by Sofia Belle
“Not available… is he alive?” The Chief’s voice was tight. “Tell me he’s okay.”
“He’s sleeping, but he’s fine.”
“You didn’t think to ask him where he put the valuables before you put him out?”
“I did ask,” she retorted. “He told me under the floorboards near the toilet.”
“He lied.”
“Well, I know that now, so you can thank him for lying about it. If he hadn’t lied, I would’ve already been gone, and neither of you would’ve been in this situation.”
The tension levels, which had been high to start, only grew as I sat in my handcuffs. There was no point in waiting any longer. I muttered the same unlocking spell I’d used before, catching the metal cuffs before they hit the ground and clattered, giving away my newfound freedom.
“We’re running out of floor space to pull up,” the Chief was saying as I crept towards the door, carrying my handcuffs with me and keeping my hands behind my back in case Trisha peeked inside the room. “If I yank up a few more, we’re going to fall right through and land on his dining room table.”
“Pull it up. We’ll fall wherever we have to.”
I stepped closer to the door, holding my breath as one of the floorboards creaked under my weight. The Chief must have heard the squeak because he coughed loud, long, and hard—harder than normal.
“Stop it, that’s disgusting,” Trisha said. “Cover your mouth or use a tissue. Don’t you have manners?”
The Chief spluttered a few more times, his cough muted probably by the crook of his elbow or the back of his hand. “Sorry,” he said. “Bit of dust went down the wrong pipe.”
“I’m not interested in excuses. I’m interested in finding out whatever’s under those floorboards.”
The cough had given me all of the time I needed to close the remaining distance between my spot in the corner and the doorway. I hovered at the edge, my back pressed against the wall. I didn’t dare peek around the corner, not yet. But the hallway was situated so that if Trisha took even one step backwards out of the bathroom, I’d be able to see her. And that’s when I’d pounce.
“What’s that, there?” Trisha said. “You’re not trying to hide that, are you?”
“Like I’ve said before, if I pull up anymore floor, we’ll be falling through. If I didn’t touch something, it’s because I’d prefer to keep my feet on firm ground.”
“You’re lying. That shiny thing there, in the corner. What is that?”
“You might want to take a step back. I’ll need a sledgehammer to get that out.”
“You make one false move and I shoot you,” she said. “I’m not afraid to pull the trigger.”
The Chief mumbled a response, but I was too busy watching, waiting for that perfect second. When it finally came, I was ready.
Trisha took two steps backwards, moving from the bathroom into the hallway just above the stairs. Her arms were extended straight from her body, the gun trained towards the Chief as promised.
Then, her head turned to look into the bedroom where she’d left me.
At that moment, I made my move.
Lunging, I screamed like a wildcat and flailed my arms at the gun as I shot across the few feet separating us. A loud bang sounded as the gun went off, the bullet thankfully lodging somewhere in the ceiling. A bit of plaster rained down on the pair of us, but I hardly noticed.
Trisha and I tangled on the floor above the stairs, scratching, pulling, screaming. The gun clattered away as I swept my right hand around with a luckily timed punch. Footsteps pounded as the Chief retrieved the gun, training it on the both of us.
“Get out of there, Rosie!” he shouted. “Get away.”
But I couldn’t move. Trisha had me in some sort of a headlock and my legs kicked and thrashed like a tornado. There was no way the Chief could get off a clean shot. Trisha was smart; she’d kept my body between her and the Chief, using me like a shield as she simultaneously tried to choke me.
Somehow, I struck an elbow to her soft stomach and she groaned. I took the moment to leap to my feet, but before I could take a single step towards the Chief, she’d whipped me back against the wall. The Chief reached out for me, but Trisha beat him to it, and the both of us tumbled down the stairs, half sliding, half falling all the way down.
She took the brunt of the bumps and bruises along the way, until we got to the bottom. My head landed with a crack on the cement landing so loud it rattled my brains. Stars erupted and flooded my vision, and I couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t move.
The next thing I knew, the Chief was kneeling over me, his hands on my shoulders. “Can you hear me?”
I blinked, but my eyelids were too heavy, so I let them close. I just wanted to sleep…
“Rosie, stay with me.” He shook my shoulders. “Open your eyes. Can you hear me?”
I opened my eyes, my gaze instantly locking on his. Something in his eyes, a pleading, hopeful expression gave me the jolt I needed to sit up. More stars popped and fizzled and exploded in my brains, but I sat still until they slowly faded away. I gave a light test shake of my head. “I think I’m okay.”
“What’s my name?”
I blinked. “Chief.”
“Good.”
“Where did she go?”
“We’ll find her.” The Chief pulled out a phone and started to dial. “I’ll get people out looking for her. It won’t take long.”
“No, go,” I said. “I’m fine. Go get her, Chief.”
“But—”
“No!” I hauled myself to my feet. The last thing I wanted to do was stand up, but I knew the Chief would never leave my side if he thought I wasn’t capable of handling myself. So I strapped on my big girl shorts and pasted a smile on my face. “Go. I’m going to go check on Reynolds.”
“Don’t do anything—just leave him be. Wait here. Sit.”
“No argument.” I raised my hands, sitting on the steps. “I promise I’ll listen this time. Just go.”
“Are you sure you’re alright?”
“Go!”
I’m not sure how long I sat on those steps, but it couldn’t have been more than ten minutes. Finally, when I could stand up without feeling an overwhelming urge to vomit, I pulled myself up the stairs and let myself into the bedroom on the other side of the bathroom, opposite from where I’d been cuffed.
Reynolds lay on the floor, unmoving, and I crossed the room in a second, forgetting all about my own aches and pains. I fell to my knees next to him, feeling for a pulse. It was there. And he was breathing. As promised, Trisha had only knocked Reynolds out.
For a moment I wondered if she’d poisoned him too, but quickly dismissed the idea. For starters, Hank had died in minutes after sipping that wine. Secondly, there was no way Trisha would’ve gotten rid of him without first getting those valuables in her hand—whatever they were.
I rested a hand on his forehead, but it wasn’t hot. Just when I was about to cover him with a blanket, the trusty sounds of sirens arrived outside, and I forced myself to stand again and move to the top of the staircase.
The front door burst open, and I waved weakly from the bannister. “Up here,” I called. “We have a man unconscious.”
Two cops and a paramedic rushed up the stairs, and the second they entered the room, I sat down, overcome with more weariness than I’d ever experienced in my life. My bones hurt, my soul was exhausted, my mind was shredded to bits.
I wanted only to sleep.
Until that face appeared in the doorway. Those eyes I’d come so used to seeing. That smile I’d come to know and love. That man who could make me laugh with a single expression and make me feel safe with a whisper into my ear.
“Rosie,” he said, climbing the stairs and sitting next to me. “Great work in there, Houdini. We got her.”
“Trisha? She’s done?”
“Arrested. You’re safe. We’ll make you all better. I’ll take you on so many dates to cheer you up.”
&
nbsp; “Hey buddy, that’s what you want. You didn’t ask me what I want.”
“Well?” He softly brushed a piece of hair out of my face, gingerly brushing it over the bump on my scalp from where I’d hit the ground. “What would make you happy?”
I wedged my way as close as I could to his chest, deeper into his arms, so close I could feel the beat of his heart. “I want a second date.”
Chapter 26
Sitting in my office a few days later, the pounding headache had finally turned into a dull buzz in the back of my skull, and any remaining bruises from the car incident had faded to near nothingness, much to the Chief’s never-ending skepticism.
My fingers flew over the keyboard, and I didn’t notice that the sun had begun its journey downward for the night. Had I even eaten lunch? I couldn’t remember. I just typed and typed, the story flowing right on out of me for the first time in a while.
Writing today was easier than ever—mostly. Now and again, it became harder because I was more invested in this story than in the words I churned out all the time about hair dryers. However, it was easy in the sense that this time, I could write from the heart. No research required.
A phone call interrupted my thoughts. The fact that I even heard the ringing noise must have meant I was getting tired. When I glanced down at my office line, I saw a blinking number six. Six messages? How had I missed six phone calls? No doubt this was Layla, worried about my mental state. If I didn’t answer, she’d like send Madrina popping in here, and we didn’t need that.
“Hey, I’m fine,” I said. “Keep your undies untwisted.”
The voice on the other end of the line cleared its throat. It was a distinctly male voice. “I didn’t know my undies were in danger of being twisted in the first place.”
I laughed, sitting back in my chair and kicking my feet up on the edge of the desk. “Chief! What brings you to call The Witch Weekly? I thought it was Layla. Do I get that exclusive interview with you yet?”
“Have an exclusive dinner with me and we’ll see.”
“Ooh, very romantic. I like when you talk business like that.”
“There’s a lot more where that came from.”
I shook my head, grateful for the distance of a phone line between the two of us. If he could see the goofy smile lighting up my face, I might just be mortified.
In the few days since the incident at the Reynolds household, we’d remained friendly. We hadn’t had that second date yet, since both of us had work to catch up on, families to see, and bruises needing rest.
Finally, with Layla’s help, we’d been able to put something on the calendar for tomorrow. I was surprised by how excited I was for the occasion. Butterflies in my rib cage jolted to high alert, and I found myself humming and thinking about tomorrow evening as I strolled down the halls during breaks at work.
“So, what’s eating you?” I teased. “You know I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“We found it!’
“You found it?” I hesitated, hoping against hope he had an answer for me.
Even after the cops had taken Trisha away and locked her up, we still hadn’t been able to figure out what Reynolds had intended to hide in the secret chamber within the piping of his bathroom. He had blamed the whole thing on Hank, saying the construction guy had put it in there without his knowledge.
Nobody believed him, but since Hank was dead and we could find anything else to prove Reynolds was guilty of anything at all, we had to leave it be. Besides the one blueprint at Hank’s house, there was strangely little documentation regarding the deal between Hank and Reynolds. If the latter still had the contract, it was locked up somewhere we hadn’t yet found.
“We’ve arrested Reynolds,” the Chief said. “Though that’s just the type of the iceberg. Reynolds was trying to get into the business of fencing stolen goods to high priced buyers.”
“What did he have on him?”
“You know that story you wanted to write?”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, exasperated. “Get to the point! What did he have?”
“He had the gems stolen from the Museum of Magic on him!”
“No!”
“Yes.”
I blinked. “I can hardly believe it.”
“You solved two cases in one, my dear.”
“I didn’t solve anything, that was all you.”
He laughed softly. “Shall we call it teamwork?”
“Let’s call it what it is,” I said. “Teamwork.”
“This doesn’t solve everything,” the Chief said, turning businesslike once more. “I’d venture so far to say it opens up a new can of worms. We’ve arrested Reynolds and taken him into the station, but we haven’t found the thieves who stole the gemstones.”
“That sounds like another case for Team Chief & Rosie.”
“Aren’t you busy trying to save the newspaper? Shouldn’t that be taking up your time?”
“They go hand in hand. You know, an article about a jewel thief might go a long way in getting the readership up.”
“What are you working on right now?”
“You can read it when it comes out in a few days,” I said, blushing as I read the title of the article plastered across my screen. “The first post is due tomorrow, and the next few will be published through the end of the week. At the end of next week, we’ll know whether or not I have a job.”
“If anyone can pull it off, you can.”
What I didn’t tell him was that the first post had already went live. The article was due tomorrow, but I’d gotten an email from Anderson right before the phone call. I’d sent him the article for editing and review, but apparently he’d liked it so much that he’d pressed the Publish button to the online blog a day early.
I wasn’t ready to read the post, let alone send it to the Chief. He could read the article in the privacy of his own home. I didn’t want to know about it or hear about it, otherwise I might just die.
“So you’re going to catch a thief now,” I said. “What happens to Reynolds?”
“As far as we know, this was his first offense. He’ll be in prison, but it’s likely we’ll be able to strike a deal with him to get him to talk; it’s the thieves we want at the end of the day.”
“And Crazy Dan?”
“He didn’t do anything wrong, not that we’ve been able to find. Trisha admitted to stealing his car, and she confessed to doctoring the bottles of wine to set off Hank’s allergic reaction. She’ll be in prison for a long, long time. As for Dan, his biggest offense is anger-management, which we’ve recommended he get checked out by a professional.”
It had turned out that Dan had walked over to his neighbor’s house the night I was hit by the car. They’d played video games the entire evening, and he hadn’t even noticed his missing car.
Trisha had followed me around during the day, she’d admitted, in order to find out who else I’d been looking into as suspects. When she saw my interaction with Dan, she’d figured out the perfect plan. Get rid of me, and make it look like a knee-jerk reaction from Dan when she’d hit me with his car.
The one problem? She underestimated Madrina. Trisha didn’t get rid of me, she’d only made me more upset, which in turn got the Chief upset. She’d led us straight to her own downfall.
“Say,” the Chief said. “I know I’m going to see you tomorrow. But is there any chance you could squeeze in date number one and a half tonight? I’ll buy you a pretzel.”
I hesitated, my breath hitching in my throat. The thought of moving forward with this whole dating idea—for real, not for the premise of an article—scared me. But as I glanced at my newly published, hot off the presses headline, I knew what I had to do. “I’d love that. Are you free now?”
Epilogue
A Girl’s Guide to Falling in Love
This week, reporter Rosie Shaw went undercover to find the answer to question women are asking everywhere—how does one fall in love?
The following serie
s of blog posts will detail Rosie’s every effort to find her soulmate. Throughout the entire process, she’ll be documenting her journey every step of the way. Stay tuned for the first article coming tomorrow…
In the meantime, she wants to leave you with this:
Sometimes, falling in love isn’t about going undercover. Sometimes, falling in love is being open to opportunities. It’s about saying yes. And it’s about being yourself.
~Rosie Shaw~
The End
Author’s Note
Dear Readers,
Thank you so much for taking the time to read the story! I hope you enjoyed it. If you feel inclined to leave a review on Amazon, I always appreciate them. Thank you, and best wishes for a happy New Year!
Sincerely,
Sofia
Table of Contents
The Witch Weekly
Synopsis
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Epilogue
The End
Author’s Note