knew she’d be putting in at least another hour before packing up her laptop and heading home. With luck, a little overtime would help her sleep better. Unless the predicted storm arrived with thunder and wound up sparking another dream.
“Well, Jesus, Sadie,” she laughed, and forced herself to buckle down.
She had the ad layouts sorted, two columns edited and was endeavoring to make sense of a third when the phone rang.
With her mind still on the article—who used Tabasco sauce as an emergency replacement for molasses in oatmeal cookies?—she picked up.
“Raven’s Hollow Chronicle, Sadie Bellam speaking.”
For a moment there was nothing, then a mechanical whisper reached her. “Look at your computer, Sadie.”
The darkest aspects of the nightmare rushed back in to ice her skin. Her fingers tightened on the handset. “Who is this?”
“Look at your in-box. See the card I’ve sent you.”
Her eyes slid to the monitor. She wanted to brush it off as a bad joke. Wanted to, but couldn’t. Using a breathing technique to bolster her courage, she complied.
“Do you see it?”
Her heart tripped as the image formed. The “card” showed two animated ravens. One was locked inside a cage. The other was out. The free bird used a talon to scratch a word in what looked to be blood. It said simply:
MINE!
Chapter Three
“You about done changing that tire, Elijah?” Despite the pouring rain, Rooney Blume stuck his head out the window of his great-grandson’s truck. He squinted skyward as thunder rattled the ground. “Someone upstairs must be working off one big mad.”
“Someone out here definitely is,” Eli said, giving the lug nuts he’d just put on the tire a hard cinch to tighten them. “What were you thinking riding your bike to the Cove in this weather?”
“DMV lifted my license last year, and the sun was shining when I started out. Probably good you came along when you did, though. My balance tends to fail me in the wet.”
As Eli recalled, his great-grandfather’s balance wasn’t a whole lot better in the dry. There’d also been a thermos of heavily spiked tea tucked in the bike’s carrier, and likely close to half of what he’d started out with inside the old man by the time their paths had crossed.
Right now Rooney was pushing a metal cup through the window. Giving the last nut a tug, Eli accepted the cup, considered briefly, then tossed the contents back in a single fiery shot.
Some things, he realized, when the flames in his throat subsided, never changed. He gave the cup back to Rooney.
His great-grandfather pointed a knobby finger at a line of trees bent low by the wind. “Gonna be a bitch of a night.”
Soaked to the skin, with his dark hair dripping in his eyes and rainwater running down his neck, Eli climbed back inside and started the truck’s engine. “You think?” But he grinned as he spoke, and flicked a hand at the thermos. “I’m surprised that tea of yours hasn’t eaten through the aluminum casing by now.”
“You sound like my great-grandson.”
“I am your great-grandson.”
“I mean the other one. The one who’s wearing a police chief’s badge and sporting a big dose of attitude over in the Hollow.”
“Only a town of fools would give a badge to someone who prefers carrot juice to whiskey.” Eli squinted through the streaming windshield. “Self-denial that unswerving upsets the balance of the universe.”
“Spoken like a cop after my own heart. And while we’re on the subject of badges and balances, did you know your carrot-loving cousin’s not gonna be putting a wedding ring on Sadie Bellam’s finger?”
“Heard about it.” Eli kept his tone casual and swept his gaze across the mud-slick road. “I also heard it was Sadie who ended the engagement.”
Rooney’s expression grew canny. “You got awful good hearing for a man who spends most of his time hunting down killers in New York City.”
“It’s not so far from there to here. As the raven flies.”
The old man chortled and offered him another cup of “tea.” “I won’t say you’re a jackass, Elijah, only that among other more valuable things—and for ‘things,’ read ‘Sadie’—the badge on Ty’s chest could’ve been yours if you’d wanted it.”
“And an executive position at the New York Times could’ve been Sadie’s if she’d wanted it. We do what we do, Rooney, and live with the consequences.”
His great-grandfather made a rude sound. “You’re as stubborn as twenty mules, the pair of you. You knew each other as kids, connection was already there. Life’ll take you down different paths because that’s how it goes sometimes. But it goes in circles other times, and you and Sadie came to the end of a doozy when you met up last April in Boston.”
“Rooney—” Eli began.
“I was there, Eli. I saw you. And let me tell you, there wasn’t a soul at that wedding reception who even noticed the bride and groom with the fireworks you two set off. Suddenly, next thing I know, Sadie’s back at the Chronicle, and you’re tracking a serial killer through the underbelly of Manhattan. Me, the universe and pretty much everyone at the reception are still scratching our heads over that turn of events.”
Eli sighed. “You, the universe and pretty much everyone at the reception read too much into a time-and-place chemical reaction. Sadie was engaged in April.”
“Only until she got back from Boston. Two days later, your cousin Ty was drowning his sorrows in goat milk and a double dose of wheat germ.”
“Sadie’s not ready to be married, and my life’s good the way it is. Cops and relationships don’t mix.”
Rooney snorted. “If you expect me to buy that load of bull, you’re no kind of cop. And no kin of mine.”
“In that case, happy hundred and first in advance, and I’ll be heading back to New York right after I drop you off at Joe’s bar.”
“I need a favor before you go.”
“Yeah?” Eli raised a mildly amused brow. “I could say I don’t do favors for people who claim to have disowned me.”
“But that would make you unworthy of any badge, and we both know that’s as far from the truth as it gets.”
The vague humor lingered despite the fact that Eli could no longer see either the road or the dense woods next to it that stretched from the Cove to the Hollow and beyond. The rain fell in blinding sheets now. “What do you need?”
“Ty’s on duty tonight. I want you to go by his office in the Hollow. He’s got a bulldog there named Chopper. Family in town’s heading south and can’t
