Jenna Ryan - Raven's Hollow

“Can I say I told you so?”

“Only if you want to walk to wherever it is you plan to sleep tonight.”

“I was originally thinking Rooney’s cottage.”

“In that case, you’re facing a long and treacherous hike.”

He chuckled. “I haven’t checked out the bulldog yet, Sadie. You know how Rooney gets stuck on a point.”

“So...Ty’s sofa it is. Good luck with that.”

“Uh-huh.” When she turned away, he tugged on her hair and swung her gently back around. “You know where I’ll be sleeping tonight, and there won’t be any old men, dogs or hostile sofas involved. Your front door lock’s been compromised, Sadie.”

Reaching behind her, Sadie extricated his hand from her hair. “You’re trying to frighten me into letting you sleep at my place. Not only is that an unworthy tactic, it’s also an unnecessary one, because while I don’t appreciate your high-handed I’m-a-cop-and-you’re-not attitude, I do in fact recognize that I’ve been threatened, and there was both a bullet and blood involved. So let’s slide past the sleeping arrangements and the mind games, drive back to Bellam Manor and make sure Molly and Cocoa are safe.”

The hand that had been in her hair moved to trap her chin. Eli’s green eyes stared straight into hers. “This guy doesn’t want Molly or Cocoa, Sadie. That’s not what it’s about.”

She held his gaze. “What aren’t you saying? I’m totally terrified to ask. In my experience, crazy people will steamroll anyone who gets in their way. Or so the theory generally goes.”

“Generally,” Eli agreed. “Except this isn’t general, it’s specific. And in terms of the email card you received, it’s a virtual carbon copy of what happened to Laura a week before she was murdered.”

* * *

TELLING SADIEWHAThad suddenly clicked in his mind did more than shock her into silence. It catapulted Eli back to the night his stepsister—Sadie’s seventeen-year-old cousin, Laura—had died.

Sadie’s aunt had married Eli’s widowed father when Eli was ten. The melding of their families had been a seamless affair. But no doubt about it, Bellams and Blumes living under the same roof in Raven’s Cove had been like Christmas on the local grapevine.

Eli and two friends from school had gone to a movie in the Cove the night of the murder. Laura had been babysitting Sadie, but she’d driven to the Hollow in her mother’s cherry-red ’69 Mustang with a promise to pick them up as soon as her aunt and uncle returned home.

He could have told her not to bother, Eli thought now. Less of a hassle to walk or let someone closer come and get them, but there’d been intermittent hailstorms all day, and face it, what adolescent boy would turn down a ride in the coolest car in town?

So he and his friends had wandered over to the arcade to wait. They’d slain dragons, bludgeoned knights and smashed castle walls, until, finally, the manager had come in and told them he was shutting down.

Eli had felt the first prickle of fear at that moment. He hadn’t known why, not exactly. It hadn’t been until later that he’d remembered hearing Laura on the phone three days earlier, pleading with someone to stop pestering her.

Drama queen, he’d figured at the time. People called Laura a diva, and, what the hell, she’d stuck her tongue out at the handset after slamming it down, so how serious could the call have been?

He’d gotten his answer that weekend when, feeling sick and guilty, he’d trudged into the hollow to search for her. Everyone had been looking by then, yet oddly enough, the only person he’d bumped into in the dense woods was Sadie.

He’d known something was terribly wrong, because he’d snuck into Laura’s room and discovered a card with two ravens on it in the wastepaper basket under her desk. She’d torn it up, but the pieces had been easily reassembled, and once whole, had made even a fourteen-year-old boy’s blood run cold.

The scrawl inside had read MY LOVE in bold red letters. There’d been no signature, and of course, nothing on or in it could be traced. Not to the boyfriend Laura had recently broken up with or to anyone in the Cove or the Hollow.

But someone had written those words. Someone who’d either sent the card or slipped it to her before she’d died. Someone, Eli reflected darkly, who’d sent Sadie an eerily similar message—two full decades later.

* * *

SADIELETHIMdrive her Land Rover up the treacherous road to Bellam Manor. They didn’t talk much, which was normal enough for Eli and perfectly fine with her. Staving off terror took concentration and strong mental locks.

Two ravens, though, on two separate cards, two decades apart. One imprisoned, one free. And no signature in either case.

Determined not to think about where this was leading, she attempted to contact Molly again. But her cousin’s voice mail picked up, and as it did, frustration slipped past the knot of fear in her throat. She turned in her seat. “Why didn’t I hear about Laura’s card before tonight, Eli? Or the phone call you say she got?”

He kept his eyes on the road and his tone mild. “You were seven years old. You found her body in Raven’s Bog. Literally tripped on her hand and went down. The doctors in both the Hollow and the Cove agreed you must be in shock. And I repeat—only seven.”

“A resilient seven.” She tapped an impatient thumbnail on her phone. “The only call I’ve gotten came in conjunction with the email that was sent to me today at the Chronicle.”

“Still a call.”

She thought back. “The voice was computer altered. I didn’t recognize it.”

“Male?”

“Inasmuch as a synthesized voice can have a gender, yes. In any case, the intruder at the manor was male. And don’t you dare suggest an accomplice. This is twisted enough already. Whoever hit Laura with a tire iron left her and her car in what used to be the heart of the hollow. But twenty years ago, the road we were on tonight—which is the only drivable road from end to end—was nothing more than a goat path. So, obvious next question. How did her car wind up in the bog?”

“The consensus was that Laura let the killer get into the car. Once inside, he forced her to drive to Raven’s Bog. They exited the car, he struck her, then left her body, the Mustang and the murder weapon at the scene.”

“Do you know where the tire iron came from?”

“An auto scrap yard in Bangor.”

“So, summing up, there were no fingerprints on the murder weapon, there was no blood in the car and nothing but... God, why am I doing this?” Unbelieving, Sadie drilled her index fingers into her temples. “It’s insane, like Laura’s murderer—who’s apparently been in the area all along. Whoever he is, this guy’s a volcanic time bomb on a really slow tick. And he seems to have it in for Bellam females.” When Eli didn’t respond, she lowered her hands. “A little reassurance would be nice here, Lieutenant— before I totally freak out!”

He made the final turn to the manor. “Would it help if I said we could be dealing with a copycat?”

“Which would be better—how exactly?”

“Different perpetrator, potentially different...motive.”

She pounced. “You hesitated before you said ‘motive.’”

“I hesitated because something just blew off one of the manor’s towers and across my line of vision.”

“You were going to say ‘outcome,’ weren’t you? Potentially different outcome. As in he might shoot me instead of using a tire iron.”

“Sadie...”

“I know.” She went back to pushing on her temples. “Freaking myself out again. I need to refocus, and lucky me, I see a light in Molly’s window. I can distract myself by reading her the riot act for turning off her phone.”