Have Yourself a Merry Little Witness

by Dakota Cassidy

  The way he said those words, as though I should pity him because he was going to feed his hostage—his victim—made my stomach roll. I’m pretty sure some of that upset had to do with the gunk Hobbs had given me, but I felt like I was on a Tilt-A-Whirl.

  “And then what, Westcott? What were you going to do then?”

  He shook his head, his eyes wild. “I don’t know!” he moaned. “They didn’t know who I was. The only person who knew was your uncle because when I was fighting with Gable, he pulled up my mask. I was careful, Hal. I was always careful when I brought them food. When I drugged them. I was so careful!”

  The wind tore at my jacket, slashing at my face, but I wanted blood. I wanted him to suffer the way he’d allowed their parents and my uncle to suffer.

  “And you were going to be the hero, weren’t you, Westcott Morgan?” I sneered his name. “You were going to dump them somewhere and find them, bring them home, and then you could be the hero of the story you created! That’s what you were going to do. You’re repulsive!”

  His breathing shifted to almost a pant. “I just wanted a story. A good story. That’s all. I didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt!”

  “And now what, Westcott? What are you going to do with us now? Shoot us?” I asked, baiting him, knowing it would frighten the girls but doing it anyway.

  His eyes grew round and wide, filling with the tears of a man in way over his head. “I don’t have a choice, Hal. You’ve left me no choice. Don’t you see? I can’t let you live! You asked too many questions. Too many! You saw Jasmine’s mother. You were at the library today… That’s where I first got the idea for this crazy plan. While I was sitting there with Kerry, just talking about nothing.”

  As much as I wanted to stroll down memory lane with him, right now, I only wanted out—and I needed but a moment’s peace to get there. I could have the answers to my questions later.

  I leered at him, making my eyes go wide and turning my mouth into a grimace of disgust, hoping to incite him. “So do it, Westcott. Do it, you coward!” I moved closer as he pointed that gun at me under the light of the moon. “Kill us, you sad sack of horse dung! Kill us all!” I screamed, spit flying from my mouth.

  The moment of surprise in his eyes was the moment I needed to bellow, “Strength of ten men, draw me near, save me from the thing I fear!”

  With those words, words I prayed were right, I ran at Westcott with everything I had, steamrolling him square in the middle of his stomach with the top of my stuffed-up head.

  As he doubled over and fell to the ground as though a wrecking ball had rammed into him, and I fell on top of him, I roared, “Run, girls! Run, and don’t stop running until you find help!”

  I heard the thunder of feet behind me just as Westcott was recuperating, and I knew, in this vacuum of stress, I had to stop him physically, because a spell was an even riskier proposition than it had been two seconds ago.

  He jammed his fingers into my cheekbones, latching onto my face and screaming his rage, throwing me from him. I landed in the snow, hard-packed and like knives in my back.

  I had no idea where we were, no earthly idea other than the flash of trees I saw as he tossed me off him.

  My head cracked against something hard, leaving me on my side with the wind knocked out of me. Snow pelted my face, the wind ate at my skin, my body ached.

  And then I saw Westcott’s hands reaching for the gun, his arms stretching, the grunts of his struggle ringing in my ears.

  So look, I don’t know how else to explain this other than I’d just binge-watched Game of Thrones (yes, I know. I was way late to the party. But better late than never), and in my crazy mixed-up panic, I saw Jason Momoa’s character, Khal Drogo, in my head.

  That was only seconds before I yelped, my ribs burning from the effort, “Westcott, no!”

  He looked to me—and what had once been grit and determination in his gaze was now complete terror.

  “How?” he screeched in abject fear.

  Again, I don’t know how I did it, but I guess I’d conjured up Khal Drogo’s face instead of a transportation spell.

  No, cloaking yourself in someone else’s countenance isn’t even remotely like a transportation spell. I get that. But I worked with what I had and tried not to laugh out loud at the idea of Jason Momoa’s head on my short little body.

  Westcott’s disbelief gave me enough time to scramble to my feet and grab the gun. Huffing and puffing, I clung to it and pointed it at his chest. Gasping for air, I managed to order, “Don’t move, or I swear on Daenerys Targaryen, I’ll shoot you!”

  “Oh, Kitten. What have you done?” Stiles asked me with a smile.

  Sitting on the edge of the ambulance’s backend, I pulled the warm blanket around my shoulders and shrugged. “Let’s just say, I don’t think Westcott’s a fan of Game of Thrones.”

  “And can you fix that?” he asked under his breath. “Because he’s carrying on something fierce about, of all things, Jason Momoa.”

  I looked up at him, my eyes grainy and tired. “I can, but let me enjoy the moment for just a little longer, will you?”

  “I can’t believe you figured it out.”

  Shaking my head, I snorted. “And again, I was a day late and a dollar short. I would have preferred to find him, tell you, and avoid being concussed.”

  Stiles laughed. “You can’t blame yourself for the fact that he whacked you over the head before you could tell me.”

  “You’re right. I did figure it out before he whacked me over the head and drugged me, and I was going to text it all to you so you could arrest him, and instead, I ended up in shackles in some weird half-underground shed in the deepest origins of the woods with a likely concussion and the worst stuffy nose ever.”

  Stiles laughed and pulled me to his chest for a quick hug. “How did you figure it out, anyway?”

  I couldn’t wait to tell my sister Stevie, a crime-solving expert, that I’d actually figured out a crime. “It was a combo pack of whammies. That University of Virginia thing was sticking to me like glue, but then I remembered that was because Dean Maverick had mentioned it’s where he got his law degree. So at first I thought it was him, you know, creating a crime to cash in on some lawsuits.”

  “But?” Stiles asked, his eyebrows raised as he tightened the blanket around me.

  “But while he’s a total tool, the talking-funny thing and the smell of cigarette smoke didn’t jive with him. Though, the crease in his pants sure fit. He does like a nice cheap suit.”

  Stiles brow furrowed. “Still don’t know where you’re going with this, Hal.”

  “Talking funny was what made me check Westcott Morgan’s page on Facebook. He’s a writer. They know all sorts of words and phrases unique to other countries, right?”

  “Right…”

  I shrugged. “He called me m’lady when we first met, and used the words ’tis I when he introduced himself. That was what made me suspicious, but when I got to his page, there was a picture of him at his friend’s wedding the night of Gable’s murder—and he had on a suit with creased pants and a cigarette in his hand. Lots of people smoke when they’re stressed, right? And I’d suppose he was pretty stressed after kidnapping three women and holding them hostage, but he was probably especially stressed when he went to get that SD card, and in the process of moving Kerry so he could dump her and look like a hero, she got away.”

  Stiles blew out a long breath and rubbed his hands together. “I still don’t know how the heck she survived out here in the bitter cold for two days.”

  I shivered, so grateful she had. “Me neither, but miracles happen all the time, Stiles. All the time.”

  He gave me a light nudge. “That’s fair. Is there more I should know? You know, in case someone asks me how you figured this out?”

  “Well, coincidence would have it that Westcott went to the University of Virginia, too, and he’s pretty skilled at taekwondo, which explains what Officer Little said about the guy who attacked U
ncle Monty.”

  A look of realization came over Stiles’s face. “Ohhh, he said he fought like an amped-up ninja, right? He couldn’t stop talking about how the department should pay for us to have classes in martial arts.”

  “Well,” I teased, “he did get away…”

  Stiles paused for a second and then he pulled his phone from his pocket and said, “So lover boy’s blowing up my phone right now, worried sick about you. I say we call it a night, and get you back to him before he blows a gasket next.”

  My heart smiled at that. Right there in my chest.

  Chuckling, I asked, “Do you think the officers need anything else for tonight, because I feel like poop and they look like they have their hands full with Westcott and his carrying on about Jason Momoa.”

  “Um, yeah, could you fix that so he forgets, because you’re my best friend and everyone in the department knows it. They’re going to start asking questions. And while you’re at it, fix the girls’ memories, too.”

  I snapped my fingers, the warmth of my magic surging through my veins. “There. All done. But I have one last question for you.”

  “That is?”

  “How am I supposed to explain how I got us out of those shackles?”

  He grinned. “Bobby pins, Kitten. Lots of bobby pins.”

  Epilogue

  Three Days Later

  “Oooh, yours is really nice, Hobbs,” I complimented. “For a boy from Texas, you’re all right.”

  He grinned his devastatingly handsome grin. “I admit, it’s a pretty good one.”

  We were lying side by side on the ground in the snow, beneath the big oak tree in my backyard, covered in Christmas lights at ten o’clock at night, staring at the stars and making snow angels and laughing like silly teenagers.

  I was feeling much better, and the knock to my head from Westcott Morgan didn’t hurt so much anymore, though I did still have an ugly knot.

  My Uncle Monty was due out of the hospital at the end of the week, and Uncle Darling had decided to extend their stay another couple of days so we could baby Monty and give him all the love he so deserved.

  Hobbs stopped moving his arms and looked over at me. “So how was Kerry today?”

  I sighed. There was a lot of trauma there. Trauma that would take time to heal, no doubt. “She’s better. Still shaky, but better.”

  Kerry had asked to see me when she found out I was the person who’d stayed with her in the ambulance, and I’d agreed.

  When I first saw her, thin and pale but with a semi-smile, I almost burst into tears, I was so glad she was awake. When she told me the chilling story of how she’d met Westcott Morgan, when she’d relayed how he’d lured her in, I could do nothing but be there for her in silent horror.

  “Did she tell you how she met Westcott?”

  “At a coffee shop in Chester Bay. They’d been dating about a week before he kidnapped her. But she didn’t know it was him who’d grabbed her, by the way. He wore a Halloween mask and he injected her with a mild sedative.”

  Hobbs’s lips thinned. “I don’t understand what he was going to do with her. Why did he take her from the shed in the first place?”

  “Well, from what Stiles said, by the time he took Kerry, he was already feeling the weight of what he’d done. The snowball effect of having to keep these women alive and fed and keep himself out of trouble was getting to be a lot. He was getting scared. Things got really out of hand when my uncle saw him. He still doesn’t remember that night, but of course, Westcott didn’t know that.”

  Uncle Monty, when showed Westcott’s picture, couldn’t remember him at all.

  “So he was going to get rid of her. That’s why she was in the trunk of the car that night, but they were caught on camera, and that’s why he needed the SD card.”

  I nodded my head. “That was the plan. He didn’t want to kill her, according to his statement. He just wanted to get rid of her so he was in the clear. So he roughed her up, drugged her, and threw her in the trunk. He was going to do the same thing with Jasmine and Lisa. Like I said, I think what really happened was, he got in too deep and he couldn’t get back out. So his solution was to ditch them and run, but he knew when Kerry escaped, the night he planned to dump her somewhere off the interstate, that his image would be on that SD card.”

  Hobbs sighed, folding his hands over his flat belly. “So he went back to get it, so there’d be no evidence; got caught up with Gable, who he didn’t expect to pull a shotgun on him; got into a fight, managed to get the gun, and shot him?”

  I flapped my arms in the cold snow. “And knocked Uncle Monty out cold—but not before Gable managed to pull off his mask. Uh-huh. That’s how it went down.”

  “Remember you mentioned Anna said Gable seemed agitated and she thought he was drinking again, but he didn’t smell like alcohol? Do you think he saw something the night Kerry escaped?”

  “Actually, Stiles told me they suspect it was probably because Mr. Feeney had offered Gable a partnership in the store and he was nervous and excited and wanted to surprise Anna with the news. Mr. Feeney was looking to retire and Anna found the papers with the offer in Gable’s desk when she was going through it for their life insurance policy.”

  The disgust in Hobbs’s voice was evident. “Man, what a shame for Anna and Gable. And Westcott did all that to create a story big enough to get himself noticed?”

  “One he hoped would go national and gain him the notoriety he so desperately craved. Sort of like the guy who starts fires and is the first one on the scene to put them out, then comes off looking like a hero.”

  Hobbs scoffed. “That duplicitous little weasel. When I think about the effort that took. I mean, he chose girls who not only looked similar, but had similar backgrounds, two of whom he basically wooed.”

  Nodding, I stopped flapping my arms because they still hurt after my struggle with Westcott. “Jasmine claims the reason she gave him her number after she’d first met him was because he was, in her words, chivalrous. That’s who she was talking to on the phone when her mother overheard.”

  “But she didn’t go out with him, right? Only Kerry did?”

  I stared up at the lights on the icy fingers of the tree. “Right. He asked, but Jasmine declined due to heavy schoolwork. Kerry was besotted with him after a couple of dates, then he kidnapped her.”

  “Basically, he groomed her.” He shivered. “How thoroughly chilling.”

  “Tell me about it,” I muttered. “But the good news is, he didn’t hurt the girls…if you know what I mean…”

  Hobbs stopped flapping his arms and rolled to his side to look at me. “I do know what you mean, and I’m grateful they won’t have that on their plates, too.”

  “Me too. And what a Christmas gift to have all three girls safe and home. I’m so grateful.” So grateful.

  “So the ladies have reported you were pretty brave, Ms. Hal.”

  I rolled to my side, as well. “That’s ridiculous. I just distracted him long enough for them to get away.”

  “While you held him at gunpoint and called the police with his phone. How did you get the gun away from him?” The pride in his voice made me blush.

  That was a story for another day.

  Instead, I smiled at him. “Yoga.”

  “I’d like for you to teach me some of that brand of yoga.”

  “Do you think you’ll be held at gunpoint anytime soon, Cowboy?”

  “Well, we are two for two.”

  “Nuh-uh, Cowboy. I’m two for two. You’re one for two,” I teased with a poke to his arm.

  He chuckled, deep and resonant. “Hey, know what?”

  I knew I wanted to ask him what he thought the typewriter in my visions was all about—something we still hadn’t discussed. That’s what. But the look in his eyes said it could wait.

  “What?”

  “I’m really glad you’re okay.”

  “I’m really glad I’m okay, too.”

  “And now you know what?
”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to kiss you. That’s what.”

  And he did.

  Phew, did he ever.

  The End

  Thank you for joining Hal and her pals for Have Yourself a Merry Little Witness, I hope you’ll come back for book three titled, One Corpse Open Slay!

  Note From Dakota Cassidy

  I do hope you enjoyed this book, I’d so appreciate it if you’d help others enjoy it too.

  Recommend it. Please help other readers find this book by recommending it.

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  About The Author

  Dakota Cassidy is a USA Today bestselling author with over eighty books. She writes laugh-out-loud cozy mysteries, romantic comedy, grab-some-ice erotic romance, hot and sexy alpha males, paranormal shifters, contemporary kick-butt women, and more.

  She received a starred review from Publishers Weekly for Talk Dirty to Me, won a Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award for Kiss and Hell, along with many review site recommended reads and reviewer top pick awards.

  Dakota lives in the gorgeous state of Oregon with her real-life hero and her dogs, and she loves hearing from readers!

  Other Books By Dakota Cassidy

  Visit Dakota’s website at http://www.dakotacassidy.com for more information.

  A Lemon Layne Mystery, a Contemporary Cozy Mystery Series

  1. Prawn of the Dead

  2. Play That Funky Music White Koi

  Witchless In Seattle Mysteries, a Paranormal Cozy Mystery series

  1. Witch Slapped