Raven's Cove

The rest of his sentence was swallowed up in a sizzle of sound that had Jasmine jerking the handset from her ear a second time.

“Daniel?” she tried from a distance.

But there was only fuzzy noise. And a moment later not even that as both the lights and her phone went dead.

* * *

HE LINGERED FOR AN exhilarating moment in the rain and gusting wind. Lingered and savored and visualized the prize.

There’d been no hitches so far, no obstacles thrown down that he couldn’t handle. They would come, though, and from more than one direction, because it was the woman’s turn now. Her long-overdue, highly anticipated turn.

Anger bubbled like hot acid. But he needed to maintain control, fight for balance. He couldn’t allow a single wrong emotion to slip in or out.

Lightning directly above fractured the night. Watching it fade, he ramped up his resolve, shoved a hand in his jacket pocket and prepared to set the wheels of Jasmine Ellis’s death in motion.

* * *

JASMINE WONDERED DISTANTLY how her mother, her only family, would react to Daniel’s call.

Colleen Ellis had been forty-four years old when she’d marched into a sperm bank and been impregnated. Time was right, she’d decided. Her tenure at Harvard was secure, and her internal clock was winding down.

She’d taught art history for twenty-five years after Jasmine’s birth, then she’d packed up her hiking boots and cameras and headed for Scotland in search of the Loch Ness monster.

Confirming the existence of at least one legendary beast was the lone item on Colleen Ellis’s bucket list. When Nessie had failed to materialize, she’d shifted her attention to the fabled giant octopus off the coast of Bermuda. Currently, she was hunting for Bigfoot in the Olympic Mountains.

Colleen could surely decipher the raven’s-feather references, Jasmine suspected, if not the implications of what they portended.

Holding tight to Boris’s collar, Jasmine waited until her emergency lights kicked in.

Rain pounded the roof and windows like ferocious fists. As if galvanized by them, her thoughts took off in two directions.

The first led her back more than a year and a half to a night much like this one. On that night, a dark-haired, dark-eyed man had appeared at her safe house, a stranger who had simultaneously terrified and fascinated her.

The second took her back six weeks, to Captain Ballard’s funeral. Once again, the man had appeared in the night. Maybe he’d appeared out of it. Either way, she’d turned and there he’d been, standing behind her, more familiar this time, but no less dangerous and certainly no less fascinating.

His name was Rogan. Just that, no more. Ballard had assured her he was a cop. Not the sort you could pin down to any one division or captain—or any one city or state, for that matter. Rogan went where required as required and stayed until the job he’d been sent to do was done. Then, poof, back into the night.

Not that Jasmine didn’t appreciate his mysterious qualities. She was, after all, the head of acquisitions at Salem’s Museum of Early American Artifacts and Antiquities, or Witch House, as it was more commonly known, since almost every piece there had a witch-related story attached to it.

More than once she’d considered working a figure of Rogan into an exhibit. Hypnotic, haunting man, dressed in black, surrounded by swirling shadows. She’d highlight his incredible eyes, give him a murky past and a vaguely occult ancestor. Any female viewing him was bound to be as mesmerized as she’d been when she’d met him.

Intriguing though it was, the idea shattered with the next blast of wind.

Good, because she really didn’t want to think about Rogan or the circumstances of their first meeting. That would lead her back to the conversation she’d just had with her ex, which would lead her to Rogan, and on and on.

Determined to break the cycle, she went to the fridge for a soft drink. She was debating her choices when Boris growled.

Bumping the door closed with her hip, Jasmine surveyed the darker shadows. “Please tell me that wasn’t a threatening sound.”

The dog gave a sharp bark.

She listened, but heard nothing above the storm. Until…

On the heels of the thunder, and courtesy of a lull in the wind, she caught a faint sound, like a swish of leather.

Now, that wasn’t part of the storm. There was someone behind her.

Fighting a spurt of panic, she ducked sideways. But the intruder was faster and apparently more intuitive. Before she could evade him, a hand came down on her mouth, and she was hauled back against a man’s strong, hard body.

Chapter Two

Jasmine knew who it was before he lowered his mouth to the side of her head. Using both hands, she reached up and snatched Rogan’s palm away.

“Quiet,” he warned in a deceptively soft voice.

She used temper to beat down fear. “What the hell are you doing in my kitchen?”

She kept the question to a hiss, but even that must have been too loud, because he covered her mouth again. “Look out the window, Jasmine.”

Her gaze shot to the rain-washed glass. Lightning forked down somewhere in the vicinity of Witch House. The trees were listing, and… Her eyes widened. The neighbors’ lights were on!

A shiver skated along her spine. Her blood ran cold, but she didn’t move, wouldn’t let herself react.

“No sound.” Rogan’s breath was warm and undeniably sensual in her ear.

Eyes fixed on the lights, Jasmine nodded.

He removed his hand, but kept her close. Beside them, Boris stood absolutely still.

Jasmine waited, breath held. Until her vision began to blur, then she let it out. Slowly, deliberately and with Daniel’s words repeating in her head.

Something bad’s going on…

Did Rogan agree? Stupid question. He was here. And Rogan never did anything without a very good reason.

Of course knowing that wasn’t exactly reassuring. Neither was the silence that vibrated beneath the storm.

Thunder rolled again. Rogan motioned for Boris to move. Since he’d trained the dog, Boris responded instantly. Although, Jasmine noted, he never actually left her side.

“Worked your magic on him, too, huh?” In the barely there light, she caught the gleam of amusement in Rogan’s eyes—a split second before they shifted to a distant window.

He nudged her toward the kitchen island, handed her a gun. “I’m going to trust you haven’t forgotten how to use it.”

She would have responded if there’d been any point. Or time. Because he was gone with the last word.

Alert and ready to protect, Boris assumed a ferocious stance between his mistress and the tall pane of glass.

Her heart was hammering, Jasmine realized, almost louder than the thunder. But she had to think past her fear, reason it out.