Читать книгу Raven's Hollow - Jenna Ryan - Страница 10

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 a little shocked to see you, though. On this road. At this time of night.”

“Right back at you. And don’t tell me you didn’t know there was a storm rolling in.”

“I knew,” she agreed, far too softly for his liking.

He studied her profile in the next flash of lightning. “Something’s wrong.”

“Nothing I can’t handle.”

With his brain back on track, he reached out and wrapped his fingers around her neck. “You were driving from the Hollow to the Cove, Sadie, in weather no sane person would take on without extremely strong incentive. As I recall, you’re stubborn, but relatively sane.”

She started to speak, then broke off and grabbed his chin as lightning snaked through the clouds. “You’re bleeding!”

“A little. It’s not...” He hissed when she poked at the gash. “Well, it was going numb.”

“Sorry.” She lightened her touch and her tone. “Eli, you were barely conscious when I found you. You could have a concussion.”

“I could also be halfway back to New York. Might have been except for a damn bulldog. Don’t ask. Just trust me when I tell you I’ve been hit on the head more times than I can count.”

She formed her lips into a smile. “To which I’ll simply say, no comment—and you can let go of me now.”

“I will, just as soon as you tell me why you were heading to the Cove in a storm that scared Rooney spitless for close to twenty minutes.”

“I—seriously?”

“Talk to me, Sadie.”

She blew out a breath. “Fine, I got an email. It was—unusual. I don’t know how or why, but it also seemed familiar. Like a memory buried deep in my head. So deep I can’t visualize it.”

“You got a familiar feeling from an email?”

“Well, I say feeling. It was more like a punch of pure creepy. And a strong sense that the sender was watching me.”

“Was he?”

“I don’t see how. I was in my office at the Chronicle. The guy on the phone couldn’t have...” She halted there, bit her lip. “I, uh, didn’t mention him, did I?”

“Not unless my brain’s shorting, and I doubt that.” Because his fingers were still curled around her neck, she couldn’t draw away. That she made no effort to do so told him a great deal—most of it not good. She was scared. “What did the guy on the phone want?”

“If I knew that, I wouldn’t have been going to the Cove in a storm that scared your great-grandfather spitless.” Her eyes, as gray and stormy as the night, slid past him to the trails of mud that slithered down the driver’s window. “The ravens must be significant.”

Eli’s grip tightened. “You wanna back that up for me?”

“The card was animated. One of the ravens was inside a cage, the other was out. The outside one scratched the word MINE in blood with his talon. I freaked at first, but after a while I convinced myself it was no big deal.”

“How long’s a while?”

“Not sure, maybe fifteen minutes. Afterward, I decided to proofread a column I’d imported for the weekend edition about fanatics and the rising numbers of them who’ve begun to act on their so-called beliefs. And there I was, right back to freaked. Seeing as he knows everything raven-related, I figured the best thing to do would be talk to Rooney, who, in case you’re unaware, never answers his phone.”

“I am aware of that, actually.” But Eli’s response was preoccupied as he searched his mind for—something. “A raven in a cage,” he repeated. “Why can I almost picture that?”

“No idea, but please tell me there isn’t a legend in the Cove about this kind of thing.”

“Not that I know of, and it’s the card part that’s ringing a really distant bell.”

“That bell could be your head still ringing from the whack it took when you almost wound up in the bog.”

“There is that,” he agreed.

When thunder caused the ground to tremble, she stared straight into his eyes. “You know where we are, don’t you.”

It wasn’t a question, Eli reflected. “Yeah, I know. This is where you and I met the night we discovered Laura’s body.”

“Met, argued, walked and found.”

“It’s been two decades, Sadie.”

“I have a long, and vivid, memory.”

“Ditto, but right now I have a more immediate problem.”

The breath she released ended on a laugh. “You really don’t, you know. You’ve got a flat and no spare, which means your vehicle’s stranded. Mine, on the other hand, has all four tires intact. Seeing as it’s on the other side of the pine, the Hollow as a destination wins by default.” A light danced up into her eyes. “Looks like you get to check out that bulldog after all, Lieutenant.”

“Yeah, well.” He moved too quickly for her to react. One moment, his gaze was sliding across her mouth. The next, his own was covering it.

The last thought Eli had before his brain shut down was that kissing Sadie Bellam would be either the best thing he’d ever do or the worst mistake he’d ever make.