Stranger on Raven's Ridge (17 page)

Raven judged the remaining distance as they walked. Fifty, forty, thirty feet to the rim of the cliff.

Huge boulders, several of them shaped like malformed ravens, rose up around them.
Please God, please,
she prayed,
let Aidan come. But don’t let him die trying to rescue me.

Joanne’s voice cut in again. “You can take off your mask now. We’re well past the point where anyone will spot us.”

The gun jabbed her ribs as Raven carefully slid her right hand back into the sleeve of her cloak and removed her head mask with her left.

“Perfect. Your pretty face is exposed and waiting for me to blow it away. Shall we make the call and bring...” A slight scuff on the rocks had her breaking off to demand, “Who’s there?” Her foot came down on the trailing hem of Raven’s cloak and stopped her progress. “Let me see who you are, or she gets a bullet that’ll have her screaming in agony. Shall I elaborate?”

To Raven’s shock—and horror—Gaitor emerged wearing his Reverend Alley disguise. He let the book he’d been holding drop to the ground as he slowly raised his hands.

“You!” Joanne exclaimed. “The oh-so-annoying preacher man. Didn’t you like the answers I gave you this afternoon, Reverend?” She mocked her own response. “No, of course I didn’t mean to implicate you in Phil Herron’s death....” Her laugh was a brittle, tinkling sound in the cool night air. “Over there, old man. The Reenactment might not have been to your liking, but perhaps you’ll enjoy the real thing. This woman’s husband murdered my son. My child. My only child!”

Gaitor stood unmoving while Joanne went from icy laughter to virulent fury. Ahead of them, Raven saw what her captor apparently didn’t—a movement near one of the bird-shaped boulders.

Her breath emerged in a silent rush of relief. And fear.

The relief was short lived as Joanne bunched the long cloak in her free hand and pushed the gun so far into Raven’s side she was surprised it didn’t puncture a kidney.

“I have three-quarter pressure on this trigger, my dear. If you so much as twitch, you’ll be as dead as your raven man ancestor. Keep those hands up, preacher man, or you’ll go before her. Now, here, take this.” Joanne threw a small pack she’d been carrying to the ground. “Raven, you stand on that protrusion. Preacher, you pull the rope out of that bag and tie her up like a Thanksgiving turkey.” She released Raven’s cloak to draw a second gun from her jacket pocket. Pointing it at Gaitor’s head, she said, “Get to work, Reverend. Now!”

Raven glanced at the boulder, but nothing stirred in the shadows behind Gaitor. Then she spotted the movement again and felt her stomach jitter.

Her heart stopped beating when she realized Joanne had seen it, as well.

Ducking smoothly behind Raven, she gave a silky laugh. “Oh, this is rich. He’s here and I didn’t even have to call him. My moment of triumph isn’t quite as I envisioned it, but if there’s one thing I am, it’s adaptable.” Her voice rose. “My gun, Lieutenant McInnis, is currently thrust against your wife’s neck. That makes the range point-blank, and I have a frightening amount of pressure on the trigger. The only shot you’ve got is through her. I want your weapons on the ground where I can see them, and your hands high in the air.”

Two guns landed on the rock. A second later, Aidan emerged, dressed as a raven.

“Interesting choice of attire,” Joanne acknowledged. “Keep those hands way up, McInnis. Move it with the ropes, old man.”

Raven’s heart pounded as terror streaked through her. She didn’t doubt for a minute that the trigger was more than half squeezed. Maybe Aidan could do something, but not before the gun went off, killing her and probably Gaitor, as well.

Gaitor finished securing the knot around her ankles. When he gave the rope an extra tug, Raven lowered her eyes.

And widened them in astonishment.

“Very good, old man,” Joanne congratulated. “Now stand and hobble over to the raven, who’s going to—”

The movement was so fast Raven missed it. With no warning, she was knocked away from the edge of the cliff. The gun disappeared from her neck. Although stunned by the sudden motion, she immediately began struggling with her bonds.

Gloved hands appeared to help her and she stared into the eyes of the raven’s-head mask. “Gotta get you out of here.” Gaitor’s voice came from behind it.

The moment he’d freed her wrists, she shed the ropes around her ankles, then brought her head around as a gun went off behind them—once, twice, three times.

She scrambled to her feet. “Aidan’s unarmed, Gaitor. I won’t leave him here alone.”

“He’s not unarmed... Wait! Raven, come back! I’m the one who threw down my weapons.”

She heard him. She also knew that Aidan was too good to ever be weaponless. But the reverend’s long coat wouldn’t be as easy to shuck off as her cloak. And bottom line? She had no idea who’d fired those three shots.

She was running past a huddled rock formation when a pair of hands came out to haul her in.

She fought automatically and only stopped when she recognized the hiss of pain.

“Aidan?” On her knees, Raven took his now-beardless face in her hands. “Thank God, you’re all right.”

“Not sure I’d go that far,” he replied. “Don’t ask,” he said before she could. “I don’t know where she is, or I’d tell you to get the hell away from here.”

Raven looked around but saw nothing. “She has a rifle stashed somewhere up here. Her plan was to get you to come up to this part of the ridge so she could kill me in front of you. She specifically said she wanted to see your face when she blew mine off.”

“Yeah, well, we’ll see whose face gets blown off.”

Raven started to speak, but choked the words back when he pushed her to the ground.

A moment later, the ridge exploded with light and sound. Raven heard gunshots, possibly rifle shots and a cacophony of other noises she couldn’t identify.

When she finally got her head up, Aidan was using his Glock, while above them, a dazzling display of fireworks illuminated the night sky. Much lower to the ground, the top of the rock formation blew apart, so, yes, she had indeed heard rifle shots.

“Where is she?” Raven yelled.

“She’s moving,” Aidan shouted back. He used his two-way. “Gaitor, can you pinpoint Joanne’s location...? Gaitor?”

Raven’s eyes landed on a pair of feet sticking out from behind a boulder. “Aidan, he’s hurt!”

“Stay behind me.” He waited through another round of shots, then tapped her hip. “Okay, head for the boulder.”

Raven stayed low and ran. High above them, starbursts of gold, red and silver rained down. When she reached the misshapen rock, she went to her knees beside the older man. Thank God, the pulse in his neck was strong and steady. “Gaitor, can you hear me?”

A hand came out of the darkness. Cruel fingers sank into Raven’s hair and wrenched her sideways half a second before Aidan appeared.

“Nice try, ace, but as I’ve told you many times, my son’s dead, therefore, Raven’s dead. Move one muscle, Lieutenant, and her brain leaves her body in bloody bits.”

The tip of her gun pressed into Raven’s temple. She looked up at Aidan, who tossed his Glock and raised his palms in an outward show of surrender.

“Very good,” Joanne’s voice tightened. “Now get up, Raven. We’re exactly where we need to be for this little drama of mine to play out. Who knows, maybe we’re exactly where the soldier from your legend murdered his friend on the rocks below.”

With a gun to her head, Raven had no choice but to comply. That didn’t mean she had to make it easy for the woman holding it. She kept her eyes on Aidan, saw his faint nod and held herself perfectly still.

Fireworks continued to rain down on the other side of the ridge. She had to step over Gaitor’s prone body to reach the ledge that protruded over the wild ocean waves. Drawing a deep breath, Raven deliberately stumbled on the older man’s legs.

Because her hand was now firmly clamped to Raven’s arm, Joanne stumbled with her. Off balance and momentarily startled, the woman’s grip faltered. In that split second, Raven got her elbow up to knock the gun aside.

She saw Aidan’s lightning-fast reaction but doubted she would ever know how he got his backup out so quickly.

“Don’t,” he warned, when Joanne would have swung her arm back. “Let her go.” He extended a hand. “Raven?”

Although she hated to leave Gaitor, Raven worked herself free of the woman’s grip and started toward him.

Joanne stood, a statue in black spandex with her back to the crashing waves and the glittering explosions overhead.

“Drop the gun, and come away from the edge,” Aidan told her.

They both saw her smile.

“Go to hell,” she replied, and, snapping her hand down, took aim at Raven’s head.

A single shot rang out between starbursts.

For a frozen moment, Raven thought whoever had fired must have missed. Then Joanne’s arm dropped, her eyes opened a fraction wider, and, taking one staggering step backward, she plunged over the side of the cliff.

Unbelieving, Raven stared—so long and hard she almost tumbled into the water herself. But Aidan’s arm around her torso drew her firmly back.

“I don’t think so, sweetheart.” Sliding his other arm around her, he set his cheek against hers. “Danger’s gone. Look up instead of down.”

Still too shocked to speak, Raven raised her eyes to the sky. For a heartbeat of time, the mist vanished. In that moment, she spied the glittering outline of an enormous raven. It hung over the ridge, until, slowly, slowly, the wings began to fold in on themselves.

One by one, the sparkles winked out. In a matter of seconds, all that remained were two red eyes staring into the blackened ocean waves that slammed against the base of Raven’s Ridge.

Epilogue

The remainder of the night passed like a fragmented dream.

Revived and relatively uninjured, Gaitor was disgusted with himself. After days of surviving the perils of his ankle-length coat, his first attempt to run in a raven's cloak had resulted in him tripping on the hem and plowing headfirst into a rock.

“Knocked myself out cold,” he said from his freshly made bed at Blume House. “Thankfully, I don't have to answer to anyone for my clumsiness.”

Although she examined him for signs of concussion, Raven found nothing and in the end let Rooney take a pot of tea and two large mugs upstairs for a visit. By morning, she imagined her great-grandfather would have concocted a new and greatly embellished version of the night's events.

“The Ravenspellers are eating this up,” Steven relayed during one of many passes through the great hall. “I'm starting to think we, as a community, are not making the most of our family's history. If any of what Rooney says is to be believed, there are all manner of addendums to the original Hezekiah legend. ‘The Soldier's Tale' is the tip of the iceberg.”

At last, Raven thought, the light was back in her cousin's eyes. True, it had a mercenary tinge, but for a disbarred lawyer, purpose was paramount, and apparently Steven had found one that appealed.

As for Aidan... Inasmuch as she loved and believed in him, he still had a great deal of explaining to do about last night. However, with no town authority present in the Cove, it was left to him and the county deputies to fill in. That included the filing of assault, kidnapping and attempted murder charges against Guy Biggs. When foggy daylight returned, it also entailed the unpleasant task of searching the rocks and indentations under Raven's Ridge for the body of Joanne Demars.

As the first light of morning pearled the sky, Raven showered and dressed. She borrowed coffee from Aidan's stash in the attic, brewed a pot of dark roast, then hunted up two travel mugs and headed for the beach.

“I love you more than life itself,” Aidan said when he saw her.

Laughing, Raven handed him a steaming mug. “Back at you, Lieutenant. But you'd say that to anyone who brought you coffee at the crack of dawn.”

“I wouldn't mean it, though.” Curling his fingers around her neck, he set his mouth on hers for a very long, very thorough kiss. “How's life up at Blume House?”

When her head cleared, she smiled. “Oh, you know, same old, same old. Poor Fergus is moping around like a lost and mournful soul.”

“He feels guilty for not guarding you properly after Gaitor and I left the ridge.”

“I appreciate the sentiment, but as I've told him a hundred times, if he hadn't left on his own, Joanne might have shot him.”

Aidan drank a mouthful of coffee. “Not might, Raven. She'd have killed him without compunction. She emulated her husband's style in order to maintain the facade, but, beyond the mother-child connection, I didn't sense much feeling in her.”

“Guess we have something to thank Johnny for, after all.”

Dropping an arm over her shoulders, Aidan tapped his mug to hers. “Here's to Johnny and maintaining the illusion.”

She sent him a humorous look. “Speaking of illusions, it was very clever of you to switch disguises with Gaitor and become Reverend Alley yourself. Your idea?”

“More or less. I heard snatches of your conversation with Joanne on my radio while Gaitor and I were heading back to the Ravenspell site. A switch seemed like the way to go.”

Raven kissed his cheek. “You're such a good cop, Aidan, and an even better husband. Did you hear the part of our conversation where Joanne admitted to murdering Johnny?”

“Yeah, I heard it. But not as part of her talk with you. The fatal conversation, if you can call it that, between Joanne and Johnny is on the flip side of the mini cassette Weasel stole from wherever he stole it from. Jason's possessions as they were being packed away, I imagine. Obviously, Jason was talking to his mother on the side of the tape we all heard.”

“And the man who said his name at the end?”

“My guess would be Johnny. Jason probably taped over an old conversation he'd had with his father. His name was there from an older recording.”

Raven's gaze touched on the white-capped waves that broke against the rocks with a foamy vengeance. “I don't know about Johnny, but I do think Joanne really loved her son. Why else would she have been so determined to make you pay for taking him away from her?”

“Joanne was obsessed, Raven, and she let that obsession eat her up. We didn't get much out of Biggs, but he did tell us that she was furious when she heard I'd died in an explosion.”

“Furious enough to come to your wake, apparently. She posed as one of the caterers. I finally put the two faces together—the server who'd been trying to get me to eat a smoked salmon canapé with the raven dog lady in the silver truck.”

“Aidan, Raven! Over here!” A fisherman waved his arm. “We found her. She's pretty bashed up.”

“Lovely.” Raven made herself walk with Aidan toward the water. “Always fun to view a bashed-up corpse before breakfast.”

“Better before than after. Are you sure you want to see her?”

“Sad to say, I need to.”

But she had to admit, Raven thought afterward, the grisly image wasn't one she'd forget any time soon.

She watched from a high beach rock as Joanne's body was prepped for its journey to the county morgue.

“You know, I'm really glad I didn't choose forensic medicine,” she admitted to Aidan. Looking up, she visualized the starburst raven they'd seen last night. “You told the organizers to start the fireworks ahead of schedule, didn't you?”

“As distractions go, it seemed like a good one.” He settled behind her, let her lean back into his chest. “So what now, angel? Do we move to Raven's Cove, lock, stock and China barrel—you as town medic and me in some kind of law enforcement position?”

She smiled. “I've been giving that question a great deal of thought. It's true, Raven's Cove needs a clinic, and I'll be happy to help set one up, but I contacted a colleague at Mayo and one of his associates is looking to relocate to a small town. He's fifty-one, he earned his medical degree in Germany and he worked as an army surgeon for the first ten years of his career. His name's Froy.” Her eyes sparkled at Aidan's narrowed expression. “Froy, not Freud. Mind you, he does have a goatee beard, but his first name's Henrik.”

“Okay, well that still leaves us with a choice. Rochester or Milwaukee?”

She shook her head. “Honestly? I'm so happy you're alive, I don't care where we live.”

“In that case, lets go with Rochester. I want to brag to my colleagues about my brainy wife.”

“Yeah, right. Your wife who has a cursed ancestor she half believes she saw floating in the sky last night.”

“You saw a pyrotechnic illusion, Raven.”

She grinned. “You think that, and I think that, but Steven, who arranged for those pyrotechnics to be shipped, swore to me there was no red-eyed raven included in the order that he himself placed on Rooney's behalf six months ago.” She arched a teasing brow. “Explain that one away, Lieutenant McInnis.”

“I don't have to.” Catching her chin, he ran his thumb over her bottom lip, then slowly lowered his mouth to hers. “As you said—it is Ravenspell, and we're in Raven's Cove, after all.”

* * * * *

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Cowboy Cop
by Rita Herron!