Stranger on Raven's Ridge (4 page)

“Well, I guess you couldn’t expect it to sit around waiting for its next victim to walk through the front door.”

Rooney gave another delighted cackle. He also took another drink. “I do believe when my time on earth is done, I’ll pass the Raven’s Tale torch and all that goes with it on to you....”

Someone dropped a heavy object outside, and Steven started to swear. Grateful for the reprieve, Raven helped Rooney to his feet, watched him deal with her cousin’s temper, then slipped back into his cottage for the keys to the Jeep he’d told her she could use.

That the vehicle possessed a valid license plate didn’t surprise her. That Rooney possessed a license to drive it shocked her speechless. But only until she heard the warning rumbles of thunder over the water. Then her focus shifted.

The road to Blume House split the woods in several places. It allowed for glimpses of the high ridge in several more. Close to the top, dense trees gave way to an odd-shaped clearing. The Ravenspell campsite, according to Steven, whose opinion of its current occupants, had been reflected in the curl of his lip.

On this, Raven’s third drive by, the site seemed more active than before as people with beads, braids and bandannas staked waterproof tarps over their tents. The big purple cloud had given way to a roiling black mass that extended from Blume House to the town center. There was no wildlife to be seen, and the only birdsong Raven heard when she pulled Rooney’s Jeep into the parking bay Steven had pointed out earlier belonged to the woodland ravens.

Weird, she decided, then upped the description to creepy as she regarded the house from a new perspective. The facade didn’t quite scream evil, but it had a forbidding look about it, as if it were expecting something less than wholesome to unfold.

Probably not the best thought she could have, Raven reflected, given that her nerves were still in overdrive from her first foray inside.

She tugged a short jacket over her tank top, glanced at the cobblestone path ahead of her and wished she’d taken the time to change out of her wedge sandals and into something more practical.

Blume House possessed multiple entranceways, but Rooney had promised that one key worked all of them. And not to worry, he wouldn’t tell Steven she’d gone back there alone. Evidently, her cousin had grown very proprietary about the place. However, as the property was no more Steven’s than hers, and the actual deed was in her great-grandfather’s name, Raven figured she could handle any objections he might make.

Not so easy to handle was the feeling that washed over her when she nudged the side door open and squeezed inside.

Whatever its source, the ripple of energy that electrified her skin lingered for several seconds. She acknowledged it, then did her best to make it disappear.

The last of the day’s sunlight stole through slender breaks in the cloud mass. Bumping the door closed with her hip, Raven waited for her eyes to adjust.

The bowling alley room must have been an arboretum at one time. Pots and planters stood like soldiers on the tiled floor. Baskets filled with stringy dead plants hung before a wall of dirty windows. There were wicker chairs covered with sheets and two large tables were piled one on top of the other.

Pushing off, she rubbed at the gooseflesh that refused to leave her arms. Whatever she’d experienced in the great hall was making a strong and stubborn return visit. Oddly enough, she didn’t think this current feeling was connected to the one she’d experienced so often in the past. There was no sense of being followed or watched here. It was more, she thought, like a prickle of anticipation.

The timeworn joists groaned. Beyond the walls, ocean waves tumbled over rock to crash against the craggy base of the cliff. Raven acknowledged the probability of a wild night ahead, and tried to ignore the fresh chill that made her shiver.

With no clear sense of why she’d returned, she left the arboretum in search of the main entry hall. She was making her way along a corridor cloaked in shadows when she detected a sound on the floor above.

It wasn’t a settling creak, and it had nothing to do with the approaching storm. This sound had a measured quality to it, the stealthy, repetitive protest of hardwood under someone’s slow-moving feet.

Whoever it was was walking from Raven’s left to her right. Toward the main stairwell?

As her eyes scanned the ceiling, a door screeched open. Seconds later, the stair treads groaned.

Keeping her eyes on the beams, she pulled out her iPhone and set her thumb on speed dial. If Rooney answered, Steven would come. He’d curse her from here to Rochester, but he’d come.

Or she could call George. But—well, no.

Twenty-one creaks later, the stairs fell silent. The shriek of hinges that followed was probably a door opening.

Or a coffin.

Sliding her thumb back and forth over the speed dial button, Raven watched the shadows. And felt her heart leap into her throat when the floor behind her gave a protracted squeak.

Okay. Damn, but okay.

She ducked into a banquet-size dining room. Still a Blume, she reminded herself. Right was on her side.

Unless Wrong was packing a gun, in which case, she was in serious trouble. “Calling Steven,” she said while she jogged across the room.

She hit Rooney’s number. However, before the dialing process ended, the gates of hell sprang open.

Doors slammed, one, two, three. Someone grunted. She counted a series of thuds, heard a scuffle in progress and veered away from it.

Furniture scraped and fell. The racket came from everywhere, or seemed to. She couldn’t separate one sound from another. Were there three people here besides her? Four?

Through a blur of mounting terror, Raven struggled to calculate where the nearest escape might be. It didn’t ease her mind that the thunder had grown louder or that she was picking up new and closer sounds.

Gusts of wind beat angry fists against the outer walls—wherever they were. A loud crack preceded the sound of breaking glass. On the heels of that, all the lights she’d switched on as she moved through the house died.

Pressing her back to a tall cabinet, she listened to Rooney’s phone ring. And ring and ring and ring.

“Come on, Grandpa,” she pleaded. “Pick up.”

But he didn’t, and neither did his voice mail.

She was scrolling for George’s number when someone barreled into the room. He shot past her at a dead run, but thankfully didn’t stop.

Far ahead, Raven spied a dusty sliver of light trickling in through a high window. As the gloom dissipated, a door took shape.

Dropping her iPhone back in her bag, she arranged the strap crosswise from shoulder to hip. Behind her, a stream of staccato thumps erupted. There was another crash and finally a shout.

Way too close, she decided, and ran for the door.

“Open,” she muttered when the latch stuck. “Damn you, turn and open.”

She shook the handle, twisted it, even used her hip and shoulder on the heavy panels. The latch clicked but the door itself refused to give.

She cursed it under her breath, then snapped her head to the left as someone’s feet landed on the floor close by. Whoever it was stood and headed straight for her.

With one panicked push, Raven got the stuck hinges to release.

She felt damp air blast her face and started to dart across the threshold.

But, suddenly, there was no floor beneath her. She was flying sideways with a pair of arms locked tight around her.

She steeled herself for a hard landing. That it didn’t materialize would have puzzled her if fear hadn’t been screaming at her to break the tackle.

She squirmed and fought and got in a single hard punch to her captor’s face. Certain it was a man, she wrenched her body sideways and freed a knee.

Whether it connected directly with his groin or not wasn’t clear, but he swore so it must have come close.

“Hold still,” he said in a low growl. “Raven, stop fighting me.”

He held her wrists, but it was his voice more than his action that stilled her.

His hair brushed her cheeks, and she could almost make out the details of his features in the light that filtered through the high window. She added in the scent of his skin—frighteningly familiar—the shape of his muscles, the feel of his body against hers, and...

Already racing, her heart knocked into her ribs. She couldn’t speak or move, was half-afraid to breathe as she stared into his eyes.

Black eyes. Black hair.

Black Irish...

The grip on her wrists loosened, tripping an alarm in her head. It was a trick, it had to be. A bad joke, or worse, a hallucination. She fought him again, then because it was the only weapon left when his fingers tightened, attempted to bite his arm.

“Raven...”

“Let me go!” Working a foot free, she lashed out at his ankle. “You’re not—”

He cut her off with his mouth. Just trapped her lips and shocked every thought, every objection, every shred of sanity she possessed into silence. This time when he loosened his grip, it was to raise her arms over her head and dive in even deeper.

Raven’s numbed senses slithered into a boneless abyss where reality and fantasy met and misted, and the impossible simply floated away.

Until his mouth left hers, and her mind jolted back to life.

Planting her palms on his chest, she shoved him back far enough that she could scramble to her hands and knees. Heart slamming, she confronted his shadowed silhouette.

“You’re a lie,” she accused. “You’re not here. You can’t be—” the denial turned to dust in her throat “—here.”

Maybe logic said he couldn’t be here, but he very much was. He’d kissed her, so she knew it was true. As astonishment faded, all that remained was the echo of a name that curled through her head like a wisp of ghost-gray smoke.

Aidan...

Chapter Four

“I’m losing my mind.” Sitting back on her heels, Raven drilled her index finger into her temples. He’d vanish any second now. Like the ghost he had to be. Then she’d know she’d gone insane.

Narrowing her eyes to slits, she stared at the gorgeous, achingly familiar and still-shadowed face of the man she loved. The dead man she’d continued to love for the past two years, three weeks and one day.

At length, the keen edge of temper sliced through the fog still muddling her brain. “You were killed in an explosion. You went into an abandoned theater, and you didn’t come out. I saw your body. I...” Stopping there, she worked backward through the nightmare. “I didn’t see your body. No one did. All we had was Captain Beckett’s word that you’d died.”

She wanted to pull away when he hauled her to her feet. “We can’t stay here.”

Someone’s body collided with a nearby wall. A snarl and several thuds reached them.

“We need to go,” he repeated. “Now.”

“What? No. Why? Never mind.” Tugging free, she backed toward the open door. “I still think I’m hallucinating.”

But this time she didn’t push him when he caught her wrist and set his lips next to her ear. “Whatever you think, we can’t get out that way.”

“Yes, we can. I felt the wind when the latch gave.”

“Wind won’t support you, and solid ground’s ten feet down. That door opens to the west wing, the one Hurricane Enid tore apart.”

Before she could respond, a human mass splatted on the floor in front of them. Her eyes went wide. “Steven?”

For the second time that day, her cousin jabbed an accusing finger at her. “I swear to God, you’ve been trouble since you were born. You just had to come back here, didn’t you?” He crawled to his feet, dusted off. “What the hell’s going on?”

“No idea.” Aidan—God, really? Really?—nodded forward. “There’s an exit on the south wall that borders the woods. We need to get to it.”

Steven scowled. “I got one guy to take off, but there’s another here somewhere.”

“I tackled him into a wall,” Aidan said. “Don’t think it slowed him down much.”

Okay, maybe she wasn’t insane, Raven conceded, but the situation definitely was.

Her cousin glanced into the shadows. “Someone’s coming.”

Bulls made grunting sounds like that, Raven thought through a haze. Too bad it wasn’t a bull thundering across the room toward them.

Aidan shoved her ahead and brought up the rear while Steven led the way toward a barely visible access hall next to a boarded-up stairwell.

She’d felt this way in her nightmares, many times. Off balance, terrified and out of step, both with herself and with the circumstances that spun like a mad kaleidoscope around her. Was it possible, she wondered, for the lunatic gene to be passed down through blood?

“Turn left,” Aidan directed from behind. “One more corridor and we’ll be in the butler’s pantry.”

Or in deeper trouble than before if the hallway dead-ended, because she could hear the footsteps pounding along in pursuit.

Thankfully, the corridor did open to a pantry. Steven pointed sideways. “Decoy,” he said, and vanished with noisy intent into the dark.

Aidan grabbed Raven’s hand. “Come on.”

She didn’t object, merely glanced back once, then ran with him through the door.

Outside, the cliff rocks loomed large and menacing. The wind swirled in fitful circles, picking up and spitting out leaves at random.

When she started to skirt the house, Aidan caught her arm and gestured at the woods. “Do you know where the Ravenspell campsite is?”

“Yes.” Her breath came in spasms now, and not entirely from fear.

“Get to the site and stay there. I need to know who’s after us.”

Even through the gloom and the hair that kept flying in her face, Raven saw his expression. She’d called it his cop look and found it amusing way back when. Now she wanted to punch him.

Or kiss him.

He decided the matter by yanking her forward for a kiss that made her go hot and tingly from the top of her head to the tips of her toes.

One, two, three seconds’ worth of delicious, soul-stirring kiss. Yet even as her mind and body reeled, he repeated, “Campsite,” spun her toward it and vanished.

“Well, Jesus.” Raven took a precious moment to finger her lips in disbelief before common sense kicked in and she ran. Along the dirt path, into the woods and down the trail to the clearing.

Only Aidan would know she’d find it. Only he would understand that she had an internal GPS better than most tracking dogs. He would also know that, although panic wasn’t a foreign concept to her, she possessed the ability to think and act her way through it. Or she did until a single gunshot brought her to a halt on the wooded trail.

The sound echoed and pulsed and strangled the breath in her lungs as she swung to face it.

That single resounding shot had come from Blume House.

* * *

A
IDAN
HEARD
THE
SHOT
and pulled his own gun from the waistband of his jeans.
Goodbye Connor, hello trouble.

A dozen deadly possibilities whizzed through his head, but in spite of them, he had to believe that Raven would reach the clearing safely. It was imperative that he discover who’d invaded Blume House, how many were there, and why they’d gone inside.

His instincts were rusty. He accepted that. But his resolve to protect Raven hadn’t changed. Nothing and no one was going to hurt her.

He crouched for a moment in the rubble of the ruined west wing. Wind whistled around chunks of what had once been a large addition to Blume House. Already, the early-evening light had vanished. With the exception of two emergency floods in the courtyard, darkness, broken only by the daunting silhouette of the house, ruled.

Holding his position, Aidan watched the perimeter and listened for anything out of the ordinary. The barely discernible crunch of rock and plaster to his right qualified. Planting a knee, he pivoted toward it.

Both the crunch and the person who’d made it froze. Luckily, so did Aidan’s trigger finger.

Raven’s eyes flicked from the tip of his gun to his shadowed face. “I heard a shot.”

A flood of emotion too deep and raw to separate rushed through him. Reaching forward, he brought her to the ground.

He started to point out that this was not the Ravenspell campsite, then thought to hell with it and set his mouth on hers.

He wanted to devour her, to lose himself and the nightmare of his current life in her. For one suspended moment, nothing mattered more than touching her, tasting her, feeling the curves of her body beneath his roaming hands.

He was hungry for her. Hell, he was ravenous. Two years was too damn long for his self-control not to crack and give his sorely deprived senses what they’d been craving since his “death.” Far back in his mind, those same senses reminded him that every second of that deprivation had been worthwhile.

With a sound caught between disbelief and desperation, Raven twined her fingers in his hair and locked his mouth on hers.

He understood the feeling, if not consciously—because his mind and body were too lost in her to think with any degree of clarity—then on an instinctive level. He tumbled from feeling to feeling to feeling, only to land in a place where rational thought no longer existed. He wanted more, and all he cared about was getting it.

Even so, he let her pull just far enough away to ask, “Why did you lie to me, Aidan? Why to me?”

The bad light might hide the expression in her mist-green eyes, but not the tone of her question. He recognized hurt over a jagged layer of anger. She could love him, be crazy happy to find him alive, kiss him senseless and still want to kick his ass from here to California.

“You know the answer, Raven,” he replied with care. “In a name, it’s Johnny Demars.”

“Because he thought he’d killed you in the...ahh.”

That single syllable said it all.

“Demars didn’t set those explosives, you did. You figured if I believed you were gone, he’d believe it, too.” She leaned back in, let her lips curve against his. “How very clever of you, Lieutenant McInnis. You and Captain Beckett.”

He deflected the fist she would have plowed into his stomach, but missed the hand that took aim at his right cheek and jaw.

Shoving back and away, she added heat to the sting with a daggerlike glare.

“Two years, Aidan. I’ve lived in hell for two years so Johnny Demars would buy your death. This was Beckett’s idea, wasn’t it? Together you’d outsmart that smart-ass crime lord.” With a humorless laugh, she raised her eyes to the night sky. “My God, did either of you give even a passing thought to the prospect of setting up and arresting the man for attempted murder? Of course not. Better you should pretend to die and spend the rest of your life living like a rat on the coast of Maine.” Thoroughly irritated now, she stood. “We could have died together, Aidan. Here, in Mongolia, at the North Pole—I wouldn’t have cared where. All you had to do was... What?”

He dragged her roughly down beside him, no doubt doubling her annoyance. “Someone’s creeping along the back of the house.”

“Where?” Instantly sidetracked, she followed his gaze through the of hurricane wreckage to a wall bordered by clumps of weeds and bushes. “I don’t see... Wait, yes I do.” She squinted into the darkness. “From the bulk and shape of him, that could be the guy I ran into earlier. Or he ran into me. I thought of a sea lion back then, but now I’m thinking creepy crawler.”

“I’m thinking he has no business being here.”

“Do you want to tell him that or should I?”

“I’ll do it.” Aidan drew the gun he’d stuffed back into his waistband. “In a roundabout way, we’ve met.”

“Have you?” Her silvery tone made it clear he’d said the worst possible thing. “So Captain Beckett, our creepy crawler and Steven, aka, Benedict Arnold, all knew you were in the Cove. How—cozy.”

“I don’t love your cousin, Raven.”

“Neither do I anymore.”

Mild amusement sparked. “I’d say Steven was in deep trouble, if I wasn’t in more of it myself.” He kept his eyes on the tiptoeing man. “He’s moving away from the shed.”

“Creepy lives in a shed?”

“No, and odds are he’s not living in a tent, either.”

“Meaning he presented himself to you as a camper?”

“Here for Ravenspell with his seventy-nine-year-old mother.” Aidan felt the exasperated look she cast him. “Yeah, I get it.”

“I’ll say it anyway, for emphasis. You need to hope, seriously hope, that your new friend’s mother doesn’t bear a resemblance to one of Johnny Demars’s hired killers.”

“Hope’s my middle name these days.” Angling his gun skyward, Aidan turned to her. “Whatever happens, I want you to promise me you won’t do—”

“Anything stupid?” She moved a finger between them. “We have met, right?”

“I’ve got enough to regret already, Raven.” Taking her chin in his hand, he tipped her head up for a brief but fiercely protective kiss. “I don’t want you hurt.”

“Way too late for that, I’m afraid. However, in an effort to keep us both alive, I promise to let you deal with—uh...” Dipping slightly, she regarded the house. “I think something spooked him.”

Aidan looked over and swore. Instead of tiptoeing, the man was starting to run. Awkwardly, but he was moving much faster now than before.

“Okay, that’s it,” he muttered. “Stay here, this time, Raven.” And with a quick left to right look, he took off.

It surprised him when two shots went off inside the house. They didn’t slow him down since neither one had been fired anywhere near Raven, but they proved the danger factor was escalating rapidly.

First things first, he decided. When his quarry stumbled, he tucked his gun away and went for the tackle.

Misstep notwithstanding, taking the man out was like trying to bring down a linebacker barehanded. The man staggered a little, but would have broken Aidan’s grip easily if his foot hadn’t landed in a rut and sent him crashing into a wall.

Rolling clear, Aidan came up on his knees with his gun drawn.

“Don’t shoot.” Frantic hands waved him off. “I don’t want anyone getting hurt, most of all me.”

Aidan tasted blood from a cut at the corner of his mouth. “Talk to me, pal. And not about bathrooms. What are you doing here, and who pulled the trigger inside?”

“I don’t know. I swear to God, I don’t. I really did come here to use that outside bathroom.” When Aidan raised his gun, the flapping became more agitated. “I’m not lying. All I have on me is a Swiss Army knife.”

“What about your mother?”

“Oh, well, that’s different. Her father was in the war. He left her a nasty-looking revolver. She keeps it in her, um, you don’t really care, do you?”

“What’s your name?”

The man waggled his fingers. “Smith. Fergus Smith.”

“Why were you skulking along the back wall of the house?”

“Well, I heard shots being fired, didn’t I? Sure, when I first got here, I wanted to know why the shotgun guy from this afternoon was jimmying a window and crawling inside, but I wasn’t about to take a bullet for wondering.”

“Who’s the shotgun guy?”

“The guy who was riding shotgun in the white truck with the pretty lady. For all I know, he’s the one doing the shooting. He tried to off a raven earlier today.”

“You saw that happen, huh?”

Smith squirmed in discomfort. “From an upstairs window, while I was—you know.”

“Looking for a bathroom. Did you see anyone else?” Aidan asked. “Tonight? After you followed the shotgun guy into Blume House?”

Smith made a flailing gesture. “Man, I don’t know what I saw. Shadows moving, people running—me being one of them. I just wanted out... What was that?” he demanded. “Did you hear something?”

Calculating that she’d given it two full minutes before coming after him, Aidan rolled his tight neck muscles. “Your rear approach needs work, Raven.”

“So does your peripheral hearing.” She hopped down next to him, tapped his arm and pointed. “We’ve got company.”

Which he actually had detected, but having recognized her cousin’s disgruntled tread, hadn’t been concerned enough to address.