by Jenna Ryan
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.”
“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.
Steven grumbled his way into sight. “Easy job, no stress. Two, maybe three years, and I’d be ready to jump back into the shark tank.” He raised his voice. “You listen to a damn thing Rooney says, Raven, and you’ll wind up loonier six months on than you were when you got to this crazy bird town. I caught someone, Aidan—for about thirty seconds. Got kicked in the crotch, almost lost the use of my right arm, and if my nose isn’t broken, it’s only because, when I foolishly attempted to teach my nine-year-old sister and Raven to kickbox, I was forced to learn the fine art of ducking fast.”
Aidan scanned the surrounding area. “Was it George?”
Raven brought her head around. “You think George was inside Blume House?”
“Fergus here saw him climb through one of the windows.”
“And you trust Fergus here to be telling the truth? No offense,” she added with a glance at the big man.
“None taken. But I did see him. The guy riding with you in the white truck went into the house through a window.”
“Call it another link in an increasingly bizarre chain of events,” Aidan suggested, “and try not to dwell on it.”
“As a non-cop, I’ll do my best.” She turned to her cousin. “Are you sure it was George?”
“Hell no. Fergus here saw him, not me. I was shadowboxing.” Reaching into his vest pocket, Steven pulled out a cell phone and tossed it to Aidan. “He dropped this. It’ll probably fill in the name gap.”
Tucking away his gun, Aidan took the device and immediately looked at Raven.
“What?”
He indicated himself, then her. “Techno-spaz, supergeek.”
She shot him a smile that didn’t bode well for their future alone time. But she held out her palm. “Okay, give it.”
He watched her play for a moment before a flicker of lightning diverted him. He’d seen the same thing earlier in the vicinity of the Ravenspell campsite. “We need to get into the house.”
“No way.” Fergus Smith was adamant. “That place is spooked. Lights on, lights off, everything creaking and groaning and wailing. How do we know there aren’t ghosts in the walls?”
“We don’t.” Aidan tracked a strange gust of wind as the sky lit up yet again. “But believe me when I tell you, there are worse things in this world than a ghost or two.... Something?” he asked Raven, who was pondering the on-screen display.
“Not sure.” She scrolled forward, then back. “It is George’s phone. It looks like he made a call while I was talking to Grandpa in the cottage. There’s no name or number, but someone called him back a few minutes later.”
“What’s the name on the incoming?”
“All it says is Gort. Outgoing was placed at 5:53 p.m. Reply, I assume, came at 5:56.” She looked up into his shielded eyes and narrowed her own. “That is not a happy expression, Aidan. Who’s Gort?”
His gaze shifted to Blume House. “Police tag for Demars is Spaceman, but George thought Gort was a better fit. Deadly robot, no face.”
“Like in that black-and-white movie where all the machines stopped working.” Fergus Smith gave a sheepish shrug. “My ma watches old space movies.”
“So does George.” Raven paged sideways. “The communication from Gort lasted four and a half minutes. Shortly after that, George returned to Blume House—not sure how—and climbed through a window. I wonder what or who he was hoping to find?”
The resentment in her voice was obvious, but under it was a strong sense of disappointment. In George and in him, but mostly, Aidan sensed, in herself for misjudging a trusted friend’s character.
“It’s done, Raven. There’s no way back. Demars knows I’m alive and in the Cove.”
Her eyes shot to his. “Then you have to leave. Now. Tonight.”
Everything inside him hardened. “Not an option. Demars wants to finish this, and so do I. And it can’t be finished on the run.”
Exasperation replaced fear. “So you’re going to take him on in Raven’s Cove?” She walked away and straight back. “That’s suicide, pure and simple. Demars will send the best he’s got to kill you. Do you have any idea what the best he’s got looks like?”
“No, but I know what George looks like, so I have a starting point.”
“If George is smart, he’ll have hitched a ride to Portland by now and be on a homebound plane by the time Demars’s hit man shows up.”
Aidan’s eyes glinted in the next fork of lightning. “You’re not factoring in Demars’s mindset, Raven. George won’t be going anywhere before that hit man shows. And it’ll be a toss-up what happens when he does.”
A false smile came and went from Steven’s lips. “I knew I should have stayed in San Francisco, just knew it.”
“And I shoulda used a porta-john,” Smith mumbled.
Raven poked a finger into Aidan’s stomach. “You can’t fight Demars alone. You know that, or you should. At least let Beckett in on what’s happening, where George is and what he’s... Oh, God, what’s that look about? What are you planning to do?”
“What you probably expect,” he replied, and couldn’t quite keep the gleam of anticipation out of his eyes. “What I should have done two years ago. I’m going to off his hit man, then hunt the faceless bastard down and end this nightmare once and for all.”
As he spoke, the wind whipped up and over the walls of Blume House. And for a single freakish moment, Aidan thought it resembled a man’s mad laughter.
* * *
IT WAS DONE. FOR BETTER or worse—and his stomach strongly suggested worse—he’d placed the call and gotten the expected response.
Alone, on the side of the road that led to Raven’s Cove, he waited. Three hours, Demars had told him in a computer-altered voice that made George’s blood run cold. Someone would be there in three short hours.
A clap of thunder sent fresh chill blades down his spine. He stood in the wind, nervous fingers snapping, his glasses askew, with tears streaming over his cheeks. He knew why he’d done it, he just didn’t know why he hadn’t thought it through better first.
When the thunder came again, he squeezed his eyes closed. But he couldn’t block the sound of Demars’s distorted voice.
“Keep her there!”
“Keep Raven here?” George had repeated, baffled. “What does she have to do with any of this?”
The reply had been swift, the distortion a shrill and horrible sound.
Keep her there!
More tears spilled. What if Demars sent the big guy? Killing was a thing he did for money. Torment and torture were his ultimate goals. And women, particularly beautiful women like Raven, provided him with the most enjoyment.
Or worse, maybe he’d send Weasel, the one with the knife. Weasel liked to cut people up, and attractive women were his favorite kind of people. Turning his face skyward, George breathed out in rapid whooshes. Until a pair of headlights cut through the gloom and he stopped
breathing altogether.
The big guy drove a four-by-four, didn’t he? But Weasel might, too. Either way, the truck with the smoke-black windows and superbright headlights had pulled to a stop five feet in front of him.
Demars’s words echoed in his head. Keep her there! And now, here was one of his twisted hit men, come to Raven’s Cove to take out the man who’d killed his son.
An eye for an eye, George thought as the driver of the four-by-four waited for him to approach. He’d heard the expression recently but couldn’t remember where. Didn’t care.
He didn’t lift his head until the window opened—and a gleaming 9 mm semiautomatic gun came out to greet him.
Chapter Five
“My mother was right about Raven’s Cove.” Feeling a little as if she’d been hit with a stun gun, Raven looked over her shoulder at the fog that had begun to slither in from the ocean. “You come for a visit and bam, five minutes later, the town jumps into a rabbit hole and takes you with it.” When Aidan stopped moving, she bumped into his back. Rubbing her nose, she said, “I don’t think this is the best place for us to talk.”
“Alone in a crowd, angel.” Keeping her firmly behind him, he pushed his way into a shabby seaside bar called Two Toes Joe’s. “Unfortunately, this isn’t your typical Tuesday night crowd.”
“No?” She dodged a man with big feet and an even bigger drunk on. “Interesting that you’d know that.”
“Being a ghost is thirsty work.” He sent her a quick grin. “I’ve come here three times in two years, Raven, and never as myself.”
“Meaning you have an alter ego here in the Cove.”
“Your great-grandfather’s sitting next to the dartboard.”
She waved at a cloud of thick, mostly illegal smoke. “I saw him, and, large crowd notwithstanding, I guarantee he’s seen us right back.”
“No one’s eyes are that good.” When two fishermen vacated a corner booth, Aidan nabbed it and waited while she slid onto the worn wooden bench.
