Any Witch Way You Can (27 page)

Russ crumpled forward, screaming in pain.

Landon raced forward, tackling Russ. Aunt Tillie took a step away. I raced over to her. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” she waved me off. “That boy with you would be good looking if he didn’t have hair like a girl,” she said after watching them wrestle on the ground for a few seconds.

Landon and Russ were grappling for the gun. We both jumped when it went off. I saw Landon slump on top of Russ.

Aunt Tillie and I were frozen in our spots. He’d shot Landon.

Russ shifted Landon’s body off of him. I could see Landon’s blood splattered on his shirt. Russ was gripping the gun in his hand and climbing to his feet. There was nowhere for us to run. And boy, did Russ look pissed.

“You guys have been more trouble than . . . well, just about anyone I’ve ever met.” Russ huffed.

I slipped my hand in Aunt Tillie’s. It was the only measure of comfort I could offer her.

I screwed my eyes shut when I saw Russ raising the weapon. I tried to move in front of Aunt Tillie as much as I could, to shield her. I new it was a fruitless move, but I didn’t know what else to do.

I felt Shane and Sophie move in beside me. “We don’t know what to do?” Shane whispered.

“There’s nothing you can do,” I said. My eyes were still closed.

When the gun went off, my heart stopped. It took me a full five seconds to realize that I didn’t feel any pain. I must be in shock.

After another five seconds, I finally opened my eyes. I was surprised to see Russ lying on the ground next to Landon. He wasn’t moving.

I swung around to see Chief Terry standing beside me. His gun was out and he was moving towards Aunt Tillie.

“Are you two okay?” He seemed concerned, but he didn’t stop as he continued on towards Russ and Landon.

“I’m fine,” I said. Then I passed out.

Twenty-Nine

Aunt Tillie’s face swam into view. She was leaning down over me. She looked more irked than concerned.

“Am I in hell?”

“Not yet,” she scolded. “You’re embarrassing me, though, so you probably will be later.”

A hand was reaching down for me. I grabbed it, and found myself face-to-face with Chief Terry.

“What happened?”

“You passed out like a ninny,” Aunt Tillie supplied.

Chief Terry smiled and shook his head. “How do you feel?”

“I’m fine,” I started. Everything came rushing back to me. Landon.

I swung around to see a group of paramedics had arrived and were working feverishly on Landon. No one was buzzing around Russ.

“Is . . .”

“Russ is dead,” Chief Terry acknowledged. “They’re still working on Landon.”

“Will he survive?”

Chief Terry read the concern on my face. “It’s too soon to tell.”

The paramedics had moved Landon onto a gurney and they were rushing him towards the ambulance. I heard one of them barking out orders on his radio: “We’re en route to Northern Michigan Hospital,” he barked. “We have an injured FBI agent with a gun shot to the chest. We’ll pump him full of fluids on the way, but he’s going to need to go into surgery.”

I watched as Landon was wheeled past me. His face was ashen and motionless. He already looked dead. Then, what the paramedic had said into the radio, sunk in. “An FBI agent?”

Chief Terry looked momentarily embarrassed. “I wanted to tell you,” he protested. “I really did, but I didn’t think you would be able to keep your mouth shut and the minute Thistle and Clove found out, then everyone in town would find out.”

“You told me to stay away from him,” I countered.

“I didn’t want you to mess up his investigation,” Chief Terry explained. “He’s been undercover with these guys for months.”

“But you told me he was a bad guy,” I argued.

“He’s an FBI agent, not Gandhi,” Chief Terry said. “Besides, I don’t like the Feds. They’re always full of themselves.”

“How long have you known?”

“Not long,” Chief Terry said. “I thought I recognized him that day out at the corn maze, but I couldn’t be sure. We met at a training exercise more than a year ago. He came to my office to fill me in, though, that morning you showed up. He didn’t want me to blow his cover.”

“So you lied to me. I knew he wasn’t just there to answer questions.”

“I didn’t lie. I just didn’t tell you everything. There’s a difference.”

“I didn’t realize we were able to use elementary school logic,” I grumbled.

“Oh, get over it,” Aunt Tillie interrupted. “He had a job to do. You had a job to do. Everything turned out fine, like I told you it would.”

“Really? Now you’re going to pull out the ‘I told you so’ card?”

I heard a commotion behind us and turned to see what was going on. I was relieved to see Russ’ cohorts being led out in handcuffs. It looked as if the state police had gotten a little overzealous with them, given the bruises that were becoming apparent on their faces under the bright police lights that had illuminated the area.

“I see they put up a fight,” I smiled.

“Not with us,” Chief Terry laughed.

“Then how . . .”

I saw a group of people walk around the corner of the maze and exhaled a pent-up sigh of relief when I saw my mom, Marnie, Twila, Thistle and Clove come into view. They looked a little dirty and unkempt, but otherwise unharmed.

“They’re the ones that subdued them,” Chief Terry said.

“They did? How?” Thistle and Clove had caught sight of me and were rushing to my side.

“Thank the goddess, you’re alright,” Clove said, throwing her arms around me.

Thistle merely smiled. We weren’t big on public displays of affection. “I was worried about you guys.”

“We had everything under control,” Thistle said.

I saw that the two bikers were giving all the women in my family a wide berth, casting wary glances at them – along with the occasional glare -- as they were led to the patrol cars.

“What happened to them?”

Thistle smirked. “Our moms got a little, um, overzealous.”

“With what? A car?”

“No, more like a rake and shovel they found on the far side of the maze when we exited.”

I saw that a couple of officers were carrying a rake and a shovel towards the police cars. The ends were bagged to preserve evidence. I was hoping that was just a formality and that my mom and aunts weren’t going to be charged with anything.

“How did you get separated from Aunt Tillie?”

Thistle glowered at her. “She purposely separated from us. I couldn’t control her. She was like a banshee. She kept saying she had to wait for you. I made a choice to get our moms away and leave her. I figured she was fairly indestructible.”

“You did the right thing,” I assured her. “In fact, Aunt Tillie is the one that hobbled Russ so Landon could make a run at him. Oh, and Landon is an FBI agent.”

Thistle looked surprised, while Clove looked relieved. “Good. I knew someone that good looking couldn’t be a drug dealer.”

Thistle was watching grimly as the police zipped Russ’ body up in a body bag. “She didn’t shoot him, did she?”

“No, Chief Terry did that. She just kicked him in the balls.”

“Oh, well, it’s not like he didn’t have it coming.” Thistle would have probably kicked him in the balls herself if she had the chance.

I was watching my mom, Marnie and Twila cautiously. “They seem okay.”

“Yeah, they beat the shit out of those guys,” Thistle said. She looked proud, despite herself. “When the cops showed up, they were begging them to arrest them and get them away from the crazy witches.”

“I don’t blame them.” I turned to Chief Terry expectantly. “So, now what?”

“Now? Now you go home.”

“That’s it?”

“For now. I’ll send officers out to the inn to question you guys, but that is pretty cut and dry. We’ve already hauled the other two bodies out of the center of the maze.”

“Emily and Ron?”

“You know them?” Chief Terry looked surprised.

“They admitted to the killings,” I said evasively.

“Did they say anything else? Like who they really were and why they came here?”

I shook my no.

“Well, hopefully we’ll be able to dig up something on them,” Chief Terry said.

Thistle and I exchanged dark looks. I couldn’t help but wonder what, if anything, they would be able to dig up on two people that were a lot older than they appeared. It’s not like we could tell them, though. Not only would no one believe us, but then we would also be exposing ourselves and what we had been doing out here tonight. And no one wanted that, believe me.

Chief Terry watched the unspoken exchange between the two of us. “They’re not going to find anything, are they?”

I held my palms up in front of me. “I honestly don’t know, but I doubt it.”

Chief Terry pursed his lips as he watched the state police congratulating themselves on a good bust that was bound to make national news. “Let them waste their time,” he said finally. “They’re assholes anyway.”

Thirty

We went back to the inn to get cleaned up. While we were eating breakfast, the state police showed up to question us. We were all exhausted, but that didn’t stop my mom and aunts from plying them with food to distract them.

“So, what were you doing out there?” One of the officers asked despite a mouth full of pumpkin donut.

“We like to walk for exercise,” my mom lied. Well, they were wearing velvet tracksuits. Of course, Aunt Tillie was wearing a combat helmet, but we could always explain that away by saying she was senile.

“It was a full moon, we like to walk under the full moon and absorb her strength and convene with nature,” Aunt Tillie told the officers.

Or maybe they would figure out she was crazy all on their own.

Once the officers were gone, I excused myself to go to the hospital. Landon had pulled through the surgery, and he was expected to wake up in the next few hours. I had a few things I wanted to discuss with him.

When I got to the hospital, Chief Terry was parked outside Landon’s room in a vinyl chair. “What are you doing here? I thought you hated Feds?”

“I figured I owed him to check on him,” Chief Terry shrugged. “He did save your life, after all.”

“He saved all our lives,” I admitted. “He’s the one that got us out of the maze in the confusion.”

“I figured.”

“So, he’s going to be okay?”

“The doctors said he was incredibly lucky that the bullet didn’t hit any major arteries. He should actually be able to walk out of here in a couple of days. It’s something of a miracle.”

I quirked my eyebrow. “More like divine intervention,” I laughed.

“Someone was definitely looking out for him,” he grunted in agreement.

Chief Terry cast a sideways glance at me as I took a seat next to him. “I got off the phone with the medical examiner a few minutes ago,” he said nonchalantly. “They’re in a tizzy over there.”

“Oh?” I honestly didn’t know where he was going with this.

“Yeah, it’s weird, the two bodies that were found in the maze, something happened to them.”

“They didn’t disappear did they?” I was panicked for a second, wondering if Ron and Emily could somehow actually stop death and resurrect themselves.

“No, they’re still dead,” Chief Terry looked surprised at my question. “They don’t look the same as when we found them, though.”

“What do you mean?”

Chief Terry rubbed his chin tiredly. “Well, for one thing, when they opened the body bags they were filled with what looked like mummified remains.”

“Mummified?”

“Yeah,” Chief Terry plowed on. “The medical examiner couldn’t explain it. He said, if he had to guess, that the bodies belonged to people that were more than a hundred years old – not two twenty-somethings. He also estimated they’d been dead for a really long time – at least fifty years.”

Uh-oh.

“He didn’t know how to explain it,” Chief Terry continued. “Do you?”

“No,” I said honestly. I had an idea, but no one would believe me, especially Chief Terry.

“The medical examiner figures that some unknown substance must have gotten into the bags and contaminated the bodies,” Chief Terry said innocently. “They’ll probably never find out what really happened, will they?”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say. I had noticed, with relief, that a doctor was walking purposely towards us. We both got to our feet and waited expectantly.

“He’s awake,” the doctor told us. “He’s asking for someone named Bay.”

Chief Terry looked at me speculatively. I smiled at him nervously and then followed the doctor to Landon’s room.

I was surprised to see him propped up in bed. He still looked paler than usual, but some of the color had returned to his cheeks. He actually smiled when he saw me walk in.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” he said. His voice was a little weak, but I was just so relieved to see him alive that I brushed the concern bubbling to the surface away.

“Did you doubt it?”

“Not for a second. How is your aunt?” His smile was faint, but it was there. He was probably remembering the combat helmet.

“She’s fine. She’s probably taking her afternoon nap a little early today, but she’s fine. She’ll be ready to wreak havoc by dinner tonight.”

“And the rest of your family?”

“They’re fine, too.”

“And Russ?” He grimaced when he asked the question.

“No one told you?” I was surprised.

“No one has told me anything.”

“Chief Terry shot and killed him. He saved us.”

“Good,” Landon leaned his head back on his pillow. “I was worried he didn’t get the text I sent him. It was dark. I couldn’t be sure my message would go through.”

“You contacted him? He didn’t tell me that.”

“I texted him before we even went in the maze. I didn’t recognize the vehicle. I just had a feeling it was you.”

I was struggling with what I had to say next, but I plowed on anyway. “You could have told me that you were an FBI agent. I would have kept it a secret.”

“From your cousins?” He looked doubtful.

Probably not. “I wouldn’t have told anyone else.”

“We couldn’t risk that.”