Raven's Hollow. Jenna Ryan
To this day, Laura’s killer remained at large. A handful of suspects and numerous persons of interest had been questioned and released. Over time—two decades at this point—what had started as a countywide manhunt had been reduced to a dusty homicide report in the back of the sheriff’s filing cabinet. Clues gathered at the scene had resulted in nothing, and, as they so often did in situations like these, the case had gone cold.
For Eli, the memory of Laura’s murder had dimmed but never disappeared. Not completely. Every similar crime he worked to solve these days took him back to her death. When that happened, the raw pain and guilt would slam through him as hard as it had done the evening he and Sadie had met in the hollow.
On a less grisly note, Eli couldn’t deny that, even at seven years of age, Sadie Bellam had been a beauty. Fast-forward twenty years, slide her into a clingy silver dress, and she’d quite literally stripped the breath from his lungs. He’d prowled around the edges of that Boston reception hall, watching but not approaching her for thirty wary minutes, until one of her aunts had swept in and sealed the deal by insisting they dance.
The idea of taking the memory deeper tempted, but unfortunately, a gust of wind upward of forty miles an hour had other ideas. It grabbed his four-by-four and sent it sliding toward a deep gully. Eli rode the wave, felt the kick of wind abate and urged the truck back onto the road.
It had been a sunny seventy-eight degrees when he’d left New York City. The clear skies had held to Bangor. Then, less than ten miles from the Cove, a mass of boiling black clouds had rolled in and let go.
He glanced left as thunder rumbled up and out of the hollow. Jagged forks of lightning split the sky overhead. His truck, three years old and heavy as hell, shuddered through another blast of wind.
Only a seriously disturbed person would stay out in this. Would be out in this. The dog could have waited while he went head-to-head with a glass of Joe’s toxic beer.
Without warning, twin beams of light appeared directly ahead. They slashed through the murk, momentarily blinding him. Swearing, Eli jerked the steering wheel hard, felt the truck’s back end fishtail and had to compensate to keep the entire vehicle from tumbling into the ravine.
He might have won the battle if something—tree, car or possibly both—hadn’t become a sudden and solid roadblock in front of him.
Using his forward momentum, together with muscle and brakes, he went for a one-eighty turn. But the mass was too close and the road too slick for him to gain the traction necessary to execute it.
The collision sent his head and shoulder into the side window. A clap of thunder underscored the hit, but the sound was nothing more than a murmur in Eli’s mind. By the time the truck stopped moving, the storm, the night and the hollow had faded to black around him.
Chapter Four
“Eli, can you hear me?”
A woman’s voice reached him. Possibly Sadie’s, possibly not. She was far away but definitely calling his name. Did that mean he was alive? Because if not, he’d gone someplace dark, wet and incredibly uncomfortable.
“Eli, damn it, open the door!”
Someplace where the angels—at worst, he hoped, angels—shouted orders, and every thought was coated in a bloodred haze.
The haze pulsed for several seconds before subsiding to a repetitive and annoying thud.
He cracked his eyes open to a different kind of darkness. This one was loud and it moved. Both sound and motion jabbed at him like dull knives. He was tempted to sink back under until it stopped.
“Wake up, Eli, and open the door.”
Sadie’s voice—he was sure of it now—sounded impatient, yet held the barest hint of a tremor. He let the memory of her face draw him to the surface and most of the way through it to consciousness.
Levering himself upright, he swore. And kept swearing because it helped him clear out the last of the haze. Once it was gone, he located and hit the lock release.
The door shot open. It very nearly flew off its hinges judging from the screech of metal and the ferocious howl of the wind that grabbed it. Eli managed to clamp a hand on to Sadie’s arm before the unexpected backward motion sent her into the ravine.
He’d forgotten she had the balance of a mountain goat. Without missing a beat, she bunched his wet T-shirt and gave him a hard shake. “Are you hurt?”
He almost smiled. “Been better. Need a minute for my brain to settle.”
“In that case, Lieutenant, shift your excellent butt to the passenger side, and let me in.”
Not quite a storybook angel, but close enough. He grinned. “Helluva time to decide you want to do what we managed not to do in Boston.”
With a glance into the hollow, she pushed on his shoulder. “If we do now what we didn’t do, this really thin rock ledge that your rear tires are barely sitting on is going to crumble apart and send us straight to hell. Or into Raven’s Bog. Jury’s still out on which name’s more appropriate.”
Either place was jarring enough for him to snap his head around.
“Bet that hurt—” she began, then gasped when he lifted her inside and deposited her on the passenger seat. “What are you doing?”
“Don’t move.” He reached for the ignition key.
Swinging her legs around and down, she snagged his wrist. “The engine’s running, Eli. You just can’t hear it over the Tarzan roar of testosterone in your brain.”
“Pretty sure I spun out trying to avoid a head-on with your vehicle, Sadie.”
Keeping an eye on the rearview mirror, and using a spectacular bolt of lightning to aid his vision, Eli shoved the truck in gear. After several seconds of maneuvering, he crawled it away from the edge.
Sadie let out a relieved breath. “I’d be impressed if I didn’t know for a fact that I could have done the same thing a full minute sooner.”
“We’re not on a deadline, sweetheart.” He fingered a cut on his forehead, and wasn’t surprised when he spied a smear of blood. “Are you hurt, and did we hit?”
“No, I’m not, and yes, we did. But not each other.” In the process of wringing out her long red-brown hair, she nodded at the windshield. “It’s difficult to see right now, but that big black thing in front of us is a pine tree. It started to fall, I hit the brakes. At the risk of fueling your already massive ego, you must have done one wicked spinout to avoid being flattened by something that could have pancaked an eighteen-wheeler.”
“Speaking of.” Eli sized up the tilt of his truck’s back end. “Unless one of my tires is sitting in a hole, I’ve got a flat.”
She waved a hand in front of his face. “Did I mention the tree was huge, with the potential to destroy both you and your vehicle?” A frustrated sound emerged. “Why are you even on this road, Eli? Why are you in Maine at all for that matter?”
“Did you think I wouldn’t come for Rooney’s hundred and first?”
“No, I figured you’d come, just not until the last minute.”
“I’d be offended if I wasn’t sure about that flat and apparently in need of a lift.”
She stabbed at the windshield, repeated very clearly, “Big tree, tremendous crushing power.”
His lips curved. “Yeah, I get the luck part. What I haven’t got is a second spare.”
He told her, in bullet points, about Rooney, the bicycle that was currently strapped to his roof rack and Joe’s bar.
Laughing, she dropped her head back onto the seat. “If I said any of that surprised me, I’d be lying.” She slanted him a speculative look. “Still