Stranger on Raven's Ridge (8 page)

He saw her smug amusement. “My mother makes good money playing to her strength. And if you say her strength is being spacey, I promise you, when this nightmare’s done, I’ll get her to show you one of her less male-friendly talents.”

“Not a promising prospect, I’ll admit, but I’m glad you think we’ll live long enough for a threat like that to be carried out.”

“Call it my faith in your strength. As for the crazy something I mentioned...”

“You want to have sex in a shadowy stairwell?”

Her smile sent a surge of blood straight to his groin. “Well, duh, Aidan, that’s not crazy, it’s just us recreating a scene from our first vacation together in Istanbul.”

“It was an elevator in Istanbul.”

“It went up and down like a stairwell.”

“It was a hundred years old. It got stuck more often than it ran.”

“Making it the perfect setting for a sex-hungry couple to use as a launching pad for the wild ride that their lives ultimately became. Can we go back to crazy?”

“If the sex thing’s a bust, yeah.”

They emerged into a first-floor utility room that smelled like old roses. Long, narrow shadows became wide, angular ones. Raven continued to lead, which suited Aidan fine since walking behind her gave him an excellent view of her truly superior ass.

“I’ve been weighing it out,” she said over her shoulder. “And I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m as curious as I am terrified to see Johnny Demars’s face. Because, really, how many people who are alive can claim to have done that? I know many have, but how many of those many can say they knew who it was they were seeing?”

Aidan rested his shoulder on a wall while she jiggled an ancient key in an even more ancient lock. “Wading through all of that, I’d speculate not many. Rumor has it Demars’s wife disappeared a dozen or so years ago, and he only had the one kid.”

“Maybe his mother’s vanishing act triggered Jason’s rebellious behavior. Did anyone ever meet her?”

“We had an informant once who did.”

“And you didn’t get this informant to give you a description of Johnny Demars because...?”

“He refused to do it. Out of fear, I imagine. Justified as it turns out. Gaitor and I found his body in a Dumpster. Like George, one bullet did the job. In the informant’s case, that bullet entered the body through his mouth.”

“Point made, but—well, ew.”

“Dead’s dead, Raven. His death was just messier than some.”

Reaching down, he punched the obstinate lock. When the door opened, she smiled and dropped the key in his hand. “It’s entirely possible you chose the wrong line of work, Lieutenant.”

“Thought’s crossed my mind.”

The air felt dank and heavy in what Raven instantly identified as a medical amphitheater. Four rows of wooden desks stepped upward from a large oval pit. Overhead, two of ten lights flickered precariously.

“Not sure I’d have felt inspired to learn in a place like this.” She turned a stationary circle. “Still—different time. I can’t see setting up a clinic here.”

Two insignificant chambers later, they entered a large library. Filthy books crammed three walls of shelves. Cobwebbed plates and teacups sat on dusty tables. There was a pipe propped up next to an ashtray and a magazine lying open on the window seat.

“It’s like the
Mary Celeste
.” Raven stepped over a pair of men’s slippers. “Do you have any idea which wing we’re in?” Her head came up. “Did you hear something?”

A cautious creak reached them. Aidan listened to the extended tread and felt anticipation rise.

Raven’s eyes slitted. “Why do you look more stoked than worried?”

“One guess. But in case I’m wrong.” He handed her his second gun.

The usual precautions applied. However, when he booted the door open and hit the light switch, he saw what he’d expected.

Massive sneakers in hand, a tiptoeing Fergus Smith blinked once, then stared like an animal caught in headlights.

Aidan ran his gaze around a mostly empty parlor. “Bathroom outside didn’t work for you, huh?”

“Actually...”

“How’s your mother doing?”

“She’s not...she’s...aw, hell.” Shoulders slumping, the big man deflated. “There’s no one here but me. Oh, hello.” He peered past Aidan to smile warily at Raven. “My name’s not Smith, it’s Fanning. Fergus Fanning.”

The name rang a distant bell in Aidan’s head. “Why are you in Raven’s Cove?”

Sock footed, Fergus toed the floor dust. “Someone I know needed a favor. I needed some cash.”

“Give me a name.”

“Er, all I can tell you is he’d have come himself if he could’ve.”

“He?”

“My uncle.”

The bell clanged, finally. Fanning. Christ. Of course. “You’re Gaitor’s nephew.”

Beside him, Raven’s expression went from puzzled to surprised to delighted. “Gaitor’s alive?” Every part of her lit up. “Where is he, Fergus, do you know?”

“Not exactly. Last we talked, he was following a lead. He said Demars might live in Wisconsin, but there’s no way he confines all his dirty work to that state.” Relieved, he glanced at the pocket of Aidan’s jeans. “I think that’s you ringing.”

Raven smiled. “My phone, my call.”

She dug it out—something Aidan didn’t mind at all—and regarded the screen.

“It’s Rooney.” Pressing Talk, she turned away. “Hi, Grandpa.”

“I didn’t mean any harm,” Fergus insisted. “Truth is, that’s what I was supposed to prevent. My uncle’s been worried sick about Raven since you died—which he really thought you’d done. He figured Demars might be keeping an eye on her, so he—my uncle’s—been doing the same.”

Before Aidan could respond, Raven spun back. “No, stay right there...we’re on our way. We have to go,” she told him. “Someone broke into Rooney’s cottage and locked him in the bathroom.”

“Is he hurt?”

“He says no, but he also says whoever did it took his wallet, his gold pocket watch...” Fearful eyes locked on his. “And Steven.”

Chapter Eight

“He stuck a gun to my head and told me I could either walk into the bathroom under my own steam, or he’d throw me in with a bullet in my brain.”

Raven had to duck or be hit with the baleful hand Rooney flung.

“I told him right back he wouldn’t be so cocky if he’d made that threat forty years ago. Told him I boxed right up to my sixtieth birthday, and by God, I was good at it. Got advice more than once from old Rocky himself.”

Aidan, who’d been examining the lock on the cottage door, glanced up. “You knew Rocky Marciano?”

“You bet I did. I was at the Boston Garden the night he...”

“Knocked out George McInnis. Save that one, Grandpa, for the party we’ll throw when we get Steven back.” Raven pulled the stethoscope from her medical bag. “Tell us what happened here this morning. Did you see the man who threatened you?”

“’Course I did. I’m not blind, you know.”

“Stop pushing at my hand. I need to check your heart.”

“Sound as a dollar,” he muttered, but let her listen.

A smile touched her lips at the steady beat. “I guess thieves and kidnappers don’t scare you much, huh?”

“Not a whole lot scares me at my age.” Giving a feeble cough, Rooney used his eyes to motion Aidan toward the counter and his collection of mugs.

Raven waved the blood pressure cuff in his face. “Uh, Grandpa, I’m right here. At least wait until I’m preoccupied before you encourage Aidan to facilitate your bad habit. And yes, I know how old you’ll be next month. We should all live so long, including my pain-in-the-butt cousin who better not be hurt.”

“He’s not. The little turd shoved him down and pointed his gun, but I heard two sets of boots walking out the door.”

“Did he say anything?” Aidan picked up the pot of tea Rooney had brewed before they’d arrived.

“Said he liked my watch, and he wasn’t about to say no to free money. Looked like a ferret,” the old man spit. “Smelled like a skunk.”

While her great-grandfather supplied the details of Weasel’s appearance, Raven took his pulse. Seventy-six and regular. Looking from Aidan to the teapot, she made a go-ahead gesture. “Why would Weasel take Steven?” she wondered aloud. “I’m pretty sure money isn’t spilling from my cousin’s pockets these days.”

“Think Johnny Demars and intent,” Aidan suggested.

It only took her a second to put the two things together. “Well, that’s just low.” Intercepting the mug, she took an irritated sip and was amazed her throat didn’t burst into flames.

“It’s my never-fail tonic,” Rooney defended. He swallowed a larger mouthful without flinching. “Now explain what you just said.”

Aidan grinned. “Your great-grandfather, Raven, your explanation.”

She breathed out the residual heat. “Demars wants to make sure Aidan and I stay in the Cove. Steven’s family...he’s been kidnapped...ergo, we won’t leave until he’s home and safe.” She raised her voice to Demars’s invisible hit man. “Not that we’d have left town anyway, seeing as I’m distantly related to three-quarters of the people in it.”

Aidan’s grin widened. “Two Toes Joe?”

“Second cousin, once removed.”

“Hezekiah’s her eight times great-grandfather,” Rooney stated with pride. “Raven and Lacey and me are his most direct kin.”

Raven shone a penlight into his eyes. “You might not want to mention that connection to Reverend Alley, Grandpa.”

Rooney snorted. “Heard about that old spook. I figure on meeting him before Ravenspell ends.”

Aidan ran his gaze around the room. “Makes two of us.”

“I’m glad you’re both feeling so sociable.” Raven repacked her bag. “Can we get back to Steven now?”

If Aidan had a plan—doubtful in her opinion—he had no chance to explain it. Two trucks squealed to a halt outside, followed by a van and three cars. People Raven had never met poured into the kitchen. They carried pitchers, casserole dishes and platters heaped with sandwiches they would cheerfully have exchanged for Weasel’s head.

Aidan vanished with the first wave, no surprise there, leaving Raven to deal with a cottage full of outrage and local gossip.

When she inquired about the police force, a woman in cat’s-eye glasses pulled her aside. “You know the Cove’s a series of terraces, right? Buildings cling to the cliff and literally step down to the water. Well, Caleb Weaver—he’s the deputy—went to break up a dogfight a couple nights back. When the barking was done, old Caleb wound up taking the fast way from the post office down to cousin Rhonda’s bakeshop. You’d think the stupid fool would know better. Put a foot wrong on those stone stairs, and you’ll be rolling all the way to the harbor. Bottom line? Our deputy’s out of commission for the next six to eight weeks with a broken leg.”

“Where is he now?” Raven asked above the growing noise.

The woman, apparently her fourth cousin, pushed a lemon square into her hands. “My husband took him to the hospital in Bangor. He’ll hole up there long as he can, eat as much of their food as he can and when the doctors and nurses get sick of him, which won’t be long, he’ll come back and make us feed him until Christmas. That—” she tapped Raven’s arm for emphasis “—is why we need a clinic here in the Cove.”

“So, I’ll be responsible for feeding him from now until Christmas.” Something hard jabbed Raven’s hip from behind. Looking down, Raven followed the line of her great-grandfather’s cane to his favorite kitchen chair.

She made her way over, cursing Aidan all the way. If he loved her, he’d have taken her with him when he escaped. She sighed and crouched. “What is it, Grandpa?”

The old man tapped his nose. “Remember I said the thief smelled like a skunk? Well, I just got wind of your cousin Emma who makes candles and such for her shop on the steps. She does those little cone things now as well. The ones you burn.”

“Incense?”

“That’s it, that’s how the scumbag smelled.”

“Like incense.”

“Just like it. And here’s the kicker. Emma rents out the apartment over her shop. Been vacant for a year.” A wily smile crept over Rooney’s face. “Until last night.”

* * *

R
AVEN
’
S
COUSIN
DROVE
ahead of them along a series of winding outer roads to her quaint step-side shop. A seventysomething hippie, she had a waiflike body and the face of an aging angel. The minute Aidan climbed out of the Jeep, she marched over to inform him that if she found Weasel first, she’d roast his balls on a spit for hurting Rooney. Then she smiled, took them inside and pointed at the apartment door.

“I smelled something coming down the stairs when I opened the shop this morning. Go on in, and see what I found.”

A collection of twenty-plus take-out containers littered the wood floor. Raven counted three cola and six beer bottles, a dozen candy bar wrappers and a mostly eaten round of Limburger cheese.

Aidan sniffed one of the boxes. “Onion rings.”

“And chow mein, and fried rice, and pot stickers and some kind of gooey stuff with orange sauce on it.” As she sifted through the mess, Raven spied something small and white on a piece of foil. “Aw, look. Goldilocks left us a gift.”

Aidan checked out the view from the window. “Explains the munchies, anyway.” He walked over to crouch beside her. “Food’ll be local. We can ask around, see what we come up with.”

Emma’s eyes brightened. “Or you could set a trap. Rusty leghold would be my choice.”

Standing, Raven dusted off. “As you see, mean runs a true and steady course through most of the family. I’m afraid that after manhandling Rooney, mercy isn’t a thing Weasel’s likely to get.”

“I’ll take that as a warning to stay on the good side of your family. Has this sort of thing happened before?” Aidan asked Emma.

“Twice this past year. Never with so much food, though. And talk about nerve. Last night’s intruder took a shower before he left. That’s just plain crazy, you ask me.”

“It’s something,” Aidan agreed.

When he walked away, Emma elbowed Raven’s side. “So is this your man, or just a cop in town for Ravenspell?”

“He’s...”

“Hell of a looker why ever he’s here. Has a real Hezekiah aura about him. Leaning toward bad, but not so far he couldn’t be pulled back.”

“He has his moments of bad.” Raven rubbed her bruised ribs. “But the cop side usually wins out.”

“I think we’re done here.” Returning, Aidan treated Emma to a smile that earned Raven another hard elbow. “Lock the place through Ravenspell, and you should be fine.”

“Bring me the slimeball who knocked Rooney around, and I’ll be better. I still know where I hid my daddy’s old bear traps. They should be plenty horrible by now. Skewered slimeballs,” she added, spacing the words for effect.

“Paints a picture, doesn’t it?” Raven remarked when they were back outside.

“Yeah, and being a guy, it’s not one I care to contemplate.” Aidan took her hand on the crooked stone stairway that bisected the town. “It wasn’t Weasel who broke in.”

“I knew you were going to say that. Why?”

“Did you smell any incense up there?”

“Not a bit.”

“And yet Emma could smell the leftover food in her shop. Air flows down in that building. Makes the apartment livable no matter what business is in residence below. If Weasel smelled of incense as Rooney claims, it didn’t come from here.”

“There was a lot of food up there, too. No one person could eat that much.”

“No Weasel-size person.”

“Then who...?” Raven’s foot slipped, and took the question with it. Only Aidan’s arm circling her waist prevented a reenactment of the deputy’s late-night roll down the stairs.

The contact didn’t startle so much as remind Raven of what she’d been missing for the past two years. Lean by nature, Aidan was all sinew and sleek muscle under his clothes, all heat and energy under his skin. If it had been about lust and nothing else, she would have jumped him in a heartbeat.

So why not do it? she reflected. Why not let her hormones take over, go back to Blume House and have sex until one or both of them were too exhausted to continue?

True, her head was still a quagmire, but in the grand scheme, they were married, and, face it, she wanted him—almost enough to take him right here.

A sigh slipped out. Too bad about the “almost.”

“We could ask Emma to let us borrow the upstairs apartment,” Aidan suggested.

“What?” Tuning back in, Raven realized that his mouth was a tantalizing inch away from hers. And her hand, God, it was sliding over the front of his jeans. On the stone stairs. In full view of every tippy little shop that lined them.

Wincing slightly, she eased her fingers away. But when she tried to sidestep, Aidan merely tightened his grip and smiled.

“Need a moment here, sweetheart, to wind down from what neither of us probably meant to start. It doesn’t take much to make me react to you right now.”

Although it was both dangerous and stupid, Raven shimmied her hips against him, then laughed at the gleam that sprang into his eyes. “Looks like your famous cop control needs work, McInnis. And you know me, always happy to oblige a person in need.”

“Practice makes perfect?”

“If that works for you.”

“You know, it really doesn’t. But I’ll show you what does.” He took her mouth before she could respond.

As instantly aroused as she was staggered by his action, Raven absorbed the sensations that raced through her bloodstream.

Now this was some kind of kick-ass kiss. Need punched through logic and slammed into desire. Something stronger than hunger clawed in her belly.

She felt every part of him digging into her, burning her skin and driving her up. This was no taste of what had been, it was an out-and-out assault on her system. It was astonishing. It was incredible.

It was insanity!

She managed—no idea how since most of her brain cells had been stunned into a coma—to drag her mouth free. “Aidan, we’re on full voyeuristic display here.”

“You think?”

No, not at all. She understood that much. Thinking was precisely what she hadn’t done before starting this.

When his lips covered hers again, she knew she should twist her head away and make him stop. But it felt so amazing to be with him again, to rediscover everything she thought she’d lost.

He smelled like the rain and fog at night. He tasted like coffee and sex. If her back hadn’t come up against a wall, she thought she might never have surfaced.

Fortunately, the impact jarred her enough that her brain kick-started itself. “Aidan...” she began again, then paused and raised her eyes. “Why is it so dark?”

He kept his own eyes on her mouth. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten what an alley looks like in two short years.”

Astonishment warred with absurd laughter. “You got us from the town steps into an alley barely wide enough for two bodies, and I didn’t feel it?”

He nibbled her jaw. “Pretty sure we both felt plenty of things, angel, just nothing as insignificant as lateral motion.”

With a sound between a laugh and a groan, she dropped her head onto his shoulder. “This is so out of context, Aidan. There’s a murderer running around the Cove. He shot George, kidnapped Steven and could have seriously hurt an old man. We’re fairly certain his boss is en route to kill me and possibly you, as well. So what do we do? We come this close to having sex in an alley. We’re sick.”

“We’re human.”

“We’ll be human corpses if we’re not careful.”

“Demars will have to go through me to get to you.”

“That does not make me feel better.” When his eyes glinted again, she drew back so fast she rapped her head against the stone wall behind her. “Ouch. No, don’t,” she warned.

“I was only going to kiss you.” His lips twitched. “No need to give yourself a concussion.”

“Been there, done that, not anxious to repeat.” Using the flat of her hand, she held him off. “Steven’s philosophy when he taught my cousin Addie and me to kickbox was that we’d never learn if we didn’t do any full-contact sparring.”

“He used full contact on nine-year-old girls?” The glint deepened to a threat. “I should leave him to Weasel for that.”

“He knocked us down hard on two separate occasions. The third time we decided to hell with fair play and kicked him in the crotch. He’s my cousin, he kept your secret, and I want a chance to kick him there again for doing that.”