Jenna Ryan - Raven's Cove

“Unfortunately, golfing and gardening can’t always fill the void in a cop’s life.”

“He could become a P.I.”

“I’ll mention that next time I see him. As for the others, Boxman’s taking a hiatus. He cited burnout coupled with a messy divorce as his reasons. Carla Prewitt’s on maternity leave, and Victor Bowcott’s thinking about transferring from San Diego to Buffalo, New York.”

“Victor…to Buffalo?” She stared, incredulous. “Why?”

“He didn’t say. Problem with Buffalo?”

“No, but come on, Rogan, Victor’s all about warm winters, not frigid ones.”

“Yeah? Interesting you’d know that.”

“What, you didn’t?”

“I’m not as well acquainted with him as you appear to be.”

She twirled a finger. “We lived together, remember? You, me, him and the others, for a month. Of course, it would have been longer in your case if you’d been there from the start like the rest of us were.”

“I came when the situation heated up and when the assignment I’d been working on prior to the heating ended.”

She let her mind slide back and amusement spike. “I honestly thought somebody’d messed up, that one of Wainwright’s henchmen had crashed our gruesome little party. One of his crazy, high-on-crack, South American mercenary henchmen. If Costello hadn’t recognized you, I might have tried to stab you with a kitchen knife. Oh, but that wouldn’t have worked, would it, because you never expose your back. To anyone.”

As the streaming rain turned into a near waterfall, Rogan switched the wipers on high. “Deal with the criminal element long enough, you’ll discover there’s always someone behind you. The trick is to make sure he or she doesn’t get a clear shot.”

Jasmine figured he’d mastered that trick in spades. Ballard had told her that Rogan appeared on scene whenever the danger peaked. After that, there were only two ways he’d leave. When the danger ended, or he was dead.

Determined not to dwell, she contemplated the barely visible road ahead. Then did a double take as she spotted the blurred headlights of an oncoming vehicle.

Unless the rain was distorting her vision, the driver had swerved over the centerline. And was headed straight for them.

Chapter Four

“I’m so sorry. Really, so very sorry. Don’t know how she got away from me like that.”

The driver, a fifty-something man in a wrinkled business suit, looked more baffled than shaken. He also smelled like a brewery. His female passenger remained in the car, arms tightly folded, eyes pointed straight ahead, tight skirt riding high on stockinged legs.

You just never know how a night might go, Jasmine thought with mild sympathy as the newly arrived highway patrol officers approached the woman.

Rogan had avoided both the head-on collision and the power pole that had appeared out of nowhere. The man in the silver Subaru hadn’t been so lucky. He’d sideswiped a tree, done a wobbly one-eighty and smashed the front end of his car into the pole’s now-dented base. All in all, the incident had cost them an hour and given Jasmine much more time to think than could possibly be good.

Not that her thoughts followed any kind of logical path, but then, considering the raven’s feather she’d received, she might have to get used to that.

With her coat and hair dripping, she headed back to the truck, tried Daniel’s number again and wound up tossing her phone on the dash.

“I sense irritation.” At a wave from the patrolman, Rogan got in next to her and swung his truck back onto the river that was the interstate. “Want to clue me in?”

Like the woman in the other car, Jasmine folded her arms and stared through the windshield. “Daniel did this kind of thing the whole time we were married, all two and a half years of it. He’d call me from wherever he happened to be, freak me out with stories about subversive activities, riots, roadside bombings or some vast grow-op he’d managed to unearth. ‘Just so you know, Jas,’ he’d say. ‘In case I don’t come home.’ He’s drawn to it.”

“To danger or the prospect of death?”

She started to say “both,” then shook her head. “Death and danger are your drugs, Rogan. For Daniel it’s the thrill of the hunt.”

“Like your mother.”

“Yes, except she’s chasing mythical creatures, not crime lords, terrorists and power-hungry third-world generals. I met Daniel while I was in college. The whole Bohemian-rebel-fight-for-a-cause idea intrigued me. It was challenging, and at the same time it seemed worthwhile. Then reality hit, and I realized there were less radical ways to make a statement than by jumping off metaphorical cliffs into the middle of international drug rings.”

“Jumping can work,” Rogan said.

The fact that she knew he was trying not to grin drew a warning sound from her throat. “You believe that because you’re all about shadows and intrigue.”

“You make me sound like a WWII spy.”

“There’s cause for comparison. Daniel has the pseudo-hippie vibe. You’ve got the mystery. Well, and the law.”

A blast of wind pummeled the truck as Rogan traded the interstate for a bumpy off-ramp. “Big gun doesn’t hurt, either.”

“No, it doesn’t, but I don’t think that’s my point.”

Despite the thickening shadows, she felt his eyes on her face. “What is your point? That under the surface I’m a lot like Daniel?”

“God.” She laughed. “You are so not. In fact, you’re as unlike as two people can be, jumping-in tendency aside. You see and act. Daniel hears and reacts. You think. He emotes. You consider. He fixates. Still not my point, though.”

“And that is…?”

“More people are going to die. More than the ones who are already dead. I don’t blame Daniel for that, I’m just tired of being dragged back into a life I tried to say goodbye to three years ago. It stands to reason that I’ll know someone who gets killed before this ends. It could be Daniel, it could be a person I meet in Raven’s Cove, it could be Boris.” She ground her teeth. “It could be you.”

Using the mirror, Rogan eyed the German shepherd, curled up and sleeping behind them. “I trained Boris at the safe house. It’s his job to protect you, and you can believe me when I tell you he knows how to take down an armed adversary.”

“Yes, I’m sure you showed him the moves personally, and you could probably dodge a hundred bullets between you. But there’s always that random shot, the one fired by the guy you didn’t see. Maybe that shot kills you. Maybe it doesn’t, and you can get to a hospital in time. But it could also hit and not kill you right away, yet you know death’s imminent because there’s no one around to help you.”

His eyes flicked to hers. “You’re thinking about Dukes, aren’t you?”

“Partly,” she admitted. “Dukes was that teddy-bear uncle you automatically love. Captain Ballard said they never found his body.” Her heart gave a painful twist. “There were only two days left before Daniel’s court appearance. Forty-eight hours. Then the wind changed, a storm blew in, and Wainwright’s men came out of the night like cockroaches.”

“There were only twenty. And we expected them.”

“It didn’t matter, though, did it? Two police officers still died. And we’ll never know what happened to Dukes. Well, yes, we will, because—what was it you said to me when he didn’t come back? A missing cop is a dead cop. Which means Wainwright’s people took him, and whether he lived long enough to be tortured, or died before they could question him, he’s gone.” She pushed on her throbbing right temple. “This isn’t helping, is it?”

“You have feelings, Jasmine. And yours are more compassionate than some. Dukes’s mother thought Daniel should have been sent up alongside Wainwright for blundering into the investigation.”