Raven's Cove - Jenna Ryan by Intrigue Romance Read Free Book Online Page B

With a couple exceptions—the geezer being one of them—folks around here mostly avoid strangers.”
    Rogan found that interesting, but again not surprising given the insulated nature of Raven’s Cove. It might have a legend, but as far as he could see, no one had thought or bothered to exploit it.
    With the storm still venting its fury, they jogged through the rain to a wharfside bar not much better lit than Daniel’s cottage after Boxman’s discovery of a puny generator in the toolshed.
    Twenty pairs of eyes turned when they entered. “Second visit to this sailors’ toilet in one night,” his companion muttered. “Gotta be a record that’ll stand for a good decade.” Raising a hand at the bartender, he headed for a table in the back.
    The plank floors were sticky, the air foul, the walls covered with old nets, stuffed ravens and damaged lobster traps.
    With more ravens inside them, Rogan noted and fought a grin. For what it was worth, the place had atmosphere.
    “Rooney’s over there.” His companion gestured through smoke and a layer of something resembling dirty fog. “Send a mug to his table and we’ll go from there.”
    “A mug of what?”
    “Whiskey.”
    Rogan cast the other man a look, but said nothing. Without appearing to, he eyed the cloudy beer that was plunked in front of him. “Send a mug of his usual to the old guy next to the woodstove,” he told the stone-faced server. He debated, then figured what the hell and swallowed a mouthful from his glass.
    “Horse urine,” his companion remarked. “Gotta be.”
    No argument there, Rogan thought. He let his eyes roam. “Doesn’t matter how you try to connect them, the feathers and the most likely suspect don’t jibe.”
    “Sure they do, or could. Wainwright or his avenger is trying to throw everyone off the scent.”
    “By using a little-known legend from a town where the person who should be his prime target has been living for eighteen months. Obviously, the killer knows Daniel’s here. Run the scenario. Daniel calls Jasmine to warn her. He gets cut off, but from her end rather than his. Now she has one feather to his two. Means our killer’s threatening his ninth victim before he’s disposed of his eighth, a man who should have been his primary target from the start. Why?”
    “Well—why not?”
    Rogan smiled, kept his eyes moving. “You’re convinced the guy wants to hurt anyone and everyone who played a part in Wainwright’s takedown, including, but not limited to, Daniel.”
    “What’s wrong with that idea? Sure, it’s not Wainwright’s style, but you and me agree he went up in smoke with his prison pals. Does it necessarily follow that his whatever you want to call him—successor, avenger—is going to do the same thing the same way he’d have done it?”
    “No.” But it didn’t feel right. And where did Boxman fit in?
    An uneven clomping sound penetrated the hum of gravelly voices and someone’s eerie fiddle. When the smoke and mist parted, he saw a mostly toothless old man with a big black mug beaming at him.
    “Name’s Rooney Blume,” the man announced in a tone that sounded as papery as his skin looked. “My nose tells me you represent the law. Gift you sent tells me you got an interest in our legend.” At a nod from Rogan, his smile spread to ghastly proportions. He clomped closer, lowered his thin body onto a chair. “Well, then. My great-granddad times seven was among the first to settle in this town.” He eased his already empty mug forward. “Year after he got here, the evil came on him, and he started killing folks. Until one night he went to bed a man. And woke up a big black raven.”
    * * *
    T HE MAN WHO WATCHED J ASMINE through the cottage window hadn’t needed to follow her here. He’d known Rogan would bring her. Flies to the spiderweb, and it made no difference to him how many of them got tangled up and died. Only Jasmine mattered. Beautiful, long-limbed, raven-haired Jasmine, with her