by Tegan Maher
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
HUNTER TRIED SEVERAL times to call her but it went straight to voicemail. Fortunately, the diner was only fifteen minutes from the house and we'd already been part of the way there. I cut it to seven even though I could see Hunter twitching and clenching his jaw out of the corner of my eye.
A black Taurus passed us driving hell bent for leather about two minutes before we got to the turnoff to the farm, and I hesitated, glancing at Hunter. If they had her, we needed to turn around and follow. I'd just slammed on the brakes when Addy popped in.
"She's not with them. She barred herself in the tack room and me, Belle, Cheri Lynn, and Max scared 'em off. But they'll be back."
My heart was hammering in my chest. "She's okay, then?"
"Yeah. Scared to death, and they did get in a couple of lumps before we distracted 'em, but she's fine."
I pulled up to the barn to find Gabi pacing and cussing in the front yard. She put the boot to an empty bucket and kicked it halfway to the pasture. Her lip was bleeding and she was gonna have a fine shiner the next day, but other than being madder than a wet hen, she was fine. That was a good sign.
I hopped out then turned to Addy. "Wait, did you say Max helped scare 'em off?"
Addy grinned as the little guy trotted up to us grinning like, well, a mule eating briars, as she would say.
"He sure did. Between see-through folks and talking donkeys, things got a little too weird for them, I reckon."
Max sniffed, looking smug. "And I got in a couple good, swift kicks, too."
I raised my brows. "Well aren't you the hero of the day, then? I'm proud of you, Max." I'd been on the receiving end of those kicks a few times during one roughhouse game or another, and even a love tap from those little hooves hurt.
Hunter was trying to get an explanation from Gabi, but she was too wound up to be coherent.
"C'mon everybody. Let's head inside. I think a glass of wine or three for medicinal purposes is called for."
"I prefer scotch," Max said.
I took a deep breath and huffed it out. He was going to milk this for all it was worth for the foreseeable future. "I know what you prefer. I was speaking in general."
Gabi had gone strangely silent as we crossed the yard, her brows drawn together in thought. Once inside, everybody gathered around the table and I set a bottle of wine and a corkscrew on the table in front of Gabi along with a couple glasses to give her something to focus on, then poured a healthy dose of Glenlivet in a bowl for Max. Hunter grabbed a beer from the fridge.
I took a couple sips of my wine, allowing Gabi a minute or two to calm down. Once her hands stopped shaking, I nodded at Hunter.
"We have a couple things to discuss, but first, tell us what happened," he said to her.
She opened her mouth to respond, but Cheri Lynn spoke first. "She was in the arena riding Mayhem and these sleazy guys in a black car came and started going through your trailer," she told me.
"My trailer? Why would they be going through my trailer?"
"Maybe they didn't know it was yours," Hunter said. "They probably thought it was Gabi's. The two are practically identical. Maybe they just started with yours."
Gabi was swirling her wine, her lips pinched together. "Okay, but that still begs the question of why they'd want to go through my trailer."
"We may have an answer for that," I said, opening my phone to the letter and handing it to her.
She tapped to make it bigger, then scrolled through it, chewing on her lip as she read.
"Hello!" Cheri Lynn said, her hand on her hip. "Share with the class if you don't mind. We're ghosts, not psychics."
Gabi scrolled back to the top and read it aloud.
"Does it make any sense to you at all?" Hunter asked when she'd finished.
Gabi shook her head, wiping away a tear. "None. I mean, the last line is a reference to a horse quote; she's wishing me a life filled with horses, but we already know that because she gave me Mayhem."
She sniffed and I handed her a tissue.
"I had lunch with her a few times a week," she continued after she wiped her eyes, "and I usually bunked with her in the trailer at shows. We talked about everything from our childhoods to horse stats, but I don't remember her ever mentioning anything about things that were precious to her other than Mayhem and the farm."
"Well there's gotta be somethin'," Addy said. "And what's this key she's talkin' about?"
"She always said her heart was in showing, but that wouldn't make any sense. The only keys she left were to the trailer, but I've been through every inch of it when I was packing up my stuff and Mayhem's. I had something in every storage compartment."
Hunter sighed. "Well, think on it. Meanwhile, we need to figure out who's runnin' your fan club before they do more damage."
"I have a feelin' that's more to do with Marcus, not Gabi," Belle said. "I kept an eye on 'em while Addy came to fetch you and Cheri Lynn went to warn Gabi. They were talkin' about how the boss"—she put that in air quotes—"was gonna be pissed that he was dead because he wasn't gonna get his money, and what a pain it was that they had to find whatever it was Marcus promised in payment."
"Great," Hunter said, dropping his head forward.
"What?" Gabi and I asked at the same time. She smiled. "You owe me a coke."
I lifted a corner of my mouth; it was good to see she was coming around.
"Now we have two elements: the guys trying to collect whatever Sylvia left behind," he said, ticking it off on his fingers, "and whoever killed Marcus. From what Belle's saying, it wasn't the knee-breakers who were just here."
Max sniffled and I cringed when I saw his wobbling head and unfocused gaze. "That final line of prose was the most beautiful thing I've ever heard in my life. She must have truly loved you!"
His sniffles devolved into sobs and I rolled my eyes, then pointed to his giant cushion in the parlor. "Go home, donkey. You're drunk."
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
SHELBY AND EMMA, HER best friend and Camille's daughter, got home from school not long after. We filled them in, then instructed them to stick together. The last thing I wanted was for them to get caught in the crossfire because then it would be personal, and Hunter would have exponentially more paperwork to do.
We decided to go through the trailer and Gabi's tack boxes in search of anything she may have missed. After all, it's not like she was looking for a random key when she packed and unpacked. For all we knew, it could be as obvious as one taped to the lid or sides of something. After two hours, we gave up and decided to do a little front-porch sittin' and think about it.
A puff of dust in the distance caught my eye; Matt was coming up the drive. A retired vet, he'd come into our lives several months before, when I'd found him camping in an old lakeside cabin on our property. At the time, he was struggling to claw his way back from the darkness he'd been living in due to PTSD and re-enter society.
As things tend to do when the time's right, the stars aligned and the perfect job was waiting for him. When Max died, his wife had needed somebody with experience to step up and help her with the business. It was great for Matt because he did most of his work behind the scenes and didn't have to deal with people—other than Max, who'd decided to stick around post-dying.
Emily got the help she needed and Matt got a job. Oh, and I got my pool and deck, which had been started right before Max died, finished. Everybody was happy.
He moved into the apartment above the barn, and was a godsend around the property. Loose boards and broken hinges didn't stay that way for long. He waved as he pulled up, then climbed out and ambled across the yard.
"Y'all look like somebody stole your birthdays and Christmas, too." He paused, his eyes narrowed on Gabi. "What in the name of God happened to your face?" He bound across the porch and knelt down in front of her to get a better look.
"I had a run-in with some not-so-gentlemen who want something I apparently have. Or they think I have, at any rate."
"What do you mean, a run-in? Where?"
She sighed and motioned toward the arena and barn. "I was riding Mayhem in the arena. Cheri Lynn came to tell me there were two men here. When I dismounted to see what they wanted, they grabbed me and started demanding I give them what Sylvia left me. I had no idea what they were talking about."
"They laid hands on you? On this property?" His eyes went dark and stormy and he was clenching his jaw.
"Yeah," she said, "But I'm okay. Cheri Lynn, Belle, and Addy distracted them, then Max started yammering and kickin', and they took off outta here like bats outta hell."
His expression was thunderous and the way he clenched and unclenched his fists was testament to how close he was to losing it. "I should have been here instead of—. It wouldn't have happened if I'd been here. I'm sorry."
"Hey," I said, refusing to let him blame himself for something that wasn't even remotely his fault. "You can't be here every minute of the day. You do have a job and a life, you know."
"If I'd been here—"
"Yeah," I said, cutting him off. "Same here. If I'da been here, I'd have blasted them to dust, but we weren't, and we couldn't have known. Look at me."
I waited 'til he made eye contact, then held it for the span of a few seconds until I saw the rage start to fade. "It's not your fault. It's not my fault. It's their fault. Got it?"
He set his teeth and rolled his shoulders, but the rigid posture remained. "Got it."
"Good. Now, go get a beer and join us if you want. We have some figurin' to do to make sure this doesn't happen again."
Gabi was sitting in a rocker with one leg pulled up underneath her. She was swinging the other running her finger around the rim of her near-empty glass, lost in thought. Matt returned, carrying his own beer, one for Hunter, and a fresh bottle of wine.
"Have y'all eaten?" he asked.
I shook my head. We had lunch at the diner, but that was a few hours ago. I glanced at my phone and was a little surprised to see it was almost six. Shelby and Emma were playing with a couple of the horses in the arena, riding bareback and being goofy.
Since Gabi'd shown up, they were showing an interest in reining. Shelby and I were raised using natural horsemanship before it was cool, and she was having a blast working with one particular young gelding we had. I smiled as she started the bridle-less horse at one end of the arena, pushed him into a lope, then did a decent sliding stop several yards before the gate. The gelding wasn't really built for it, but he tried hard for her.
"Girls!" I yelled. "Are y'all getting hungry?"
Emma nudged the little mare she was riding up to the gate and unlatched it, and the girls rode up to the porch. "Yeah," she said, "but Mom's home. I'm not sure what her plans are."
I pulled out my phone and dialed up Camille, who said she'd lost track of time and hadn't even thought about it. She was the head of the Magical Oversight Committee, and was responsible for monitoring witches with unstable magic or questionable ethics. Her workload was ridiculous.
"C'mon over, then," I said. "I'm throwing some burgers on the grill. We need to put our heads together on a few things."
Since her transition to Camille 2.0, it was rare for her to turn down a good burger.
"I'll see you in fifteen," she said. "I’m already close to your house on a job. What do you want me to bring?"
"Chips and a bottle of red. We're keepin' it simple."
"That's my kind of meal."
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
RAE NEEDED MY HELP the next morning because Angel had a class at the community college and there was some sort of get-rich-quick real-estate thing going' on in town. Why they'd choose Keyhole Lake for something like that was beyond me, but we were happy to take their money. I'd baked triple the amount I usually did the night before because we knew from experience we'd need it.
When I started the truck at a quarter 'til the butt crack of dawn, I groaned when I saw the gas needle sitting in the red. I'd planned to get gas on the way home the day before, but with the Gabi thing, that had gone out the window. Fortunately, the QuikStop was on the way and it was open 24/7.
Still yawning, I pulled up to the only available pump and climbed out of the truck. The place was bustling with activity—linemen and retired fishermen, and other people headed to work the first shift at wherever they served their time in exchange for a paycheck.
I leaned my butt against the truck and half-dozed while I waited for my pig of a truck to drink its fill. The pump handle finally clicked off and I huffed when I saw the amount—it was swoon-worthy, had I been the swooning type. Since I wasn't, I just grumbled halfway across the lot on my way inside. The bright lights inside the store made me squint while I was paying, and I was grateful to leave them behind for the relative comfort of the pre-dawn darkness.
A woman wearing a ball cap and scrolling through her phone was approaching and I held the door the extra second or two it took her to get to it. She must have been as out of it as I was because she didn't even look up when she grabbed the door and went inside, muttering a thanks as she did.
Her face was shaded by the hat and the poor lighting, and I took a step or two before my sleep-fogged brain registered that it was Bobbie Sue.
I started to turn around and follow her in to say hey, but I was already running late. She wasn't any more of a morning person than I was, so I figured I'd bust her chops about walking right by me later.
Being the disgustingly cheerful morning person that she was, Rae already had the money in the till and the espresso machine going when I got there. The smell of coffee woke me up a little, and she slid a cup of cool-enough-to-drink coffee to me and took the boxes of pastries I was holding.
"Good morning, sunshine," she said, and I waved a hand as I took a gulp of caffeine. She plucked two apple fritters—one for each of us—on the bar and came back around to sit down beside me.
She gave me a couple minutes to slug down half my coffee before she started grilling me about what happened the day before. She and her mom had gone out of town to pick up some fresh cuttings from a witch who lived on the outskirts of Atlanta, so she'd missed the action.
"Anything new since I talked to you last night?" she asked, groaning as she took a bite of fritter. "Ohmuhgod, Noe. These never get old."
My baking was part of my magic, or, more accurately, my magic was part of my baking. The steady rhythms and comfortable routine of kneading dough, slicing fruit, or mixing muffins were so relaxing and enjoyable to me that my magic flowed into everything I made. Rae was convinced that added a bit of "happy" to all of my goods, and maybe she was right. If so, I was glad.
"Nothing'. Hunter worked with Gabi to put together a list of as many ranch employees as she could remember and he's working through them today, trying to find anybody who owns a green pickup. You know as well as I do that's likely to turn up at least half a dozen people. She came up with almost fifty names.
Rae snorted. "Her memory's better than mine. I don't think I could name fifty random people off the top of my head."
"Yeah," I said, "but we live in a fishbowl. I don't even know if that many people work at the Walmart."
"True. Still, it'll take him a minute to go through all of that. What about that sheriff over there? He's not gettin' itchy to pin it on Gabi, is he?"
I lifted a shoulder. "He is, but Hunter put him in his place and told him it wasn't his jurisdiction and he had no say in the matter. Course, that don't mean the judge is gonna see it that way when he comes this way next week."
For almost twenty years, Keyhole Lake had been run by a sheriff who'd done everything from triple property taxes for profit to blackmailing judges, so we were constantly under the microscope of regional law enforcement. Hunter had to walk a fine line between using his discretion and appearing to favor one citizen over any other.
"Then I reckon we better cross our fingers a single green pickup full of Marcus Sturgess's DNA turns up quick."
I raised my coffee cup. "
Here's to it."
CHAPTER NINETEEN
WE WERE SLAMMED ALL day long. Usually, there's a lull between breakfast and lunch, but that day was an exception. We went through every single pastry I'd brought, plus Hunter had gone to the shop and brought an extra box I'd had in the freezer for emergencies. By the time we flipped the open sign to closed, there was one lone, half-squashed peach turnover left in the case.
I flicked a wrist and the blinds tumbled closed on all the front windows, and then plopped into a chair and kicked my shoes off. I dropped my chin in my hand and muttered a spell that set the broom and mop to work on the floors. Rae flicked the door locked and took a seat at the other end of the bar after she closed out the register and pulled the money out of the till. She motioned toward the bar towels and in just a few seconds, we had a regular modern-day Fantasia going on, without the epic fail at the end.
Within ten minutes, the whole place was clean and my stomach rumbled—neither one of us had eaten anything since our pre-dawn fritters.
"You wanna run over to Bobbie Sue's with me and split a rack of ribs?" I asked as I sent the mop and broom back to the closet. "Hunter's gone over to Eagle gap to talk to some of the employees and Shelby's hanging out with Cody and Becki then staying at Becki's to study, so I'm on my own."
"You had me at ribs, but get your own. My belly thinks my throat's been cut." She ran a bar towel across the counter one more time, then tossed it into the bucket of sanitizer. "Let's go."
The afternoon was beautiful, but our dogs were barkin' so we decided to drive rather than walk even though it was only a few blocks. A steady breeze was blowing, and it dried the sweat off the back of my neck. One of the worst things about the service industry is even though you may be running an all—day marathon, you couldn't crank the AC down to make it comfortable because you'd freeze out the customers. That's why I always carried a sweater when we went out to eat—been there, done that.