The Purr-fect Crime: Willow Bay Witches #1

by Silver, Samantha

  I swear, if I get out of here alive, I’m going to start going to the gym more, I thought to myself as I struggled to run with Bee through the forest. I could hear Zoe catching up to us. We had to be still a good mile from the road, there was no way we were going to make it.

  “I’m sorry, Bee,” I whispered to my cat. “You run as far as you can, ok?” I asked.

  “Nah. The other humans don’t talk to me. They’re boring. I don’t have the energy to try and claw her down again, I’m sorry,” Bee replied.

  “Don’t be. I love you,” I told my cat as I came to a stop. Zoe had practically caught up to us, we were just delaying the inevitable. Less than five seconds after I stopped, Zoe came upon us. She flashed a grin as she raised her gun.

  “You realize my sister and Sophie got away, right?” I said, desperately hoping to stall Zoe. Not really because I thought anyone was going to save us, but because I just wanted a few more precious moments on earth. It wasn’t until now, as I stared down the barrel of her pistol, that I realized just how much I really, really wanted to keep living.

  I heard a rustle of wind in the trees, and inhaled a deep breath of air, knowing it might be my last one. Nature was so wonderful, so peaceful. At least I’d picked a nice place to die.

  “They’re going to get the police. And they’re going to come and arrest you,” I told her. “You’re not going to get away with it.”

  “I can kill you now and get back there long before they do. No one will ever know.”

  “I know,” came a voice out to the side, and a split second later Jason Black burst out from the trees and tackled Zoe. They fell to the ground, and I ran towards the two of them to get the gun from Zoe.

  Suddenly, a shot rang out. It was like everything froze for a split second. I couldn’t hear anything. All I knew is my t-shirt had blood on it. But I didn’t feel any pain. Then, instinct kicked in.

  Get the gun.

  I caught a glimpse of the barrel and reached towards it, yanking it from Zoe’s hands. Jason overpowered her easily and pressed her to the ground, ripping off her jacket and using the sleeves to tie her up.

  I looked down at my shirt. There were splatters of red blood on it. But funnily enough, nothing hurt.

  That was when I looked up at Jason, and I realized: it wasn’t my blood.

  He was standing there, a hole the size of a quarter in his arm with blood flowing out of it.

  “Are you ok?” he asked.

  “I’m not the one we have to be worried about right now,” I said, stuffing the gun into the back of my pants. He looked down at the wound.

  “Yeah, that’s not great, is it?” he replied. Even though my training involved taking care of animals in an emergency, it didn’t mean I was completely useless with humans as well.

  “Take off your shirt,” I ordered.

  “Look, I know you think I’m hot, but do you really think this is an appropriate time?” he asked.

  “To stop the bleeding,” I replied, exasperated.

  “Oh. Uh, yeah,” he said, immediately slipping the shirt up and over his head. I totally didn’t look on purpose, but couldn’t deny that he had one hell of a chiselled body. I didn’t think I’d ever actually seen a six pack in real life before.

  “And I do not think you’re hot,” I replied, grabbing the fabric from him and tearing it into strips.

  “If that’s true then why did your face go like three shades of red when I took my shirt off?” he asked, and I felt my face go an even deeper scarlet. Great.

  I immediately wrapped the strips of fabric tightly around his arm to help staunch the bleeding. That was the most important thing; we were far enough away from civilization right now that I had to make sure he lost as little blood as possible before we got to the hospital.

  “Are you ok to walk?” I asked, and he nodded.

  “I’m not a doctor, but I’m pretty sure you don’t need an arm to walk,” he replied with a smile.

  “Well if you don’t stop giving the actual doctor lip, you’re going to be walking back to Willow Bay by yourself,” I warned, looking around for Bee. She was just sitting on the ground, still looking a little bit dazed as she stared aimlessly at a clump of grass.

  “Come on Bee, we’re going,” I told her. “Can you jump up on my shoulder?” The sound of my voice seemed to shock Bee back to life, and she easily leapt up onto me.

  “Wow, that’s the best trained cat I’ve ever seen,” Jason said, staring at Bee, amazed. A second later he had to move out of the way of her claw swiping at him.

  “Woah, what was that for?”

  “Insinuating that she’s trained,” I replied, rolling my eyes at my cat. “Now come on, let’s get going. I really don’t want to have to carry a gunshot victim out of the woods in the dark,” I replied.

  Zoe Wright was still writhing around on the ground. We had no other options but to hope she wouldn’t be able to get out of Jason’s makeshift rope tying her up until Chief Gary got there. Although even if she did, at least now we knew who was responsible.

  I helped guide Jason through the forest and back towards the town.

  “How did you find us, anyway?” I asked as we trampled along. I took out my phone and turned on the flashlight to make it easier to see; unfortunately around Jason making magical light was completely out of the question.

  “I followed you, after you left the rally. I knew you were going to try and find out who killed Tony Nyman, and thought you might have gotten a clue.”

  “So you were also trying to find out who killed him.”

  “Well, yeah. I thought that was obvious.”

  “You did a really bad job of it; we all spent a good while thinking you had killed him.”

  Jason was silent for a moment before replying. “For a long time, I wanted to. I really did.”

  “Why? The thing I can’t figure out is how you fit into the picture? How did you know Tony Nyman?”

  “He was my dad.”

  I didn’t even have the time to let the gravity of those words really set in before I suddenly heard some movement and saw flashlights in the woods a few hundred yards away.

  “Hey! Over here!” I yelled, and a couple minutes later Jason and I finally met up with Taylor, and another cop I didn’t recognize.

  “He has a gunshot wound, get him taken care of,” I ordered the two cops as soon as I saw them. Taylor was instantly on his radio, asking for an ambulance to meet them as close by as was possible, and rushed off with Jason while I stayed behind with the other cop.

  “I’m Officer Schultz, but you can call me Jesse,” the man told me, shaking my hand. He was about my age, with just the first sign of a balding head, and a friendly face.

  “Angela.”

  “We had a report that Zoe Wright tried to kill you?”

  I nodded. “Yes. She almost succeeded, too. Jason saved my life. He overpowered her and tied her up back in the forest a bit. Do you want me to show you where?”

  “If you can describe it to me I’ll send other officers over there. I want to get you to the hospital as quickly as possible.”

  “I’m fine, really!” I protested.

  “Chief Gary’s orders, ma’am,” Jesse replied.

  “Fine,” I sighed. I described where Zoe had caught up to me as best as possible, then Jesse led me back to the road after he radioed in my directions, where an ambulance was already waiting for me.

  As soon as the paramedics came into view I was whisked away from Jesse. Bee hissed threateningly at anyone who tried to take her off my neck.

  “We can’t take the cat in the ambulance,” one of the EMTs told me.

  “Well, Bee saved my life out there, so either you let her in the ambulance, or I’m not going,” I replied. They decided they could bend the rules just this once.

  As soon as I lay down on the gurney I realized just how exhausted my body was. I had scrapes and bruises all over me from the various fights. I was covered in blood – mostly Jason’s, but some of m
y own. I was shaking, and my heart was still going a million miles a minute. Now that I had time to come to terms with the fact that I’d come really, really close to being killed, well, that wasn’t a great thing to have to deal with. I stroked Bee’s fur; she had decided to lie down on my stomach in a little ball.

  One of the EMTs told me they were going to give me something to let me sleep for a little bit; apparently I wasn’t the only one who realized that I was in pretty bad shape. A minute later my eyes began to close and I fell asleep, the last thing I remember being a soft meow from Bee.

  Chapter 23

  “You have to let her sleep,” I heard Charlotte hiss.

  “I am letting her sleep!” Sophie protested in reply.

  “You are not. You’re making so much noise.”

  “It’s not my fault they use the crinkliest wrappers ever for their take-away burgers.”

  “You could always eat that in the hallway.”

  “I promised Angie I wasn’t leaving her side.”

  It took every ounce of effort I could muster to open my eyes. Charlotte and Sophie were sitting in a couple of chairs next to my hospital bed. Hospital bed. Why was I here?

  Suddenly, everything came flooding back to me. We went out to the Ocean Mist site. Zoe Wright trying to kill us. Jason Black getting shot while saving me.

  I leaned back against the soft pillow as Sophie and Charlotte realized I woke up.

  “Angie!” Sophie exclaimed.

  “Oh Angela, I’m so glad you’re awake!” Charlotte exclaimed, coming over and taking my hand gently. I could feel Bee against my leg; she was sleeping, curled up into a little ball next to my right thigh.

  I smiled weakly at my sister and best friend.

  “Are you guys ok?” I asked.

  “Of course we are. Thanks to you. And to Bee. If it wasn’t for the two of you, well, I think we’d all be dead now.”

  I shook my head. “Don’t think about that.”

  “Seriously though, you were awesome,” Sophie said.

  “What happened to Zoe Wright?” I asked in a soft voice that didn’t quite seem my own yet.

  “They found her. She’s been arrested and is facing a lot of charges. Apparently she’s not admitting to anything, but Chief Gary thinks as soon as her lawyer gets here he’ll try and get her to confess to get a slightly reduced sentence. Either way she’s going to spend pretty much the whole rest of her life in jail.”

  “Good. She deserves it. What about Jason Black?”

  “He’s ok,” Sophie answered. “He was just shot in the arm. We had breakfast with him this morning before he went back to the airport.”

  I had to admit, my heart sunk a little bit at the news that Jason had left. If nothing else, I wanted to thank him properly for saving my life. That was the only reason. Or so I told myself.

  “Airport?” I asked, not really feeling up to full sentences yet. Charlotte filled me in on the rest.

  “Yeah, when his mom heard that he had been shot, she was worried and wanted him to come home straight away. So he did. He flew out from Portland back to New York a couple hours ago.”

  “He’s from New York? He told me Tony Nyman was his dad.”

  “Yeah. He was. That was why he was here. It turns out Tony Nyman used to be Tony Formetti. He had an affair with Jason’s mom, and Jason was the result of that affair. Except that Formetti was in the mob, and ended up on the wrong side of a hit. His wife was killed, but he managed to get away by faking his own death and creating a new identity for himself. That was when he came to Willow Bay.”

  “That’s why the mob guys were at the funeral.”

  “Exactly. Since people aren’t usually killed so dramatically in small tourist towns Nyman’s death actually made the news around the country, and someone in Formetti’s old group saw the picture and recognized him. They came over to make sure it was him and he was really dead.”

  Suddenly, something else clicked.

  “So that day. When Jason saw me and ran away…” my voice trailed off and Sophie nodded.

  “Yeah, it wasn’t you he saw. He saw the three mob guys, instantly recognized them, and decided he had no desire at all to see them. You were standing in between the mob guys and Jason, so you thought he was running from you.”

  Everything was slowly starting to make sense.

  “But why was he here to begin with?” I asked. “I saw him a few hours after his dad died. He couldn’t have found out and flown out here that fast.”

  “No, he arrived the night before. Apparently Nyman emailed his old mistress, Jason’s mom, telling her where he was. Jason decided to come and visit and see the dad he hadn’t seen in a long time. It was just incredibly bad luck that he showed up just before his dad was murdered. Also, he told us it was him who was in the house at the same time as us, he was looking for his dad’s will, but the place had already been ransacked, since Zoe Wright had already been there.”

  “Wow. That’s pretty sad,” I said, feeling bad for Jason. “So what happens now?”

  “Now you start by going back to sleep,” Charlotte ordered, suddenly going into doctor mode. “We’ve already probably told you more stressful stuff than you really needed right now.”

  “How come I have to stay in the hospital when you guys seem to be up and about and getting food from good places?” I protested, looking at Sophie’s bag of takeaway.

  “Because we weren’t the ones who saw a man being shot, got covered in his blood, or who got an infection from one of the cuts on the run back,” Charlotte replied. “You have to stay here for another day or so, then you can come back and eat all the take-away you want.”

  “Can you at least sneak me in some Chipotle?” I asked, giving Sophie my best puppy dog eyes. I knew Charlotte would never, ever break hospital rules. I loved my veggie bowl from Chipotle, but Willow Bay didn’t have one. Seeing as it didn’t have a hospital, either, I knew I had to be in Portland.

  “Yeah, for sure,” Sophie replied, earning herself a glare from Charlotte that she purposefully ignored.

  “Have I ever told you that I love you?” I replied, just the thought of my favourite fast food making me feel better already.

  “Not nearly as often as you tell me you hate me,” Sophie joked in reply, and I laughed. It felt really, really good to laugh.

  “Is the Ocean Mist resort still going forward?” I asked, and Sophie shook her head.

  “You know, it’s funny. I seem to remember someone telling me that there was nothing we could do, that it was hopeless, that even though we tried really hard and we understood the people, there was nothing we could do to stop the project from going forward. It turns out that was wrong. All we had to do was get the head of it arrested for murder, and the company decided to put the project on indefinite hold.”

  I grinned in reply. That was absolutely awesome news.

  Just then, Bee stirred at my feet, shifting a little bit before going back to sleep.

  “Oh, we got her these,” Charlotte told me, holding up a giant bag full of Temptations, Bee’s favourite treats.

  “Yeah, we figured she deserved them after saving all our lives,” Sophie replied.

  “I bet she loves you guys,” I said, grinning as I noticed the bag was already open. It seemed Bee had already gotten into her treats.

  “Well, she’s letting us pat her, and also not trying to bite us, so we figure that’s about as close to love as Bee gets with people that aren’t you,” Sophie replied, and I laughed. That did sound like Bee.

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you, Lisa’s coming in after work to check in on you as well,” Charlotte said.

  I smiled.

  “Thanks so much, guys. I really appreciate it.”

  “Hey, I’m only here because you saved my life,” Sophie replied, punching me in the arm lightly. I laughed.

  “I guess that’s fair.”

  “Let me eat my burger and then I’ll go get you Chipotle, ok?” Sophie asked.

  “Sure, no probl
em. Thanks.”

  Fifteen minutes later Sophie and Charlotte had gone to get Chipotle, after a nurse came and told them I needed to rest for a little while longer. I lay on the bed and absent-mindedly stroked Bee as she purred contentedly under me. Who could have guessed that our little adventure to try and find out who had killed Tony Nyman would have almost led to the three of us getting killed? And the fact that Bee had saved all our lives was even more incredible.

  Leaning back, I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply. This was enough of a crazy adventure to last a lifetime.

  Also by Samantha Silver

  First of all, I wanted to thank you for reading my book. I well and truly hope you enjoyed reading this book as much as I loved writing it.

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  Want to read more of Angela’s adventures? Willow Bay Witches #2, Barking up the Wrong Tree, has now been released:

  Angela Martin was expecting to have a normal, uneventful week in the small town of Willow Bay. The universe, however, had other ideas.

  When a local gossip is murdered while walking her dog, Angela knows she needs to find Sprinkles, who ran away during the murder. After all, being a witch who can talk to animals, finding Sprinkles might be the only way to find the murderer. Especially since the victim had more enemies than most people have Facebook friends.

  But she has to investigate without the police chief suspecting anything, she has to deal with Bee's jealousy about a dog getting attention, and she has to try and get along with Sophie's mom's new boyfriend.

  And just to complicate things even further, the infuriating but crazy hot Jason Black is back in town, and this time, it sounds like it's for good.