Stranger on Raven's Ridge (14 page)

“But...”

“When you reach the cave, you can use that protrusion on the side to cover my back on the off chance he decides to go for me.”

Did she have a choice? His backup in hand, she gave him a kiss, took a deep breath and, when Aidan tapped her butt, ran for the cliff wall.

Demars’s response was instantaneous, a rapid onslaught of rifle fire, that, unfortunately, came from a lower position than before. Aidan fired back, and between the two weapons, each blast overlapped and created deafening distorted echoes.

Raven couldn’t stop the thoughts flying through her head. She saw red eyes, then no eyes, Weasel’s thin face and Herron’s bloated one. She saw Gaitor with a beard and Fergus tiptoeing through Blume House, Steven injured and George as a ghost. Superimposed over all of that, however, she saw Aidan, and she vowed, as she clawed her way up the rugged cliff, that he would not die for her a second time.

A bullet bounced off the wall near her shoulder. Another narrowly missed her head. Every time Demars fired, Aidan answered back—and she wasn’t sure he was doing so from the beach.

Her palms scraped and her nerves raw, Raven finally hoisted herself onto the ledge outside the cave. She was on her knees with her gun out when someone touched her shoulder from behind.

“It’s me.” Aidan trapped the swinging gun barrel with one hand and the back of her head with the other. “You climb like a mountain goat, Raven.” He kissed her hard and deep. “I almost couldn’t keep up.”

“I knew it.” She shook away the spinning heat. “You didn’t wait. And don’t tell me you weren’t at risk because I’m the one he’s after.”

“I don’t have to tell you what you already know.” He kissed her again. “We’re not safe yet, angel. Let’s go.”

Another flurry of shots erupted.

“This really sucks,” she began, then spied the blood on Aidan’s wrist and grabbed his hand.

“It’s nothing,” he promised. “A bullet nicked me on the way up. Trust me, the man had his sights on your back.”

What could she do, Raven thought, but grit her teeth and let him propel her through the narrow opening?

Tendrils of fog trailed them into a dark, wet void where drips of water echoed as loudly as their footsteps. The halogen beam from Aidan’s flashlight illuminated the blackness ahead. Recalling Rooney’s words, she searched the walls and located a single black feather outlined in red. A moment later, she heard a scrape on the rocks behind them and froze.

“It’s only bats. Keep going.” Aidan’s calm tone helped her beat the fear back.

She found another feather, then a third and a fourth. She also heard more scrapes on the cavern walls.

Her heart pounded. Demars was in here with them, he must be. But they’d turned two corners already and climbed at least twenty feet, so he might not know exactly where they were.

The feathers led them on a twisty upward path. The shadows became grotesque monsters. Once, Raven set her hand on a sleeping bat and was barely able to swallow the scream that leaped into her throat.

“Do you hear someone breathing?” she whispered at length.

“No, but if your mind needs to visualize something, go with Hezekiah in protective raven state.”

“That does not make me feel better, Aidan. Hezekiah’s about as far from a guardian angel as any legendary creation can g-get.” The last word emerged on a stuttering gasp as she went to take a step and encountered nothing but air. Aidan snagged her waist, but not before her heart shot into her throat and her stomach dropped straight to her toes.

Eyes closed, she struggled to control her breathing. “How—far—down?” she managed to ask.

“Too far” was all Aidan said, but she heard anger now under the calm.

Raven took a moment to will her pulse rate down, blocked the echoing scrapes of God knows what behind them and squeezed the arm still wrapped like a steel band around her waist. “We’ve come a long way up and gone hundreds of yards south. We should be close to the subcellar by now.”

He loosened his grip, kept his light angled down. “Why a subcellar, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know?”

She tossed him a deliberately teasing grin. “The usual reasons. Pirate stuff, illegal shipments of rum and brandy, maybe a few other commodities from the Caribbean.”

“Jesus, Raven. Did anyone in your early American family operate within the confines of either church or state laws?”

“I think one of Hezekiah’s cousins returned to Europe and became a monk, but that’s about it...” She stopped moving, set her hand on yet another feather. “I distinctly heard a footstep—not sure from which direction.”

He nodded, shone the flashlight beam ahead. “All we can do is keep going.”

As reassuring as that wasn’t, Raven knew they had no alternative. She continued along the feather trail. Two hundred feet farther on, they reached one of the dreaded skinny bridges.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got you.”

“Great. Who’s got you?” She looked into the blackness behind them. “Was that a footstep or a scrape? I can’t tell where the sounds are coming from anymore, let alone what they might actually be.”

“Probably a good thing at this point.” He ran his light along a narrow strip of rock. “Bridge is a twenty-foot span of rock. Not too bad.”

Not bad if a person had suction cups on her feet, Raven thought. Boots with heels didn’t inspire quite as much confidence.

Focusing, she set her sights solely on the path of Aidan’s beam and didn’t breathe until they reached the other side.

Leaning into his chest, she murmured, “My hair’ll be snow-white by the time we get out of here. Where’s the wall gone?”

He played the light to his left. “This way.”

If he said more, Raven didn’t hear it. A sharp corner appeared in front of them. She spied a shadow and a blur of black as someone turned that corner and crashed into her.

As startling as the collision was, her attempt to avoid the hands that immediately reached for her sent her staggering sideways. Not into Aidan, her shocked mind realized, but straight into the chasm they’d just crossed.

Chapter Fourteen

“I’m sorry, Raven.” Gaitor’s face under his beard was ashen. “I came down to meet you, to help you if I could, and instead I almost killed you.” He mopped his neck and blew out a dry breath. “Your reflexes are quick as ever, partner. I thought she was a goner.”

Raven rubbed her wrist where Aidan’s strong fingers had caught her and pulled her until she was out of the yawning black pit and safely back on solid rock.

“Please tell me you’re not hurt.” Although it had taken them fifteen minutes to access the subcellar after her fall, Gaitor’s tone told Raven he was still badly shaken.

Feeling steadier out of the cave, she patted his knee. “I’m honestly not hurt.” A sense of mischief crept in and she smiled. “I might have a dislocated shoulder if I hadn’t lost those two pounds.”

As she’d hoped, Aidan’s lips twitched. “Pretty sure you’ve lost two more by now.”

“If dodging bullets didn’t send the stress meter off the scale, I might be onto something.... What?” She frowned when he got to his feet. “Are we leaving already?”

“Scraping sounds—someone else’s in the cave,” he reminded.

Gaitor buttoned his coat. “I was moving semi-quickly through the tunnel. Distortion, refraction—those sounds could have been me.”

“They could also have been rodents.” Aidan led the way up a rickety ladder staircase. “Or Johnny Demars.”

“On the bright side,” Raven said, and tested a sagging tread, “as real villains go, we’re down to only him.” When Aidan didn’t respond, she hit his leg. “What does that mean?”

“Did I say something?”

“No, and that’s the giveaway.”

“Sorry, angel, I’m not as convinced as you are that Demars is the only person we still need to worry about.”

“Ask a stupid question.” She blew out a breath. “Why?”

“Gut feeling.”

Gaitor snorted. “I hate those damn things. Nine times out of ten, my instincts turn out to be nothing more than a greasy burger I shouldn’t have eaten the night before. How many people could Demars reasonably bring with him, Aidan? Both his go-to assassins gone, and George got nailed right off the bat.”

Aidan shouldered the door open and stepped ahead of Raven into the marginally less musty main cellar. “Technically, Demars doesn’t bring anyone, but to be on the safe side, he could have sent any number of snipers. From what we know about him, he could also walk up to any of those snipers, ask for directions, and they wouldn’t have a clue who was doing the asking.” When Gaitor grunted and jammed on his reverend’s hat, he let his lips quirk. “Just saying.”

Back in full disguise, the older man placed his hands on Raven’s shoulders. “And he calls me gloomy. Rooney wants to talk to you. Something about a costume he’d like you to wear for the Reenactment.”

She offered Aidan a bland smile. “Should I bother having that chat, or will we be hiding out in the attic tonight?”

“We’ll be hiding,” Aidan agreed, “but not in the attic.”

Gaitor dusted off his coat. “Let me know what you decide. Meanwhile, before the festivities commence, I have a bone to pick with a certain female hot dog vendor who needs glasses badly if she thinks she saw me anywhere near the clearing last night.”

“She didn’t come right out and accuse you of being there,” Raven told him. “As Aidan said, it was dark and the person outside Herron’s tent was wearing black. She could have seen anyone.”

“Except she intimated it was me.” Gaitor’s lips flattened to a thin line. “I want to know why, and I want it straight from the horse’s mouth. You need me in the meantime, Aidan, you’ve got my number.” His parting smile was a mere show of teeth above his beard.

A curious chill rippled through Raven’s bloodstream as Gaitor left. “Well, that’s totally weird.” She turned a full baffled circle. “I’ve got that freaky feeling again, and we’re nowhere near the market stalls.”

“Yeah? Huh. Can’t imagine where a freaky feeling might stem from. Corpse on the beach, flying bullets, two near fatal missteps—nothing weird in any of that.”

“True. We’re also in Raven’s Cove, and it’s Ravenspell.”

“Whatever that means.”

“There are real facts and Cove facts, Aidan, and I’m a Blume. Now, getting back to the beach and the little matter of Herron’s body. We can’t leave it there for kids playing pirate to find.”

“Even though we’re in Raven’s Cove?”

“You need to call the county sheriff. It’s not right to keep hiding dead bodies and tell ourselves we’ll deal with them later.”

“You’ve obviously never dealt with a county sheriff before. It can be a smooth road, or one so full of potholes you wish you’d never turned onto it.”

Chuckling, she patted his cheek. “You’re an excellent driver, Lieutenant. If anyone can navigate potholes, it’s you. I only wish getting around Rooney would be as easy.”

“What’s to get around, other than the costume?”

“I’m not well versed on the specifics of the Reenactment, but I know it involves a lot of people dressed as ravens, one particular person decked out as Hezekiah in human and bird forms, a good spirit, the silhouette and snakelike voice of the evil that infected him, and of course, the townspeople he murdered at the beginning of the tale.”

“So far, so theatrical. What’s the catch?”

Her lips tipped up. “There aren’t enough actors in Raven’s Cove to fill the roles. Means they have to use locals. Rooney’s in charge of recruiting modern-day versions of the murder victims.”

Aidan’s eyes narrowed on her deliberately neutral features. “And that involves you how?”

Determined to lighten the mood, she strolled up to him, touched her tongue to her upper lip and slid a provocative finger along his throat to his collarbone.

“Story goes that the last person Hezekiah killed before he repented was a man named Zachary Blume. Zachary was Hezekiah’s cousin.” She kissed the pulse point at the base of his throat. “As coincidence would have it, he was also the newly arrived town doctor.”

* * *

I
T
WOULD
BE
DONE
TONIGHT
, Demars vowed, while people were distracted and costumed role players ruled the ridge beyond Blume House.

No way to control the peripherals, of course, but improvisation had worked in the past.

Then there was the ace, cleverly tucked up and waiting to strike.

Visualizing the moment of Raven Blume’s death, the crime boss whispered a scathing, “You’ll know soon enough, Aidan McInnis, how it feels to lose the person you love above all else in life.”

The cruel smile that formed felt as good now as it had twelve years ago.

Until Jason had discovered the truth.

* * *

A
SHOWER
,
EVEN
IN
THE
snug confines of Gaitor’s RV, felt like heaven to Raven’s abused muscles. Every part of her was either bruised, cut or scraped. She set the nozzle on Pulse, closed her eyes and zoned out for ten exquisite minutes. Then she turned off the spray and was zapped straight back to cold, hard reality.

Voices trickled through the bathroom door. Aidan’s, Gaitor’s and occasionally Steven’s. In snatches, she discovered that Aidan had in fact contacted the county sheriff about the dead people. He and Gaitor had removed Phil Herron’s body from the beach and put it with Weasel’s in the family crypt.

Aidan had also searched for and found a spent cartridge in the sand near the rock wall. He and Gaitor agreed it had been fired from an M16 assault rifle, which they believed was the weapon that had blasted twin holes through Phil Herron’s eye sockets.

Shuddering that grisly visual away, Raven slicked on a layer of orchid-scented lotion.

Tick, tock. Tick, tock...

Although she struggled to shut them out, the words of Demars’s text message resounded in her head. They were nearing thunderous proportions, when the bathroom door opened.

Snapping her head up, Raven shook the damp hair from her eyes. And breathed out when she saw Aidan. “You know, I’m so used to my heart wanting to bash through my rib cage, it’s starting to feel like a normal state. Uh...” She flicked a questioning finger at the living room.

Aidan’s dark eyes sparkled. “Gone.”

Dropping her hand, she smiled. “Like you’d come in here if they weren’t. Sorry. My brain’s running ten steps behind my mouth at the moment.”

“Yeah?” The sparkle deepened and stirred her amusement.

“You do know it’s getting late,” she warned when he pushed off from the frame. “We don’t have time to be—well, God.”

He swallowed her laughing protest, taking her mouth and booting the door closed with his foot. “There’s always time to get wet and naked, angel.”

“Oh, well, you’re running way behind me there.” Easing back, she began unsnapping the buttons of his shirt. “Guess it’s your turn to do the catching up.”

“Trust me, Raven, I’m very up. And I’ve been caught for years.”

“In that case...” She tore the rest of the buttons open, hooked a bare leg around his hips and dived in. “Let’s get Ravenspell started with a steamy Reenactment of our own.”

* * *

A
FTER
TWO
YEARS
OF
NO
SEX
, then eighteen hours of little else, Raven’s mind was buzzed and her body gloriously numb.

They ate a lunch-dinner combo cold from the fridge, but avoided the half bottle of Raven’s Blood still sitting next to the fireplace. Her great-grandfather called to tell her there were costumes waiting up at Blume House. Because the absentee deputy had been slotted to play Hezekiah, he wanted Aidan to pinch-hit, with Raven cast in the surprising role of the good spirit. Better in the story than on the sidelines, was Rooney’s sage philosophy.

The trick was to make it Aidan’s, as well.

“Being a spirit, I could hang out in the background and leave the spotlight stuff to the more seasoned players. As Hezekiah, you could make sure—” She positioned and repositioned her hands. “Hmm, well, maybe not.”

“Definitely not.” Dressed in fresh jeans and an even cooler jacket than before, Aidan stuffed the Glock in his waistband and strapped on his backup. “We don’t know what Demars’s overall plan might entail. The best we can do is control as much as possible on our end.”

“Which is why you’re okay with me being part of the performance.”

“Sort of okay with it,” he corrected. “The last thing I intend to do is let myself be distracted by spotlights and actors and someone telling me to look tormented.”

“You know, I get that, I really do.” She grinned at him via the bedroom mirror. “It’s just that you’re so perfect for the part.”

“You see me as a homicidal maniac, looking to the dark side for personal power?”

“Anguished homicidal maniac. Hezekiah had emotional and mental issues.”

“Bull.” He sent her a slow smile. “That’s you, his descendants, prettying the story up. He went looking to be possessed because he was pissed off about some aspect of his life, and he got his wish.”

“You’d have made one truly lousy psychiatrist, McInnis.”

“Glad to hear it.” Sliding a hand over her hair, he tipped her face up to his for a kiss. “Tell Rooney I’ll play one of the background ravens and make sure he gives Fergus and at least three other large men the same outfits. Now, talk to me about the good spirit’s costume.”

“It’s a silver cloak.” She shot him a suspicious look through her lashes. “Why are you being so amenable?”

“Full head mask?”

“Yes.”

“Hood?”

She crossed her arms. “Yes, there’s a hood but, no, I’m not calling Rooney until you tell me what’s going on in that cop brain of yours. I know you’re thinking I’d make an easy target in a billowy silver cape, so what’s the deal? Will I be wearing a bulletproof bodysuit underneath?”

“If we can get our hands on one, absolutely. If not, we’ll settle for mixing things up a bit.”

A light winked on. “Ah, got it. Mixing—as in I won’t really be playing the good spirit.” Moving her lips into a blithe smile, she replied along with him, “No, you won’t. Steven will.”

Aidan chuckled. “Exactly how do you do that?”

“I’d say I was psychic, except in this case, I heard Steven while I was drying off in the bathroom. He said he wants it made clear before he goes front and center onstage that there’s been a last-minute substitution. I didn’t know what he meant at first, but being around you, I’ve learned to play catch-up. Aidan, what if Demars shoots the good spirit anyway, just for the hell of it.”

“Italian mother, angel. It wouldn’t be ethical.”

“And if he lapses in that area?”

“The sheriff’s office is trying to locate a bulletproof vest.” He trapped her chin for another kiss. “Steven’s fine with the idea, and I don’t intend to give Demars any clear shots. The plan is to close on him while he’s setting up. There are a limited number of vantage points for a shooter on the ridge.”

“Meaning the ball’s in our court?”

“Meaning if we don’t do something here and now, he’ll have the element of surprise entirely back on his side.”

Working through her frustration, Raven picked up the mini cassette recorder. “This has to be something, don’t you think, because a person like Weasel wouldn’t own or use such an outdated device. And why would he carry it around with him even if he did have a bent for old technology?” She played the tape again, heard the man at the end offer a weary “Jason...” But still no face materialized.

“It’ll drive you crazy if you let it.” Aidan zipped his jacket. “It’s like a yo-yo in your brain. Yes, I recognize him, no, I don’t.”

“Diagnosing unusual problems is my area of expertise,” Raven pointed out. “I’ll listen to it again while we drive to town.”

“We’re driving to town?”

“I’m told the pharmacist wants to see me.” Humor nudged in. “Medicine is kind of why I came to Raven’s Cove, Aidan. It shouldn’t take long, and, who knows, maybe the bumpy ride will shake loose a useful memory.”

“Be nice.”

Halting on the threshold, she looked back. “Do you think he’ll come after me during the Reenactment?”

“The play’s an opportunity, and it strikes me that Demars is growing impatient. Whatever he does or doesn’t do, I want to be prepared.” He kissed her again, and something in his touch stilled the panic that wanted to rise. “One thing, I’m sure of is that I’m not going to let you or any member of your family die at the hands of Johnny Demars. No matter what the cost.”