Snow Way Out: A Mystic Snow Globe Romantic Mystery (The Mystic Snow Globe Mystery Series Book 2)

by M. Z. Andrews

“Of course, I could be completely wrong about all of that, but it sure sounds possible, doesn’t it?”

  “Evanee, have you told anyone about this hypothesis of yours?”

  Evanee swallowed hard. Lane literally had to be there any second. She’d left him the message, and it had to be noon by now. She didn’t know how to answer Ace. She decided to lie. “Oh, well, of course I did.”

  “Who’d you tell?”

  “Lane.”

  “Just Lane?”

  Evanee nodded. “He should be here any second, you know.” She looked at her watch. “Any second,” she repeated to herself.

  “Well, listen, Evanee, it’s been good chatting with you, but you know, I’ve gotta get going. I have a thing I just remembered I need to attend to. I think I’ll let you finish setting up the pub before my wife gets upset that I wasted a bunch of your time with this.”

  Evanee gave him her best fake smile. “Oh, yeah. Well, I’ll talk to you later, then.”

  She turned to give Whitley a side glance as Ace disappeared from the doorway. “Well, that was—”

  Her words were cut short when all of a sudden, the pub’s two-by-four-framed door slammed shut.

  “What the—?”

  Evanee rushed to the door and pressed against it. It didn’t want to budge.

  “Evanee, what’s going on?” asked Whitley.

  Evanee reared back and threw her shoulder into the door, but it was obvious someone had slid something into the door handle, essentially locking them inside.

  “Ace locked us in here,” she said. She pounded her fists on the door. “Ace! Let me out!”

  When he didn’t immediately return to open the door, she pressed against the windows, hoping the plywood window covers weren’t still padlocked down. But they didn’t want to budge either. Evanee looked around the room. There was very little light inside. The small bit there was only came from the crack in the walls. She looked around for something that could break through plywood but found nothing.

  And then suddenly, she smelled something. She’d recognize that smell anywhere. Burning wood!

  Whitley pointed to the side of the building. “Oh my gosh! Evanee, look! Fire!”

  39

  Lane parked his truck next to Evanee’s Tahoe and began to make his way towards the fairgrounds. The whole place looked abandoned, but he could plainly hear someone speaking on a bullhorn somewhere in the distance. The older couple who had manned the entrance booth earlier were gone, so Lane veered towards the castle.

  As he rounded the corner, he saw a group of people sitting in the stands. The announcer was talking about the parade route and what people were supposed to do while walking in the parade. He glanced around as he walked, scanning the area for Evanee, but he didn’t see her.

  Then out of nowhere, her furry gray cat came running up to him, bounding into his arms like a cheetah attacking his prey and nearly throwing him off balance.

  “Hey!” he said, smiling. “Good to see you too.” He hadn’t realized how much her cat actually liked him.

  The cat meowed at him, but quickly the meowing morphed into more of a warbling sound, and the next thing Lane knew, the cat was singing to him. He stared at it, entranced. When it was done, he sucked in his breath.

  “I’ve got to get to Evanee!”

  Somehow certain that she was at the pub, he began to run. He had a bad feeling that something was wrong. As he sprinted through the medieval village, he came to a clearing and saw what appeared to be the pub on fire!

  Muffled screams came from inside! Evanee!

  He bolted towards the building, and just as he did, he saw Ace Adams sauntering off towards the parking lot, as if he hadn’t noticed the smoke or the fire or heard Evanee’s screams!

  “Ace!” Lane hollered at him. “Help!”

  Ace Adams turned around. He smiled and waved when he saw Lane, and then he did something Lane couldn’t believe. He pulled a gun out of a holster beneath his shirt.

  Lane’s eyes widened. “What the—” He fell to the ground just as a bullet whizzed past his head. He army-crawled several feet to a concrete bathroom that had been dressed up to look like an old-time outhouse, and when he had cover, he scrambled to his feet.

  “Come on out, Lane,” hollered Ace. “The jig is up.”

  “What jig?” bellowed Lane, his mind spinning. “Where’s Evanee, Ace?”

  “Oh, I’ve handled that little nosy one.”

  Lane felt like he’d had the wind knocked out of him. He was almost certain that Evanee was in the pub. He had to get to her! “Did you start that fire, Ace?”

  Ace chuckled. “You’ll have to be more specific. The one behind me, or the fire that killed your mother?”

  Lane’s eyes widened. “Both!”

  “Well, as your girlfriend well knows, too bad for her, I’m afraid, I happen to be guilty of both. But that little secret is going to die here today, with us. Now isn’t it?” Ace’s voice was slowly getting closer.

  Lane looked around for anything he could use as a weapon. A spade someone had left leaning against the bathroom caught his eye. Grabbing hold of it, he held it at the ready, waiting for Ace to come even closer.

  “So you were the one that killed Rachel?”

  “No need to play coy, Lane. Your girlfriend already told me she told you all of it. And she was spot-on. It was actually supposed to be Steve and Bluebell in that fire. I had no idea that Rachel was even in there. Poor woman. That fire wasn’t meant for her. It was meant for your father and my wife! They were having an affair!”

  Lane shook his head. “Ace, you’re wrong. They weren’t having an affair. I went and spoke to my father this morning. I wanted to know why Bluebell had gone over there. He said that she did want to get back together with him, but he was in love with my mother. Dad told her no. He told her to leave, Ace.”

  “That’s bull. They were having an affair!”

  “Who told you that, Ace? Because it’s not the truth. My dad was in love with my mother. He wouldn’t cheat on her.”

  “I saw Calvin over at the Sports Stop while I was waiting to meet Bluebell. Calvin told me that she’d just left to find Steve. When I asked him why she was going to see him, he told me he heard they were having an affair. I knew they’d dated before, but I was still dumbfounded.”

  Lane leaned his head back against the building. So that was what had happened. Calvin Lancaster’s lies had once again ruined his parents’ lives.

  “Calvin Lancaster was manipulating you, Ace. And you fell for it. He just wanted you and Bluebell to break up so she’d get back together with my dad. Then he could have my mom for himself. He was trying to stir the pot!”

  Lane could hear Evanee’s screams. He had to get to her!

  “No, that’s not true,” said Ace, just around the corner now.

  With his pulse thundering in his ears and his shovel at the ready, Lane leapt out and swung as hard as he could. The shovel forced the gun out of Ace’s hands and then smacked him in the side of the head. Ace fell to the ground with a thud.

  “Evanee! I’m coming!” he hollered.

  But he couldn’t hear anything coming from inside anymore.

  He didn’t have time to bother with Ace or the gun. He had to get to Evanee! By now, the fire had all but consumed the front panel of the building. He raced to the door. Ace had wedged a two-by-four into the handle, but it was starting to burn. He used the spade to unjam the board, and then he used it as a wedge to open the fiery door.

  Lying on the ground, huddled in a ball, Evanee had pulled an empty cardboard box over her head, trying to keep the smoke at bay. Lane’s heart dropped. He couldn’t tell if she was dead or alive.

  “Ev!” he bellowed before lunging through the smoke. He scooped her up and raced her outside, the smoke trailing behind them.

  “Help!” he yelled. “Somebody! Help!”

  He got Evanee onto the ground on her back. Her eyes were closed, and she wasn’t moving. “Evanee,” he hollered be
fore checking for a pulse. There it was. Faint, but there. He began to administer CPR, until finally, he got her back. She woke up sputtering and coughing.

  “Evanee!” he screamed. “Oh, thank God! You’re alive!”

  And then out of nowhere, a bullet grazed his shoulder, burning his skin. “Not for long!” said Ace from behind him.

  Lane threw his body over Evanee’s body to shield her from Ace’s gun.

  And then Lane heard another voice. “Ace? What’s going on?”

  “Bluebell?” cried Ace. “Bluebell, I can explain!”

  Lane looked down at Evanee, she was still struggling to breath. “Just breathe, Evanee. You’re gonna be okay. I gotta handle this.” Lane stood up and turned around, slowly keeping his hands by his sides.

  “The pub’s on fire!” said Bluebell, in shock. “And Ace, why do you have a gun? Is that a prop? It looks real.”

  “It’s a prop, sweetie,” said Ace, looking suddenly like a deer in the headlights.

  Lane shook his head. “It’s not a prop, Bluebell. It’s real.” He pointed to his shoulder, where the bullet had shaved some fabric from his shirt and skin from his body. “Ace just tried to kill me and Evanee. He started that fire.”

  Bluebell’s eyes widened and her head snapped back. “No, Ace would never!”

  “He did, Bluebell. He did because we figured out the truth about who started the fire that killed my mother.”

  Bluebell’s brow furrowed. “You’re not making any sense, Lane. I don’t understand.”

  Police sirens sounded in the distance.

  “Ace was the one who set the fire that killed my mom. He thought you and Steve were in there. He thought you two were having an affair.”

  “What!” she gasped. “Ace! Is that true?”

  “No, of course it isn’t true. The man’s lying.”

  “I’m not lying,” said Lane evenly. He fought to control his temper as every fiber in his body wanted to rip Ace Adams apart limb from limb for what he’d done to his mother, to his father, and now to the woman Lane was falling in love with. “He tried to kill me and Evanee too. He trapped her in the pub and set it on fire.”

  “And he killed Calvin Lancaster,” whispered Evanee from the ground.

  Lane spun around. “What!”

  Evanee nodded. “I went there earlier. Before I came here. Calvin’s dead. He was shot. It’s how I pieced everything together. Ace left here after we accused Bluebell. We were getting too close, Lane. He had to shut Calvin up before we learned more from him.”

  Bluebell’s head shook violently. “No, it can’t be true!”

  The emergency sirens were in the parking lot. He could hear them.

  “It is true. He thought you were having an affair with my father.”

  Bluebell turned to look at her husband then. “Ace? You really thought that? But I wasn’t cheating on you!”

  “I know you went over there to get him back,” said Ace, like his world was destroyed.

  “I wasn’t sure what I wanted. We had just started dating, and I was having a hard time believing that things between Steve and me were really over! I can’t believe you were the one that killed Rachel Dawson! And you never let on once the whole time we were married.”

  “I didn’t want you to know,” said Ace, hanging his head. “I didn’t want you to think you married a monster.”

  “You didn’t want me to know that you thought you were killing Steve and me!” she hollered at him. “You wanted me dead!”

  “Bluebell,” he begged, down on his knees now. “I wasn’t thinking clearly. I wasn’t. And Lancaster lied to me. He told me you were having an affair. It’s all his fault!”

  “So what if I had been having an affair! That’s no reason to try and kill me!” She shook her head as tears streamed down her face. Her shoulders shook. “Ace, what are the kids going to say about all this?”

  The look on Ace’s face said he’d never considered for a second that any of his children would ever find out his secret.

  And then the police and firemen were upon them. As they drew their weapons and descended upon the man with the gun, Lane rushed Jason Brewer, an EMT and a guy he’d gone to school with, over to Evanee. “Over here! She inhaled a lot of smoke,” he said.

  Jason held up a hand. “I’ve got her, Lane. Don’t worry. I’ll take good care of her. You go deal with all of this.”

  Lane squeezed Evanee’s hand and looked down into her big green eyes. He was so relieved that she was alive and was going to be alright. “I’m not leaving you, Ev, I promise. I need to go speak with the police, but I’ll be right back.”

  Evanee’s head bobbed lightly, and she managed to squeeze his hand back.

  He bent down and kissed her forehead. Then he rushed back over to the police and gave them a rundown of everything that had happened, starting with the fire that had killed his mother. When he was done giving his statement, he looked at the responding officer curiously.

  “How’d you even know we were here anyway?” he asked.

  “Gemma Greyson said she got a 911 message from Evanee Woods. We were told to go out to Calvin Lancaster’s place. We discovered him in the woods behind his house. He’d been shot. We knew we had to find Ms. Woods immediately. Ms. Greyson said if she wasn’t at the Lancaster place, she’d be out here.”

  Lane nodded. The realization that Evanee had just about died hit him hard. Tears welled up in his eyes as he looked across the field to Evanee, who now had an oxygen mask on and was being wheeled away on a stretcher.

  “Thank God Gemma thought to alert the police!”

  He only wondered why Evanee hadn’t called him herself! He just didn’t understand the woman. For the first time in his life, he’d finally started to fall in love with a woman, and yet she seemed bound and determined to push him away every chance he got. He just didn’t understand it.

  Lane watched as the EMTs wheeled her down the path towards the waiting ambulance. He couldn’t let her leave without him. He had to get to her.

  “Officer, I have to go.” Without hesitation, he took off after her. “Evanee! Wait!”

  40

  “Evanee! Wait!”

  Her name rode in on the breeze as she was wheeled towards the waiting ambulance. Thanks to the oxygen mask she wore, Evanee was finally able to breathe a little better, but the last fifteen minutes had been touch and go. She knew she’d almost died in that fire. And she knew exactly who’d saved her.

  “It’s Lane, Ev,” said Whitley, glancing over her shoulder.

  “Lane,” she whispered, her eyes opening.

  “Evanee!” His voice was getting closer.

  “Lane!” she said, louder now. She held out a hand to stop the EMT from pushing her. “Stop, please stop,” she begged.

  And then Lane was upon her, looking down at her with concern-filled eyes. “Evanee, are you alright?”

  To the chagrin of the EMTs, Evanee pulled the oxygen mask off so she could look up at Lane. The man that had saved her. Her prince. Her knight in shining armor.

  “You saved me,” she said quietly.

  “You almost died, Ev! I-I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “Lane, I…”

  The EMT forced the mask back on her face. “Ma’am, you need to leave it on.” He looked at up at Lane. “She needs the oxygen, Lane.”

  Lane grinned down at her, his eyes shining. “Yeah, ma’am, leave it on. Maybe then you’ll let me talk for once,” he said, grinning like a fool in love.

  Evanee giggled through the mask.

  “Evanee Woods, you have been nothing but a pain in my butt since the day I met you. You have to have everything in your life perfect. And you’re not willing to settle for anything less. Well, the truth is, I haven’t been willing to settle either. I’ve been looking for my princess. I’ve been looking for the woman that I could sweep off her feet. And I think I found her. But you refuse to let me be that guy. I know I’m not a prince, I know I don’t have a white horse…�
��

  Evanee reached out and squeezed Lane’s hands. She pulled the mask from her face. “Don’t, Lane. Please? Don’t even for a second keep talking.”

  Lane’s mouth snapped shut. A look of disappointment crept across his face.

  “Lane Dawson, you are every single thing that I was looking for and more. You are a prince. You are my white knight. And to prove how wrong I was, you went ahead and rescued me today. You saved my life!”

  Evanee coughed then. The EMTs and Lane both forced the face mask on her for a few long breaths. When she took it off again, she looked up at him, tears shining in her eyes.

  “I’ve just been a fool, Lane. I thought things had to be a certain way for me to be happy. I was looking for perfection. But after seeing a perfect marriage like Bluebell and Ace’s self-destruct like it just did, it just went to show me that Gemma was right. Perfection is an illusion. I have to follow my heart, and my heart has been pointing to you for days now. I just didn’t want to listen to it. I was a fool. And I’m sorry, Lane. I hope you can forgive me.”

  “Forgive you? Ev, there’s nothing to forgive,” he said softly. “I—I’m falling in love with you, silly woman.”

  “Awww,” cooed Whitley, clasping her hands together under her chin.

  Evanee smiled from ear to ear. Lane’s words filled her heart. She’d never felt this way before herself. “Well, that’s good to hear, because I’m falling in love with you too, Lane.”

  41

  Evanee sat outside on the love seat on her patio. Per doctor’s orders, there was no fire in the fire pit. Her throat was still hoarse and her chest was kind of sore, but other than that she felt pretty normal.

  “I can’t believe we actually solved another mystery!” said Whitley excitedly.

  Esmerelda pawed the snow globe that sat on the end table. “Two down, tons to go,” she sighed. “Solving all these mysteries is going to take us forever, Whit.”

  “But just look at all the people we’re helping, Essy.”

  Evanee nodded as she cuddled Prim in her arms. “Yeah, Es. Without you two, I’d still be ridiculously clueless about love. I’d still be searching for some fantasy that doesn’t exist. Instead, I’m head over heels in love with an imperfectly perfect man that loves me right back!”