Raven's Cove - Jenna Ryan (22 page)

And there it was, she thought a few seconds later. Thunder rumbling ominously in the distance.

The lights bobbled. As they did, she felt a click of memory in her head.

The wind gave a mighty roar. The lights snapped off and on.

Determined to eliminate everything except that one elusive thought, Jasmine pressed her fingers to her forehead and concentrated on the flash.

For an instant, half a heartbeat, the vision solidified. Hitching in a startled breath, she snatched her hands down and brought her head up. A second later, the lights sizzled and died.

The entire house trembled now, as if a giant were shaking it.

“Costello?”

“Over here.” He waved his penlight. “By the…”

The sudden blast launched Jasmine into the wall. Her head struck the table under the raven clock.

The memory, whole now, drifted through her mind like a wisp of fog. A man’s face, a crimson glow and a simple yet terrifying lie.

As the dust settled and the light and the face dissolved, Jasmine’s mind went dark.

* * *

R
OGAN LOST
B
OXMAN DURING
the first ten seconds of the chase. But the man ahead of him carried a light that rose and fell and followed a zigzag path toward the cliff.

That was good, Rogan reflected. Out of the woods, he’d be exposed. No place for him to hide.

The wind blew everything not rooted to the ground into his face. Broken branches got his shoulder twice. Twigs, stones and pinecones battered the rest of him. A dislodged bird’s nest narrowly missed smacking him in the face.

The rain slowed him down, but it seemed to impede the runner even more. Rogan knew he was closing on him and felt a fresh pump of adrenaline when the man stumbled.

Thunder rocked the ground. Lightning split a turbulent night sky. It also showed a large mass steaming toward him from the left. He tried to rear back, but couldn’t avoid the collision.

It was like plowing into a stone wall. Rogan wound up on his knees. So did the steam engine that broadsided him.

“How come we can always find each other, but never the person we’re chasing?” Boxman panted above the wind.

Ignoring the question, Rogan searched for the light.

Strong gusts of wind bowed the trees so he almost missed it, but when the runner jumped and the light made an arc, he had him.

“We can cut him off,” he shouted to Boxman. “At the edge of the woods.”

“Your wish, my command.” Doubled over, Boxman flapped a hand. “Go. Cut. I’ll be there.”

Rain blurred trees and undergrowth alike. The light bumped up and down over boulder and stone. Rogan saw Boxman charging in from the left. Tucking his gun away, he went for the tackle, used a rock for a ramp and laid the guy flat.

Thankfully, Boxman pulled up at the last second and landed in the mud rather than on Rogan’s back.

Out of patience, out of breath, and with his right shoulder throbbing, he grabbed the runner by his hair and gave it a yank.

It didn’t surprise him that he recognized the man’s face.

“Nice try, Lieutenant,” Cyrus bit out. “But you got the wrong guy again.”

Instead of releasing him, Rogan summoned a nasty smile. With his forearm pressed to Cyrus’s neck, he bent close. “Cliff’s right here, Bowcott, and I’m in a pisser of a mood. Either you talk, or you take a swim.”

“Don’t talk,” Boxman begged, swiping mud from his eyes. “Lieutenant, you’re ringing.”

Jasmine’s face leaped immediately to mind. Which was the only reason he shoved Cyrus’s head down and pulled out his cell.

The name on the screen wasn’t Jasmine’s, but it intrigued him all the same.

“Looks like you’ll have a chance to say goodbye to someone before you take that dive, Cyrus. It’s your grandmother returning my call.”

* * *

B
Y THE DIM FLASHLIGHT
, Rogan saw the color drain from his prisoner’s face. More intriguing still. And possibly the break they needed. Extending his phone, he gave Cyrus the option.

“Three seconds,” he said.

Cyrus took all of them, but in the end his bravado deserted him. “Don’t involve her. She wears a pacemaker. She doesn’t need any more jolts.”

Rogan caught the call before it went to voice mail, spoke to the woman briefly, then climbed from Cyrus’s back and grinned at Boxman.

“You wanna bring him?”

“Do ravens have feathers?” The big man’s saber-sharp teeth appeared as he one-handed Cyrus to his feet. “Old stone lookout’s about fifty yards north, around that jut of trees.”

Rogan nodded and let Boxman lead the way while he called Jasmine’s cell.

No answer. Had she taken it inside? he wondered. Or left it in his truck?

He tried Costello and got a busy signal. And Wesley’s place didn’t have a landline.

“Lookout,” Boxman shouted back.

The narrow stone structure was pitch-black, and it smelled strongly of damp. Boxman shoved Cyrus through the remnants of a door and onto a rough bench.

“I figure my belt light’s got fifteen minutes left in it. Lieutenant?”

“Maybe ten. Means you want to talk fast, Cyrus.”

“Talk, not lie.” Boxman shrugged. “Though I’m good either way.”

Cyrus slumped in his seat. “Victor was right when he said I couldn’t deal with the blood and death anymore. It is one of the reasons I quit being a cop.”

“What was the other?” Rogan asked.

Cyrus let his head fall against the wall. “My older brother died when I was fourteen. That’s a matter of record. The circumstances surrounding his death aren’t.”

Rogan surveyed the man’s taut facial muscles and his defensive posture. “What happened to him?”

“His name was Robbie. He was our mother’s favorite. No idea why. He was a bully and a jerk to Victor and me. One day while our parents were out, he got hold of a whiskey bottle. He dared us to match him drink for drink. Being fourteen and faced with an opportunity like that, we were happy to oblige.”

“Cut to the end,” Rogan suggested.

Cyrus’s eyes glittered. “Sure, no problem. Squish.”

With his patience exhausted and his temper beginning to strain, Rogan pulled his gun. “You’ve got a choice, Bowcott. You can give me something concise and coherent or choose which of us you want to deal with one-on-one. Either way, you won’t be feeling your best when you leave here tonight.”

Cyrus snorted. “You’re bluff—” Rogan raised his gun, cocked the hammer “—ing.” Fear strangled the final syllable. “Fine. We obliged him. We got drunk.” He tossed a glare skyward. “That was the point, wasn’t it, Robbie? To get us in trouble. But you didn’t like it when I stopped. You came at me with Mother’s boning knife.”

Boxman nudged Rogan’s ribs. “Is he faking us out?”

“Not sure.”

“You’d have stuck me without a second thought if Victor hadn’t wrestled you down. But you were bigger than him and stronger, and we were all trashed.”

Lowering his eyes, Cyrus spoke through his teeth. “I don’t know how it happened. We were all flailing around like wild animals. Robbie slashed my arm. I thought he was going to stick Victor. Pretty sure he would have if Victor hadn’t rolled away. That’s when Robbie lost his balance and fell.”

“Onto the knife,” Rogan assumed.

Cyrus made a slice-and-twist motion. “Right between his ribs. That’s how he died. Eventually.” His eyes met Rogan’s and slitted. “But sometimes the dead don’t stay dead, do they? Robbie was one of those. Our mother blamed us, and we knew, somehow we knew, that Robbie did, too. It took a while, but finally it happened. One horrible day, I realized he’d come back. Robbie really had returned from the dead.”

Boxman, who’d been staring in suspicion, kicked Rogan’s foot. “Maybe we should…”

Before he could finish, Cyrus surged up. Using his head like a battering ram, he sent the big man crashing into Rogan’s chest. Boxman fell, Rogan hit the wall and Cyrus bolted back into the storm. Back toward Wesley Hamilton-Blume’s house.

Back toward Jasmine.

Chapter Seventeen

Jasmine felt the motion. It was like floating, except there were bumps and jolts and everything was dark and windy and wet.

Needle-sharp objects hit her face. They stung her cheeks and made the journey through the drenched blackness that much more unpleasant.

Then suddenly, the wind disappeared and the objects stopped flying at her. The floating sensation ended with a thump that bruised her tailbone and shot a painful spear into the back of her skull.

Ruthless fingers squeezed her throat.

“Wake up,” a man’s voice ordered. “I wasn’t ready for this, but he’s trying to stop me. I won’t let you make him do that.”

The layers of dark parted as consciousness returned. She was in her body now, and she hurt, everywhere.

She saw red, just a glimpse, heard two voices, one in her memory, the other not. One was nice, the other was—wrong.

The hand squeezed again. Her eyes inched open.

Stacks of books towered over her. A domino crash site lay to her right, but plenty of precarious piles remained intact.

He’d brought her to Daniel’s cottage. To kill her without interruption, her blurry mind assumed. How dreadful would it be, she wondered, when the haze that cushioned her fear wore off?

Through the patchy gloom, his features took on definite form. With her throat banded, a scratchy “Why…?” was all she could get out.

He shoved her back, and the movement pushed jagged splinters of pain into her brain. “Because he loves you, Jasmine. He’s in love with you, while I—” an ugly smile twisted his mouth “—am not.”

“Cyrus…” she began, only to have his hand tighten on her windpipe.

“We’ll leave him out of this, I think. Cyrus can’t stop me any more than your cop lover or his Grizzly Adams sidekick can.” The killer’s face swam right up to hers. “Just so you know who’s going to end your life, I’ll introduce myself. My name is Robbie. I was seventeen years old when I died. Just seventeen years old when the man you know as Victor killed me.”

* * *

“
N
O ONE’S BURIED UNDER
this rubble, Rogan.” Boxman flipped over a piece of the wall inside Wesley’s house. “So you’re saying Victor’s the killer. Mild-mannered, we-need-anti-Peeping-Tom-rules Victor Bowcott. Why? And please don’t say he loves her.”

“He does. His brother Robbie doesn’t.” With fear for Jasmine’s life threatening to tie his brain in knots, Rogan shoved what thoughts he could in line and entered the killer’s mind.

Victor, aka Robbie, wouldn’t have wanted to murder her here, and an explosion was too impersonal in any case. A blast would knock her off her feet, but he wanted her to suffer. Conclusion? He’d taken her someplace private.

A groan emerged from the rear of the kitchen. Rogan was there before it ended, dragging the pantry door from Costello’s prone body.

“How bad?” he asked before he moved him.

“Just loopy. Tried to call your cell, but I blacked out.” He squinted up into Rogan’s face. “He took Jasmine. I saw him carrying her.”

“Was she alive?”

“Couldn’t tell.”

“Did you see which way they went?”

“Sorry. Rogan, who…?”

“It’s Victor.”

Boxman plowed through the rubble. “Cyrus and Victor are identical, Lieutenant.”

“Cyrus didn’t have time to get back here.” Easing Costello upright, Rogan checked him for breaks. “You’ll be okay. Call 911,” he told Boxman.

“Does Cyrus know?” a woozy Costello asked.

“Yeah, he knows.”

Rogan’s mind raced as he patted Costello’s shoulder. Where the hell would Victor as Robbie take her?

The word
anywhere
whispered tantalizingly in his head. But anywhere wouldn’t do. People might see them at Blume House. Boris might sniff them out.

The old house then?

Possibly, but it was a steep climb, and the storm was getting worse.

“Paramedics are en route.” Boxman tipped his phone up. “How can you be sure Victor’s the killer, Rogan?”

“Cyrus wants to stop his brother from murdering any more people. It’s why he’s here.”

“But he said—”

“He saw a text message on Victor’s phone. My guess is it came from the sent file. He put what he had together and wound up in Raven’s Cove. It also fits the riddle Jasmine got. She’d see him, but it wouldn’t really be him she’d see. She saw Cyrus, not Victor.” Rogan’s eyes traveled to the blown-out door as he drew his gun. “Stay with Costello until the paramedics arrive. I’m going after Jasmine.”

“Wait. How do you know where…?”

“I don’t.” Rogan weighed the options one last time. “I’m playing a hunch.”

“Well, hell.”

The storm drowned out whatever else Boxman had to offer. What it couldn’t cover was the voice that crept through the slithering terror in Rogan’s head.

What if he was wrong?

* * *

A
T FIRST,
J
ASMINE WAS SIMPLY
too stunned to react.

Victor was the murderer? He’d killed nine people as part of some crazed plan to be rid of her? Because he loved her, and his alter ego, Robbie, didn’t?

She wanted to be dreaming, prayed she’d wake up and find herself anywhere but here.

Then she recalled the flash of red light. And she remembered.

“I saw it,” she whispered. “A red light came on when I was talking to Victor. He— You were in Wesley’s home, talking to me while you waited to ambush him.”

Squatting next to her, Robbie gestured with his gun. “I was behind the sofa when I called Rogan. A necessary call, I felt at that point. And I admit it, I wanted to play with your heads a little. Lucky me, you happened to be grilling Cyrus at that precise moment. So you knew we were two. But then the dumb deputy came in, used the wall switch to turn on a lamp and—uh-oh, gotta go, beautiful. My so-called drug deal’s going down way out here on the West Coast.”

“But why kill Wesley?”

Robbie grinned in a way Victor never would. “Let’s say I was blowing off some badly needed steam. I’d rather have killed Rogan—favor to little bro,” he said with a wink. “But I’ll get to him in time. It’ll be a twofer in the end. You for me and Rogan for Victor, who’s been fighting me like a demon since he met you.” The ugliness returned to distort his features. “You were a thorn at first. Now you’re pure poison.”