RAVEN'S HOLLOW (8 page)

“His accent’s wrong.”

“I—” she thought for a moment “—didn’t notice that,” she realized, and replayed the shooter’s warning. “Mississippi?”

“Or Louisiana.”

“So, not Cal, and not friendly. But in Cal’s cabin with a gun.”

“Rifle.”

“Aimed at our trespassing butts.”

“And where’s Cal?” Eli wondered aloud. “Alive, dead or somewhere in between?”

“I see two grazes, Eli, one on your shoulder, another on your upper arm.”

His eyes remained on the cabin. “They’re scratches, Sadie. I’ve had worse.” He shifted his weight. “I need to get down there without him seeing me. Can you keep him talking?”

She could argue, Sadie supposed, or accept and deal as he was apparently doing. Gnashing her teeth, she glanced one last time at his injuries before switching her attention to the cabin. “Not sure how long he’ll want to chat.”

“Do what you can.” Reaching into the top of his boot, he drew a second gun. “You’ve got fifteen shots. Brace when you squeeze the trigger. This thing has a wicked kick.”

“That’s so reassuring.”

“Have you ever fired a gun before?”

“Only in my dreams at an unpleasant boss. Better for all concerned if talking works.”

Pressing a hand to her neck, Eli cautioned her to keep low, then vanished into the underbrush. And people called her a witch?

“We’re not here to hurt you,” she shouted downward. “We just want to talk to Cal.”

A bullet clipped the trunk of an elder behind her and sent bits of bark flying.

“I don’t give a damn who, what or why, lady. Ain’t no one in this foxhole but me and Old Faithful, and we’d as soon kill you as look at you.”

“Like I haven’t figured that out,” she muttered. Double-handing the gun, she braced her arms on a rock and tried again. “Look, you’re in Cal’s Kilgore’s cabin. How were we supposed to know he’d moved?”

“Well, you know now, so beat it and let me be.”

He released three more shots, one of them so close to her cheek she felt the air move as it whizzed past.

Fighting to keep her voice even, she countered, “If we leave, do we have your word you won’t shoot us in the back?”

She swore she heard him snicker. “Yeah, sure, you got my word. You want me to give it in your language, too?”

Sadie opened her mouth, closed it again. Her language?

She glimpsed a movement through the foliage. A second later, three rapid-fire shots exploded. Glass shattered, wood splintered and someone—not Eli, she prayed—gave a short, sharp cry.

Her arms ached from holding them over a rock. Lowering her forehead to her wrists, she counted to five, heard nothing except the wind in the trees. She had to believe Eli had made it inside. But had he done so safely?

Raising her head, she started to call out. She actually had Eli’s name on her lips when the underbrush rustled behind her. Rolling sideways, she snapped the gun up. But had no time to fire as a large black mass leaped at her.

Chapter Eleven

Eli distracted the shooter by tossing a stone through one of the side windows. He fired as he ran along the porch, then kicked at the latch of a rickety-looking door.

Inside, the man with the rifle spun, ready on the trigger. Anticipating him, Eli used a branch he’d snagged in the woods, knocked the barrel away, then grabbed the tip and yanked.

When the rifle clattered, the shooter stumbled backward, smashing a table and landing on the floor, where he thrashed his arms like an addict in the throes.

A fist plowed into Eli’s bad shoulder, but once he had the guy on his stomach, it was over.

“Kill me!” his prisoner ordered. “You kill me now, I don’t care how. I ain’t gonna rot in one of your stinking prisons.”

“Wanna bet?” Holding him down with a knee in the small of his back, and his gun pressed to a grimy nape, Eli batted aside an erratic arm and found a lamp cord. The struggle that followed had him longing for a pair of handcuffs and uniformed backup. However, despite his throbbing shoulder, the guy, who had a good thirty years on him, was trussed and turned inside a minute.

“Kill me,” the man demanded while Eli wound a second cord around his feet. “I got a right to die with dignity.”

The words registered as much as the ravings of a junkie ever did. It wasn’t until his gaze landed on the big, round table near the kitchen that those white-noise ravings gave way to a sharp click.

There were two bowls. Two bowls, two mugs, two plates.

Like a solid blow to the midsection, the truth stripped the air from his lungs and turned everything inside him to ice.

The shooter wasn’t alone.

Cursing his lack of forethought, Eli grabbed his gun and, shoving in a fresh ammo clip, ran back to where he’d left Sadie.

* * *

T
HE
BLACK
MASS
would have landed on her if the ground hadn’t been sloped and relatively free of obstructions. Sadie reacted quickly, but he still managed to pin her hips.

She heard snarls like those of an enraged bull. That he wasn’t actually a bull only made its way into a side pocket of her brain. The rest was more concerned with gaining her freedom and, barring that, figuring out how to shoot him before he tore her apart.

With Eli’s gun still tightly clutched, she used her other hand to scoop up a handful of mud and pebbles and fling it in his eyes—wherever they were.

A floppy hood covered his head and obscured his features. Her mind immediately conjured Ezekiel’s face, but that was her nightmare. The man on top of her wasn’t Ezekiel Blume, and waking up wouldn’t save her from whatever horror was in his mind.

When he stretched out for the gun, she managed to buck him sideways and get an elbow up into his jaw. The impact knocked him back far enough for her to free a foot. Unable to kick him in the crotch, she brought her heel down on his calf and at the same time sank her teeth into his wrist.

Swearing, he snatched his arm away and squared up for a punch. His knuckles clipped her cheekbone, but when he groped for the gun again, she worked her knee loose and shoved it between his legs.

That he didn’t crumple had ripples of fresh fear racing along her nerve ends. She didn’t know if she tasted blood or only imagined it. Whatever the case, the gun remained in her possession, and that was key.

She used her heel again, but this time he slammed a forearm across her windpipe and pressed until her vision went spotty. She was endeavoring to bite his hand when suddenly his weight and the spots were gone, and she was skidding downhill.

“What the...?” Startled, with her lungs screaming for air, she dug in and scrambled to her knees. By the time she whipped the gun into position, however, all she saw was her captor and Eli disappearing into the underbrush below.

Pushing the hair from her face, Sadie tracked their movements. It was easy enough to do. Fists slammed repeatedly into bone and flesh, and the growls were growing feral.

She could help, she thought, and found a rock. Curling her fingers around it, she slid awkwardly down the slope.

Maybe Eli could take the guy—probably could, in fact—but his opponent was big, strong and likely hadn’t been grazed by two bullets. So...

Using her senses, she pushed through the bushes. When she spotted them, she didn’t aim—no time for that—merely trusted her instincts and brought the rock down hard on the man’s neck. A second later, Eli kicked him up against a tree. Sadie saw part of a beard, heard a whoosh of breath and watched the man slide bonelessly into the mud.

Regaining his feet, Eli took a single unsteady step. He wiped at a trickle of blood on his mouth as he angled his gun down. “Twitch a muscle, and you’ll be leaving these woods in a box. Did he hurt you?” he asked Sadie in the same breath.

“No more than I hurt him.” Curious, she eased forward and gave the black hood a tug.

Stringy gray-brown hair, no longer confined, lay in rats’ tails across a pair of sallow cheeks. His eyes remained shut while his mouth opened and closed like a woozy codfish’s.

She straightened with a sigh. “Cal Kilgore, two decades later. Now I remember the face.”

“Who are you?” he slurred from the ground. “And what’re you doing on my land?”

She would have answered, but it seemed he wasn’t as woozy as he looked. A leg snaked out in Eli’s direction.

“I’ve met smarter,” she murmured, and wisely backed off.

A few seconds later, with Cal spread-eagled in a mound of lichens, his eyes wheeling from a punch to the face, she smiled at Eli, who stood shaking out a fist. “Impressive, Lieutenant. However, if you and Laura’s former stud are done here, we should probably think about heading down to the cabin. It’s getting awfully close to dinnertime.”

Stashing his gun, Eli bent to one knee and hauled his prisoner to a sitting position. “I’ve been inside that cabin, sweetheart. Pretty sure you won’t want to eat there.”

“That wasn’t quite what I meant.” She helped him lever Cal to his feet. “Unless I’m hallucinating, that black thing heading down the hill from the trees is a very large, probably very hungry bear.”

* * *

“Y
OU
’
RE
WAY
OUT
of your jurisdiction, Eli,” Cal accused thirty minutes later. “You also didn’t identify yourself as a cop. Not to me or to my uncle. You press charges, we’ll press charges.”

“Then I’ll press charges,” Sadie added. “And we’ll turn the courtroom into a three-ring circus.”

She spoke from the far side of the room where she sat cross-legged on the floor, observing Cal’s uncle while he snored, jerked and shuddered in his—she supposed you could call it sleep. Judging from the empty prescription bottle on the kitchen counter, he’d taken more than a few tranquilizers that afternoon.

She indicated the older man’s military tattoos. “Post-traumatic stress syndrome?”

“Used to be called shell shock.” Cal fixed his left eye on her. “He spent four years in Nam and every year after that paying for the pleasure.” His other eye glared at Eli. “You’ve got no business showing up here unannounced.”

“We announced ourselves loud and clear to your uncle.” Eli flexed the shoulder Sadie had done her best to clean and bandage. “His response was to open fire on us.”

“Shell shock,” Cal repeated.

Sadie regarded the grizzled man who looked like a hermit and snored like a buzz saw. “He needs more help than you can give him, Cal.”

“Don’t we all, Sadie Bellam? Me, I could use a double shot of the whiskey my uncle polished off two days ago, but life’s always been a kick in the crotch that way. Oh, no, wait. That was you who kicked me.”

“After you jumped me,” she reminded. “Come on, Cal, you and Eli are distantly related. Help us out just a bit here.”

“Why should I?”

Eli stared him down. “Because odds are that whiskey your uncle polished off came from a storehouse I noticed that’s sitting on your land. And helping us is a good start toward helping me forget that once we’re back in the Hollow.”

Cal started to boil up, but reconsidered when he looked at his sleeping uncle. “Aw, hell, go on, then, fire away, Sadie.”

“Were you upset when Laura ended your relationship?”

“Not upset enough to do her.”

“You didn’t come to the funeral.”

He showed his teeth in a nonsmile. “Ex-boyfriend. Think that one’s been established.”

“It has, yes. A month after Laura was buried, someone left a bouquet of wildflowers on her grave.”

“Good for someone.”

“On the anniversary of your first date with her.” She sent Eli a blithe smile. “I went into the
Chronicle
’s archives on my computer last night after the break-in at the manor and found an article. One of the reporters interviewed your grandmother, Cal. And please don’t tell me the flowers were a coincidence, because somebody’s doing to me what he did to Laura, and it’s freaking me out.”

“It’s pissing me off.” Moving to an unbroken window, Eli made a thorough scan of the clearing.

“If you’re looking for Mr. Bear, Eli, he only comes around when the urge strikes. I let him raid my trash cans, he lets me pass when we accidentally bump. I gave the police everything I had way back when, Sadie. Nothing more I can tell you now.”

But she sensed from the way neither of his eyes met hers that there was in fact something more. Something he hadn’t told the police, or possibly anyone.

She studied his body language. Irritable with traces of resentment around the edges.

“If it makes a difference, Cal, I don’t think you’re involved in Laura’s death or in any of the threats I’ve received.”

“Haven’t heard the lieutenant say that yet.”

“Storehouse,” Eli reminded him from the window.

Cal paced in stiff strides around the room. “I saw my life going differently back then. Figured Laura and me’d get married, but I guess the bad-boy thing wore thin. I said some stuff after she broke it off. Not that I wanted to kill her, but that I thought maybe she was seeing another guy. She said she wasn’t and wouldn’t be for a long time, because she was going off to college, then down to Ecuador. She wanted to be a nurse and work where there was a need.”

“Was that the last time you talked to her?” Sadie asked.

“Last time I called her, yeah. I went into a funk for a few weeks afterward. Didn’t work or wash, just watched TV and drank beer.” One eye rolled, the other remained on her face. “She phoned me two nights before she died, mad as a hornet. She wanted to know if I had put a big, folded piece of paper in her gym bag, because what was on it was sick and low, and it wasn’t going to change anything between us.”

Sadie’s stomach muscles tightened. “Do you know what the paper said?”

“All she told me was that it was sick and like something she figured I might do if I was drunk and feeling ornery. Fact is, I
was
drunk, but truth is, I didn’t know what the hell she was talking about. That’s when she got all pissy and said I might as well have signed my name to it.”

Sadie ran the thought through her head. “That’s—really interesting, actually.”

“Not to mention incriminating,” Eli put in. “Keep talking, Cal. What did you say back to her?”

A shoulder jerked. “Stuff she didn’t like, nothing that came out like a threat. It wasn’t until right before she slammed the phone down that she finally told me what she meant.” He raised and wiggled all ten fingers. “I’m what you call ambidextrous. Means I can write with either hand. But the writing looks different, depending on what hand I use. That’s why she thought I’d given her the paper. Because partway through the message, the writing changed. Those were the last words she spoke to me, and every one came out clear as a bell. She said, ‘The writing changed.’”

* * *

L
ATE
AFTERNOON
BLED
far too quickly into early evening. They had to leave because no way did Sadie want to be on foot in the north woods after dark. Lions and tigers and bears, she could handle, but not a crazed killer who shot ravens and, twenty years after the fact, saw her as his next victim.

They made it to Eli’s truck less than ten minutes before the last shimmer of daylight faded to black.

While the headlights provided a measure of comfort, they also turned the drizzle into thin white needles and revealed vague movements that gave the shadows life and fed the fearful chill that had been making Sadie’s teeth want to chatter since Cal had talked about his final conversation with her cousin.

Not for the first time, she wished she could push her fingers directly into her brain. Anything to blot out the monstrous images that played and replayed like a carousel of horror.

“I’ve got this Jekyll and Hyde film clip running through my head,” she confessed as they drove. “Except in my case, Jekyll’s as dangerous as Hyde. And just as mad. Apparently.”

A smile ghosted around Eli’s lips. “With Ezekiel Blume in the starring dual role?”

“It would have to be Ezekiel, wouldn’t it? He wanted his brother’s wife dead. It turned out Nola was able to cheat death, but initially, everyone involved believed she’d gone to hell where she belonged. Laura wasn’t a witch, though, Eli, and all teasing aside, neither am I.”

“I don’t think this is a witch-hunt, Sadie.”

“What, then? Obsession?”

“Mine forever,” he repeated.

She sighed. “I guess in a weird sort of way, death could be construed as forever. Someone wanted Laura. Couldn’t have her. Killed her. It’s straightforward enough from a psychological standpoint in that obsessed people frequently turn on the person after whom they lust. But when you factor in what Cal told us about the writing changing, straightforward becomes a wobbly line to nowhere.”

“Unless Cal’s the murderer and, as Laura believed, he simply changed hands while writing a message that only she saw.”

“Obsessed with Laura, I get. Obsessed with me, not at all. Except for our red hair, Laura and I look—looked—nothing alike. Also, the last time Cal and I met face-to-face before today, I was a kid. I really think you can scratch him from the suspect list.”