-grandfather on his SAT phone, but the thickening cloud cover made satellite communication impossible. Last, because she’d ventured into the north woods enough times to know, she’d loaded a canvas pack with personal items and emergency supplies, and stowed it in Eli’s truck.

From the passenger seat, she watched a line of evergreens, as tall as the towers of Bellam Manor, sway like happy drunks.

“If memory serves,” she mused, “Cal gave me the willies when I was a kid. His eyes moved independently of each other, causing many of the Hollow residents to avoid him like the plague. It goes without saying that everyone who knew Laura seriously questioned her taste in males.”

Eli braked at an odd-shaped fork. “Go for it.”

She ticked a considering finger. “Left.”

“Are you sure?”

“Eli, of the two of us in this truck, who’s holding back the rain?”

Lips twitching, he took the left fork. “Tell me, how strongly does Molly believe in your witchy heritage?”

“Hard to say. She’s superstitious on one hand and completely practical on the other.”

“She told me Bellam Manor wouldn’t turn on one of its own.”

“That’s a relief. Now if we could get it to tell us who broke in last night, we’d be set.” She let a few seconds pass before sliding her gaze sideways. “Eli, what’s the deal with you and Ty?”

“No deal, other than if I’m smart, I won’t walk in front of him after sunset.”

“There’s a cheerful prospect.”

“Guy’s in love with you, Sadie.”

She smiled a little. “He’s really not, you know. He might still love me, but not the way you’re interpreting it.”

“He wanted to trade punches on the Hollow Road.”

“What he wanted was to show you that he’s as good a cop as you are.”

“Ty knows he’s a good cop. As much as it pains me to say this, he’d have been a decent husband, too.”

Now her smile blossomed. “Every part of you just clenched up. But you can relax. Bellam females, from Nola to now, have had a notorious lack of success where relationships are concerned. Ask either of my parents which one of them screwed their marriage up worse, and they’ll both tell you it was my mother.” Leaning forward, she regarded the bruised sky. “Aw, see what you’ve done? It’s starting to rain again. You rattled my concentration with that ‘decent husband’ remark. Now my mind’s stuck in the bedroom.”

“Pretty sure we were talking about you and Ty, Sadie.”

“Yes, but I’m in your truck, post-Boston, and I have all these sexual vibes jittering around inside me.”

His lips curved, but the gleam in his eyes smacked of danger. “Is that how you see us? As opposing masses of barely controlled vibes?”

“I used the word
jitter,
Eli, specifically because jitters are in fact controllable. By women, anyway.”

“Is that your opinion of all men, or just me?”

“Oh, I have a much higher opinion of you than I do of most men.” Her smile teased him now. “You charmed me in Boston, Eli. The bigger miracle is that you also charmed my aunt, who’s as practical as Molly and wouldn’t know a jitter if it bit her. She thought you were hot, and I was insane not to jump you.”

“Yeah, well, that same aunt told me that you were her favorite niece, and if I so much as made you frown, she’d turn me into a jackass.”

Sadie waved off the remark. “She uses that threat on men all the time. It’s a private joke. In her opinion, there isn’t a male alive who needs a hit of magic to become a jackass. It’s a natural condition.”

He grinned. “I could refute that, or shut up and drive. I’ll go with the easier option.”

“Making you the smartest jackass in the class. Turn right,” she said without looking. “Follow the so-called road as far as you can, and I’ll do what
I
can, sans spell book, to keep the ground underneath us as navigable as possible.”

“Appreciate that, sweetheart. While you’re at it—” he nodded through the windshield “—you might want to tell that moose thirty feet in front of us to move along.”

* * *

H
E
’
D
EXPECTED
HER
to jolt. Instead, the smile that lit every one of her features had his brain blurring with lust.

“She’s gorgeous.” Clearly captivated, Sadie scooted forward in her seat. “The size of them never fails to amaze me. This one’s bigger than most males.”

Noting a movement, Eli gestured. “This one has a calf.”

“Really? Where? Oh, it’s gorgeous, too.”

He reached into his waistband. “Don’t know about baby, but Mama moose is a hell of a lot more than gorgeous.”

“The word you’re looking for is dangerous. But only if she sees us as a threat.” She made an uncertain motion. “Then again, it’s mating season, so that could be a problem if there’s a horny male in the vicinity. Present company excluded.”

“Funny.” But when he started to open the door, she caught his arm.

“Eli, you are not going to shoot that magnificent creature.”

He half smiled. “I thought we agreed I wasn’t the biggest jackass on the planet. I only want to move mother and child along before a hormonal bull shows up and sees my truck as a worthy opponent.”

“What makes you think...? Oh, never mind. Just do it.”

Four harmless shots later, Mama moose, having carefully considered her options, nudged her calf along and clomped into the woods behind it.

“Huh.” Sadie sat back. “Bear would have been more fun.”

“Proof that you’ve never ventured into the high Rockies. No encounter with a grizzly could ever be called fun.”

She waited until he slammed the door, then reaching over the console, grabbed a handful of his hair and yanked his mouth onto hers. When she drew away, her gray eyes glittered. “I love a man who can transition from back alleys to the backwoods without missing a beat.”

He’d figure out what she’d said, Eli reflected, when the flames at the back of his throat subsided and his heart—which had missed several beats—kick-started again.

A blast of wet wind bore down on the truck. Releasing his hair, Sadie dropped back into her seat. “Looks like my focus is shot, Lieutenant. Good thing we brought our rain gear.”

Rain gear, right. Eli struggled to think past the need currently blasting through his bloodstream. The road they were on ended two miles from Kilgore’s cabin—as the raven flew.

Given that Sadie had long since mastered the art of a guileless expression, he could only speculate as to what was running through her mind right now. Probably nothing his male pride wanted to hear. Happy enough to let it ride, he flicked on the wipers and upped the volume of Whitesnake on his iPod.

By the time they ran out of drivable track, the shadows between the trees made gloomy afternoon feel like weird twilight.

“Rooney says the north woods are even more haunted than the hollow.” Sadie zipped herself into a bright yellow raincoat. “I’m curious to know what that means.”

“It means he’s got a friend with a still in the area.”

She pulled on a pair of rubber boots. “Eli, Rooney doesn’t need to come all the way out here for his whiskey. Ben Leamer—” she caught his level look and ramped up her smile “—has a refreshment stand in one of his barns. Kids get a free bottle of fruit juice with the price of admission.”

“Uh-huh. Does Ty know about this stand?”

“No need.” She scooped her hair into a ponytail, popped a ball cap on her head and pulled up her hood. “He doesn’t have any kids. Ready?”

He’d leave it alone, Eli decided. Rooney had survived without his help for more than a century. If they didn’t stop the person threatening her, Sadie might not make next Friday.

Over his dead body, of course, but his darker sense didn’t think that would be much of an issue in her stalker’s mind.

Rain continued to fall in miserable wind-driven sheets. When the ground gave way and almost sent Sadie into a rocky chasm, Eli barely managed to catch her.

Rebalanced, she exhaled. “Imagine how bad this would be if my mind wasn’t holding back the worst of it.”

“Given the strength of those gusts, we’d probably be landing in Oz about now. Keep to the right,” Eli told her. “The path’s higher there.”

Not that it made much difference since calling the ground a quagmire would have been a generous description.

“We should have hired a helicopter to drop us onto Cal’s roof.” Sadie began the tricky descent into a wide gully. “Between last night’s storm and this one, if he’s home and dry, I say Laura’s ex isn’t the person who threatened me.”

But still worth the trip in Eli’s estimation. As far as he could tell from the information on file, both Cal Kilgore’s mother and his grandmother had alibied him for the night of Laura’s murder. Although similar, their stories hadn’t quite jibed in terms of where he’d been on the property and what they’d believed he was doing.

The points were small, but interesting when added to the fact that Cal had personally delivered three shipments of hardware to Bangor this fall. In other words, a guy who seldom surfaced had passed through Raven’s Hollow as many times in one month as Brady had seen him in the last fifteen years.

“Do you remember what Kilgore looked like?” he asked Sadie from behind.

She shoved through a tangle of branches. “I remember him as tall, with long, stringy brown hair that he wore in a ponytail.”

“What about his features?”

“Sorry, all fuzzy. Guess the guy didn’t do it for me when I was seven. The story I heard is that Cal’s mother left the Hollow when she was found to be in possession of a stolen cameo pendant. She used to clean houses part-time. She claimed she accidently dusted the cameo into the pocket of her apron. The owner didn’t press charges, and a few weeks later, Mrs. K just sort of faded from sight.”

“What about Grandma K?”

“Molly said she died in her sleep while watching the Shopping Channel.”

“Wouldn’t anyone?”

Sadie hopped over a deep crevice. “Molly also said that Grandma Kilgore and Rooney used to share a corner table at Two Toes Joe’s Bar on Saturday nights.”

An image he did not want to see slid through Eli’s head. “Okay, you need to stop right there.”

“Sundays at Joe’s were reserved for Rooney and Ben Leamer’s sister.”

“Any time you wanna stop.”

“Rooney and Ben’s sister used to hold hands between drinks. Oh, and there was also—”

“Sadie.” Snagging her collar, Eli brought her to a smooth halt. “Shut up.” To make sure she did, he tipped her head back and set his mouth on hers.

Bad idea, he realized instantly. The taste of her simply blanked his mind. Fortunately, it also set off about a thousand warning bells. With the last of them clanging loudly, he reeled in an urge to take her on the forest floor, and while he could still form a rational thought, he murmured a quiet “Got to stop doing that.”

He nudged her ahead of him on the path, where they carried on in silence for several minutes. He figured she was channeling her mental energy upward rather than cursing him, because with every step they took, the wind gusts grew more fitful and the rain slowed from a downpour to a steady drizzle. He sensed he should be grateful.

“You’re welcome,” she called over her shoulder. Boosting herself onto a fallen tree, she swung her legs over and hopped onto a weedy slope. “Cal’s cabin’s dead ahead. I don’t see any chimney smoke, but there might be a light—”

It was as far as she got. Metal glinted in one of the windows. Eli heard the sound of glass breaking and glimpsed a long barrel through the scrub. He shoved Sadie to the ground a split second before a hailstorm of bullets erupted.

* * *

S
ADIE
COULDN
’
T
SEE
or think or feel. She could only breathe in shallow gasps. It was better than being shot, she supposed, but barely.

The initial barrage of bullets stopped at twelve. Although half of them came from Eli’s Police Special, he kept her firmly beneath him during the entire exchange. When the last echo subsided, the weight on her rib cage lifted, allowing her to draw her first desperate breath.

“Are you hit?” Eli yanked her zipper down and pulled her top up. “Talk to me, Sadie. Where’s the wound?”

With black spots still swimming, she sucked in more air. “I’m not...” The word
hurt
dissolved when she saw the blood on her raincoat. “Eli, stop. It’s not me, it’s you. You’re the one who was shot.”

He frowned, glanced down—then shoved her under him again as five more bullets zinged through the low leaves.

She wriggled out far enough to shout, “Cal, stop shooting. It’s Sadie Bellam and Eli Blume. We’re not here to—whatever you’re thinking. We need to talk to you!”

“Get off my land,” a man’s voice bellowed back. “I protect what’s mine.”

“You must have known the guy, Eli.” She wriggled out farther. “Say something buddylike. Then roll over so I can look at your shoulder.”

“It’ll keep.” He stilled her busy hands. “You sound friendlier than I do. Identify yourself again, and mention Laura.”

She raised her voice. “Cal, I’m Laura’s cousin Sadie, from the Hollow.”

“I don’t care if you’re General Lee come back from the dead. I want you and your pal to haul your trespassing butts off my land, or else I’ll shoot ’em off.”

“O-kay,” Eli said in a tone that fell somewhere between enlightenment and anticipation.

“We’re trapped, and you’re bleeding.” Sadie yanked his T-shirt down. “It’s just a graze, but there’s nothing okay about any of this.”