by Jenna Ryan
“Put the living-to-tell part down to pure, dumb luck. I was painfully green at the time, but I was also a better shot than my partner, who took it upon himself through me to try to blow Sparks’s tires out after we witnessed an illegal late-night exchange.”
“And?”
“I hit two tires before someone inside the vehicle fired back. The shooter winged my partner. He got me in the shoulder, then got off when our report of the incident mysteriously disappeared. Before the night was done, we’d been ordered to forget the whole thing.”
“Lucky Jimmy.”
“Is that censure I hear in your voice, Red?”
“On the off chance that you actually do have a concussion, let’s call it curiosity.”
“Let’s call it not your business, and move on to why one of this country’s least-favorite sons is giving you, the descendant of a Maine witch, grief.”
“I helped send him to prison. Seems my testimony pissed him off.”
“Thereby landing you in a whack of trouble and leaving me with one last burning question.” Without appearing to move, he closed the gap between them, wrapped his fingers and thumb lightly around her jaw and tipped her head back to stare down at her. “Why the hell has your witchy face been in my head for the past fifteen years?”
Chapter Four
He didn’t expect an answer. He wasn’t even sure why he’d asked the question. True, she looked very much like the woman in his recurring dream, but the longer he stared at her—couldn’t help that part, unfortunately—the more the differences added up.
On closer inspection, Amara’s hair really was more brown than red. Her features were also significantly finer than...whomever. Her gray eyes verged on charcoal, her slim curves were much better toned and her legs were the longest he’d seen on any woman anywhere.
He might have lingered on the last thing if she hadn’t slapped a hand to his chest, narrowed those beautiful charcoal eyes to slits and seared him with a glare.
“What do you mean my face has been in your head for fifteen years? What the hell kind of question is that?”
A faint smile touched his lips. “Given my potentially concussed state, call it curiosity and forget I asked.”
The suspicion returned. “Are you sure my grandmother’s in the Caribbean and not locked in a closet upstairs?”
“This might not be the best time to be giving me ideas.” With his eyes still on hers, he pulled a beeping iPhone from his pocket and pressed the speaker button. “What is it, Jake?”
“Got a problem here, Chief.”
His deputy sounded stoked, which was never a good sign. But it was the background noises—the thumps, shouts and crashes—that told the story.
“Bar fight got out of hand, huh?”
“Wasn’t my fault.” Jake had to yell above the sound of shattering glass. “All I did was tell the witch people to mount their broomsticks and fly off home.”
“You know you’re in Raven’s Hollow, right? Raven’s Hollow, Bellam territory.”
“Can I help it if folks in this town are touchy about their ancestors?”
“This night is deteriorating faster by the minute,” McVey muttered.
Jake made a guttural sound as a fist struck someone’s face. “Raven’s Cove was settled first, and that’s a fact. Why’re you sticking up for a bunch of interlopers who can’t hold their liquor and are proud of the fact that one of their stupid witch women made it so my great-great-whatever-granddaddy got turned into a bird?”
Were they actually having this conversation? McVey regarded Amara, who’d heard every word, and, holding her gaze, said calmly, “I’ll be there in fifteen.”
He could see she was trying not to laugh as he pocketed his phone and bent to retrieve the gun he’d lost during their scuffle.
“Sorry, but I did warn you, McVey.”
“No, you didn’t. You said your Raven’s Hollow relatives represented the less antagonistic side of the family. That’s not how Jake Blume’s telling it.”
“Twenty bucks says Jake started it.”
Since that was entirely possible, McVey stuffed his weapon. “What can I say? He came with the job.”
“The job’s a powder keg, Chief, a fact that whoever talked you into it obviously neglected to mention. Raven’s Cove goes through police chiefs—”
“Like wolves go through grandmothers?” In a move intended to unsettle, he blocked her flight path. “Gonna need your keys, Red.”
Unfazed, she ran her index finger over his chest. “Are you telling me, Chief McVey, that a deputy came with the job, but a vehicle didn’t? Sounds like someone suckered you big time.”
“I’m beginning to agree.” And, damn it, get hot. “Keys are in case your car’s closing my truck in. Knowing Jake as I do, we need to leave now.”
“We?”
“You’re coming with me.”
“Excuse me?”
“Whack of trouble,” he reminded her, and was relieved when she ground her teeth.
Their banter was getting way out of hand. Given the situation, a distraction like that that could turn into something bad very quickly.
He caught her shoulders before she could object, turned and nudged her through the mudroom. “As much as I’d love to argue this out, my instincts tell me you have a functioning brain and no particular desire to wait here alone for whatever family member Jimmy Sparks chooses to sic on you.”
“I wasn’t planning to wait anywhere.”
“Right. You want to search for a place to flop in Raven’s Hollow. At night, in a windstorm, with no idea how many of your relatives are home and how many are participating in the destruction of a Blume-owned bar at Harrow and Main in the Hollow.”
“The Red Eye?” She laughed as he reached back to snag his badge from the table. “That’s gonna piss Uncle Lazarus right off—assuming he still holds the lease on the place, which he will, seeing as he’s notorious for acquiring properties and never selling them. Never selling anything, except possibly, like his ancestor Hezekiah, his soul.”
“I’m getting that you don’t like your uncle.”
“It’s not a question of like or dislike really. Uncle Lazarus is a miser and a misery of a man. He’s also quite reclusive. Even so, your paths must have crossed a time or two since you arrived.”
“More than a time or two, only once that mattered.”
Wind whipped strands of long hair up into her face the moment they stepped onto the back porch. “What did you do, fine him for jaywalking?”
“Nope.” McVey held the key ring in his mouth while he clipped the badge to his belt and checked his gun. “I arrested him for being drunk and disorderly.”
Amara clawed the hair from her face. “I’m sorry. I thought you said he was drunk.”
“He was hammered.”
“And disorderly.”
“He lurched into a dockside bar in Raven’s Cove, staggered across the floor and slugged a delivery driver in the stomach.” He pointed left. “My truck’s that way.”
“I see it. I’m waiting for the punch line.”
“No line, just two punches. The second was a right uppercut to the driver’s jaw. He’s lucky the guy didn’t file assault charges. I’d guess your uncle did a little boxing in his day.”
“He did a lot of things in his day. But burst into Two Toes Joe’s bar drunk? Not a chance.” She hesitated. “Did he say why he did it?”
“Driver was a courier. He’d delivered a large padded envelope to your uncle’s home in the north woods earlier that afternoon. Four hours later the guy’s eyes were rolling back in his head. Lazarus pumped a fist, laughed like a lunatic and fell facedown on the floor.”
“After which, you locked him in a jail cell.”
“Yep.”
“You put Lazarus Blume in jail and you’re still in the Cove? Still chief of...? Hey, wait a minute.” Already standing on the Ram truck’s running board, she turned to jab a finger into his chest. “That is seriously not fair. I kn
ew— I just knew he’d let a male get away with more than a female.”
“What?”
“You heard me. You arrest him and nothing. No repercussions, no threats, no embellishing the whole suddenly sordid affair to your grandmother.”
Okay, he was lost—and beginning to question her sanity. “What suddenly sordid affair?”
She poked him again. “I snuck out of my grandmother’s house once, just once, so my friend and I could spy on her older sister’s date with the local hottie, and wouldn’t you know it, Uncle Lazarus spotted me. He dragged me back to Nana’s and informed me I’d be mucking out his stable for the rest of the summer. Yet here you stand, still employed and without a speck of manure on your hands.” She indicated herself, then him. “I’m a female, you’re a male. It’s not fair.” Huffing out a breath, she sat, yanked the door closed and flopped back in her seat, arms folded. “I should have put two curses on him.”
McVey climbed in beside her. “You put a— What did you do to him?”
She gave her fingers a casual flick. “What any self-respecting Bellam in my position would have done. I put a spell on the midnight snack Nana told me he always ate before going to bed. He had severe stomach cramps for the next three days. Some of my relatives swear they heard him laughing hysterically while the doctor was examining him. Other than cleaning his stables, I didn’t hear or see him again for the rest of the summer. He’d always been a loner, but Nana told me he became even more of a phantom after his...spell of indigestion. I don’t know if that’s true or not. I was fourteen when it happened, and except for a mutual relative’s funeral, our paths haven’t crossed again.”
McVey’s lips quirked as he started the engine. “Note to self. Grudges run in your family.”
She sent him a smoldering look. “Not a problem in your case, seeing as Uncle Lazarus’s grudges don’t appear to extend to men.”
“I was referring to you, Red.” The quirk of his lips became a full-fledged grin. “I’m not overly fond of stomach cramps.”
On the heels of that remark, wind swooped down to batter the side of his truck. McVey heard a loud crack among the trees crowding the house and glanced upward.
“Stomach cramps will be the least of your problems if one of those evergreens destroys Nana’s roof.” As Amara spoke, the porch light went out then stuttered back on. “That’s not good.”
“Tell me something that is.”
Overhead, a fierce gust of wind brought two large branches crashing down into the box of his truck.
“Dodgers probably lost by a landslide.” He handed Amara his cell phone. “Do me a favor and speed-dial Jake. Tell him I’ll need more than fifteen minutes.”
“I can help you pull the branches from the—”
That was as far as she got before three shots rang out behind them.
She started to swing around, but McVey shoved her down and dragged the gun from his waistband. Keeping a hand on her neck, he risked a look, saw nothing and swore softly under his breath.
Amara pried his hand free. “Who is it?” she asked with barely a hint of a tremor.
“No idea. One of my backups is in the glove box. It’s loaded. Use the keys.” He gave the door a kick to open it. “Meanwhile, stay here and stay down. Unless you want to be pushing up daisies next to your Bellam and/or Blume ancestors.”
“McVey, wait.” She grabbed his arm. “I don’t want you taking a bullet for me.”
“Don’t sweat it, Red.” He risked a second look into the woods. “Chances are only fifty-fifty that those shots were fired by someone in Jimmy Sparks’s family.”
* * *
HE DISAPPEARED SO QUICKLY, Amara had no chance to ask what he meant. Or to wonder if she’d heard him correctly.
For a moment she simply stared after him and thought that somewhere along the line she must have fallen down a rabbit hole into a parallel universe where police chiefs looked like hot rock stars and any vestige of reality had long since been stripped away by a raging northeaster. Who was this stranger with the wicked sexy body and dark hypnotic eyes?
“More to the point,” she said to her absent grandmother, “why didn’t you mention him when I called you last night?”
Knowing she needed to think, Amara tucked the question away. Three bullets had just been fired at close range. A glance through the rear window revealed nothing except the moon, a scattering of stars and no flashlight beam. Actually—had McVey even taken a flashlight?
“I need you to step on it, Chief.” Jake Blume’s unexpected shout sent Amara’s heart into her throat and almost caused her to drop the phone she’d speed-dialed without thinking. “You there, McVey?” the deputy yelled again. “Come on, what’s taking you?”
“McVey’s busy.” As she spoke she pulled the key out of the ignition. “My name’s Amara. We’re still at Shirley Bellam’s place.”
“You fooling around with my superior officer out on the edge of the north woods ain’t exactly my idea of help, sweetheart. Now, I don’t give a rat’s ass why you’re in possession of McVey’s phone. I just need you to put him on it.” He waited a beat before adding a reluctant, “Please.”
Amara tried one of the smaller keys in the glove box lock. “What you call fooling around, I call dodging bullets while your superior officer goes all Rambo and takes on an unidentified shooter in the woods. Trust me, his plate has more on it than yours does at the moment.”
“Wanna bet?” The deputy’s tight-lipped response gave way to a resounding punch. “You said Amara, right?” Another punch. “You wouldn’t be that little witch bitch who used to come here in the summer, would you? Because if you are, you scared the bejesus out of my kid brother by telling him you could talk to ravens.”
“Does it matter if I’m her?”
“Makes us cousins is all.”
Since he practically spit the words out, Amara assumed the idea didn’t sit well with him.
Behind her, three more shots rang out. She shoved another key into the lock—and breathed out in relief when the compartment popped open to reveal a 9 mm automatic. “Thank God.”
“Depends on your point of view,” Jake muttered. “As I recall, your last name’s Bellam.”
Irritated, she regarded the phone. “Did I mention someone’s firing a rifle out here? I’ve counted six shots so far.”
“Rifle shot, huh? Could be Owen thinking the sky’s fixing to fall on his cabin. Old Owen ain’t been right for years.”
Parallel world, Amara reminded herself. “Will ‘Old Owen’ know the difference between McVey and a piece of falling sky?”
“I said it could be Owen,” Jake countered. “It could just as easily be one of your backwoods cousins looking to shoot himself something feathered for the upcoming street barbecue.”
Now she frowned at the phone. “You people are deranged.”
She heard a grunt and a punch. “This from a raven whisperer?”
“I can’t talk to—” She spun in place as three more shots sounded. “The whole world’s deranged. Later, Deputy.”
Tossing the phone aside, she firmed up her grip on McVey’s gun and slid cautiously from the truck.
The wind blew in wild circles and made pinpointing the shooter’s location next to impossible.
Amara searched the dark woods. Would Jimmy Sparks abandon all discretion this way? She didn’t think so, but then, what did she know about the man’s psyche? Maybe he’d sent a hothead after her.
Heart pounding, she worked her way along the side of the truck. She hissed in a breath when the tips of a broken branch snagged her hair like claws. She had to stop and untangle herself before she could continue.
Continue where, though, and do what when she got there? Her grandmother had taught her how to shoot clay pigeons, but she doubted the owner of the rifle would move in a high, wide arc for her.
“What the hell are you doing?”
The question came from close behind her. Snapping the gun up, Amara spun on one knee and almost—alm
ost—squeezed the trigger.
When she saw who it was, her vision hazed and she lowered her arms. “Jesus, McVey.”
“Have you gone mad?”
“Don’t you dare glare at me. I counted nine shots, none of which came from a handgun. For all I know, you could’ve been dead or bleeding to death in the woods.”
“I also could’ve shot you in the back. You want to protect yourself, you use the best cover you’ve got. Case in point, my truck.”
“I’ll remember that next time someone decides to fire a rifle in the middle of nowhere, during a windstorm, while a cop with a much bigger weapon than the one he left behind disregards his own advice and takes off in pursuit.” Pushing aside the hand he held out to her, she stood and dusted off her jeans. “I talked to your deputy while you were gone. He seems to think the rifleman might be someone called Owen, worried that the sky’s falling.”
McVey ran his gaze around the clearing. “It wasn’t Owen.”
“Figured not. A Bellam bird hunter was his second suggestion. Looking for barbecue night’s winged entrée.”
“Red, the most common birds in these woods at night are owls, and not even a grill can make a screech owl taste good.”
Moving her lips into a smile, Amara dropped the gun into his free hand. “I keep telling myself that at some point this night will end. Whether any part of it makes sense when it does remains to be seen. Moving on, if not Owen or someone who likes to hunt owls, are we back to a member of the Sparks family as the prospective shooter?”
He kept scanning. “Not necessarily.”
“Didn’t think so.”
“Yeah, you did, but think deeper. Sparks wouldn’t want you taken out in such an obvious fashion. It’s true, Jimmy has moments of blind rage during which he loses all control, but that’s the reason he gets people with cooler heads to do his dirty work.”
“There’s good news. Look, McVey, if you think the shooter’s close enough to be watching us, why are we standing here having his discussion?”
“Shooter’s gone.” He made a final sweep before bringing his eyes back to hers. “If he wasn’t, we’d be dead.”
