Witch Slapped (Witchless In Seattle Mysteries Book 1) (22 page)

Oh God. He truly was insane.

But what left me feeling the absolute worst? Madam Z had been protecting
me
even before she knew who I was. Because of Win.

As my stomach turned, I knew I had to figure a way out of this basement. I didn’t know how I was going to do that, but Sal couldn’t be allowed to walk free.

Licking my lips, I swallowed hard and forced myself to ask, “So…how is killing me going to help you, Sal? You won’t be able to get your hands on Crispin’s money. It’ll go into probate forever. The legal red tape will be a nightmare.”

He shook a finger at me, his eyes almost wild, his brow covered in a think sheen of sweat. “Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong. You’re going to sign everything over to me in your brand new will, Stevie. Lock, stock and millions of Mr. Showoff’s money!”

I shook my head. The hell I would. “I won’t do it. You can’t make me.”

He reached down and pulled up the leg of his jeans, dragging a knife from his sock to hold it up against the light. “You will if I cut your fingers off one by one. You’ll give in exactly the way Madam Zoltar did, crying and begging for your life.”

“Stevie, we have to do something rash and we have to do it now.” Win’s voice was calm, but I was sure he could see as well as I could, Sal was falling further down the rabbit hole.

“Stevie? You here? Brought you some coffee to cheer you up!”

Forrest?

I froze, that icy course of blood streaming through my veins again as Sal’s head popped up and his eyes went wide.

“Stevie, you must act! Listen closely. The moment Sal turns his back to find out who’s calling you, grab that chair and hit him. Hit him
hard
, Stevie, and make it count. Use everything you’ve got!”

I nodded and gulped.
Hit him with the chair, hit him with the chair.

“Stevie? Where are you?”

Sal’s eyes narrowed, his mouth turning to a thin line, and then he did just as Win suspected. “Don’t make a sound, or whoever that is will die, just like you,” he threatened.

He turned to head for the steps—and with a whoosh of air and a silent prayer to the goddesses, I slid from the chair, grabbed it with my imprisoned hands, lifted it high and nailed him on the side of his deranged head.

“Run, Stevie!” Win hollered. “Run and don’t look back!”

I did as I was told, fighting the wave after wave of dizziness as I attempted to climb the steps. “Forrest! Get help!” I screamed upward, my voice raspy and tight.

Just as I reached the top of the stairs, I saw Forrest, his face slathered in his surprise. “Stevie! Are you okay?”

The moment the words flew from his mouth was the moment Win yelled in my ear, “Tell Forrest to duck!”

“Forrest, duck!”

I did as Win told me just before a shot rang out that, to my horror, took Forrest to the ground with a thud that shook the rafters of the house.

But I didn’t have time to react before Sal was grabbing at my ankles, trying to drag me back down the stairs.

“Roll over, Stevie! Roll over and kick his hand with the gun then uppercut with the heel of your foot to his jaw!” Win directed.

Again, I did as I was told, acting merely on adrenaline and British spy advice. Rolling to my back, I whacked at Sal’s hand as he dragged me down, my head banging against each tread as we went.

I whooped a yelp of triumph when I successfully knocked the gun from his hand and followed up with the hardest kick I could manage just beneath his jaw.

Sal howled when my heel made contact and he fell back down a few steps, giving me enough time to roll back over and scurry the rest of the way up the stairs.

I tripped over Forrest’s big body, his arm bleeding from the gunshot, his forehead following suit with a big gash in it.

“Don’t stop now, Stevie—he won’t trouble himself with Forrest. It’s
you
he wants. You have to run! Sal’s right behind you!”

“
Where?
” I screeched into the kitchen, trying to break free from the duct tape on my wrists, but I couldn’t remember a dang thing Win told me about how to do it.

“Enzo’s hammer, by the microwave. Grab it now and hide! I’ll get Bel to use Forrest’s phone to call 9-1-1. Do it now!”

I managed to grab the hammer just in the nick of time, almost fumbling it before grasping it securely and running through the kitchen into the dining room.

I thanked every God available to my memory Win had decided to knock down the wall between the kitchen and the dining room as I scooted around the corner, my feet plowing over discarded nails.

As my heart pounded in my chest like the hammer I was holding, my eyes wildly searched for somewhere to run. The wind outside howled, crying out, the frigid air coming from the door Forrest must have left open.

“Stevie!” Sal hollered, his voice echoing through the emptiness of the house. “You can’t get away from me!”

“You can, Stevie. You will!” Win urged. “He’s hurt. You cuffed him on his head but good. He’s dizzy and stumbling. Use that to your advantage.”

“Stevie!” Sal wailed my name again, his voice closer. “You’re going to die tonight!”

“Where?” I whispered, looking toward the set of windows in the dining room.

“No! Not the windows. There’s nowhere for you to run in all that mud. No neighbor nearby to help. Bel’s dialing 9-1-1 now, but you have no choice but to go up, Stevie. Hurry! Get up the stairs and we’ll catch him by surprise!”

Sal had gone silent now, so silent, if not for the howling wind, he’d hear me gasping for breath.

Up. Go up
. I snuck around the corner of the dining room, poking my head around it to see the stairs, trying to keep my ragged, fear-filled breathing to a minimum. My eye ached like the dickens, making everything feel off kilter.

When I saw the coast was clear, I ran like the hounds of hell were nipping at my heels, clamping my mouth shut when I hit a jagged patch of wood on the stairs.

I’d just made it to the top where the landing met the steps when Sal’s heavy feet touched the first tread. His roar of anger tearing through the air had me biting the inside of my cheek to keep from screaming in terror.

I almost couldn’t make my feet move, but Win was there again. “Hide, Stevie! Choose a room, get into it and around the corner of the doorframe. If he gets to you before the police arrive, whack him again. Run, Stevie!”

I flew down the long, dark hallway to the left, scooting into the second room and directly around the corner just as sirens pealed, piercing the night air. My eye throbbed, my vision becoming worse by the second.

Sal’s footsteps grew closer, pounding, driving, running right past the room I was hidden in, and I almost breathed a sigh of relief, thinking Sal had gone another way, until Win bellowed, “Stevie, now!”

I whacked at the air, not even sure what I was whacking at, it was so dark, but I got him good on some fleshy part of his body I couldn’t distinguish. Judging from Sal’s howl of discontent, it hurt. As my eyes began to adjust, I pushed my way past him, using all my strength to get out the door.

I managed to fumble to the hallway, crashing against the wall before I took off running again, unsure where to go next.

“Stevie! I’m going to tell you to do something crazy, but it’ll buy you time until the police get here! You can’t let him get his hands on you or he’ll strangle you before the police arrive. See that rope on the scaffolding at the edge of the broken railing to the stairs? Grab it, push off the step then make like Tarzan and swing!”

“Are you insane? I’ll never make that! Have I mentioned I failed gym?” I cried as the rope he was talking about came into view. It was hanging from the highest point of the entryway scaffolding that went all the way across to the wall along the stairs—the entryway I’d thought would eventually be so beautiful, not where I’d leap to my death.

Uh, no way.

But Sal’s feet were coming faster now, his insidious footsteps, the rasp of his breath lending to sheer terror like I’ve never known.

So I did it. I ran for that rope like it was the only thing to grab on to that would keep me from falling off the edge of the planet.

The coarse material ripped at my hands as I gripped it, wrapping it around my restrained wrists, panic making me push off the step just as Sal grabbed at my right foot, his fingers slipping off my ankle with a howl of rage.

“Ahhh!” As I flew across the entryway and headed into the parlor, where I was sure I was going to fall to my death, I screamed again.

My scream was matched by Sal’s bone-chilling howl, making me swivel my head to see him fall head first over the banister. His skull hit the table saw with a sick thud before he landed on the entryway floor, a pool of blood spreading out behind his ebony hair.

But Win gave me yet another order. “Don’t look back again, Stevie! Look down and the minute you see the parlor floor, drop, tuck, roll!”

Honest, as I flew over the entryway and into the parlor, I’m not sure I had a choice
but
to drop because my entire being shook with fear.

“Drop, Stevie! Drop now!”

So, I dropped, probably fifteen feet or so, definitely much higher than the window at Madam Z’s, and fell to the floor on my arm in a crumpling heap.

So much for tuck and roll.

Then there were flashlights and sirens and people yelling and Sandwich on crutches, kneeling down beside me. “Stevie! Don’t move. Stay right there,” he ordered, suddenly sounding incredibly authoritative. “Here, let me get the tape off your wrists.”

But I had to see if Sal was really dead, so I sat up, my body bruised and battered, my feet bloody and raw.

Win’s warmth surrounded me all at once. “Stevie. Don’t look anymore. You’ve seen enough.
Please
.”

“But Sal…what if—”

“He didn’t,” Win reassured me in soft words. “He’s gone. There’s nothing to fear.”

Sandwich confirmed what Win told me as he took the tape from my wrists with gentle hands. “It’s all okay now, Stevie. There’s nothing to worry about where he’s concerned.”

And then I remembered Forrest, his arm wounded from a bullet, his head gushing blood. “Forrest!”

The paramedics arrived with gurneys and blood pressure cuffs, heading toward the kitchen, but I had to see for myself if Forrest was all right.

I fought to move them out of my way, but Sandwich was back in my line of vision again. “It’s okay, Stevie. Forrest’s gonna be just fine. We got the pizza delivery kid, too. He’s okay. Now, let the people do their job and make sure you’re okay. You took quite a shiner to the eye. Doc at the hospital’s gonna wanna look at that.”

Heaving a sigh of relief, I allowed the paramedics to put me on a gurney and wheel me out of the house to the ambulance.

“Do as Sardine says,” Win said. “I’ll be here the whole way. Promise.”

And he was, right up until the moment they wanted to admit me. But I had Belfry to consider and no way to explain his existence. So after giving the police another statement, I took the script for pain meds, promised to see the eye doctor for my trashed eyeball, tucked the sling for my sprained arm against my body and let Sandwich drive me home.

“Wish you’d have at least stayed the night, Stevie. Your eye’s all kinda colors,” he remarked with a smile just as dawn was breaking over the horizon, the drizzle of a new day arriving in the way of splotches of rain.

“What kind of accused murderer would I be if I couldn’t take a right hook to the eye?” I joked, forcing myself to keep things light.

“About that,” Sandwich said, his face somber, his eyes tired. “I was just doing my job. Sometimes it’s hard to separate that from friendship, Stevie. I have to keep things professional, but I never thought you hurt that nice lady.”

I smiled until it hurt my eye. “Are we friends now, Sandwich?”

He held out his hand and grinned. “You bet. Now lemme get you up this mudslide and inside where it’s warm.”

“And how are you going to do that with a sprained ankle? It’s enough you already did it once today. I’ll be fine, Sandwich. Promise. You go home and get some rest.” I propped open the door and dropped out of the police cruiser.

Sandwich held up a hand and waved to me just before I turned to fight my way up those crumbling stairs. “Driveway, Crispin Alistair Winterbottom. Before we put coffee-urinating sculptures of David and waterfalls in the kitchen—a driveway,
please
.”

He cackled his rich laugh. “A driveway for the lady it is.”

I successfully made it to the front steps to find Enzo waiting for me, steaming cup of coffee in hand, the first smile I’d seen on his face since I met him.

“Thought you could use this,” he said, gruff and short. “Heard all the commotion on the scanner and came right over. Took care of that mess, too. Police said I could after they finished up here. Didn’t want you coming home to that.”

Tears welled in my eyes, tears of gratitude. “Oh, Enzo, thank you so much. I…” I couldn’t finish my sentence as he led me inside where, as promised, everything was cleaned up.

“Nah, you don’t have to thank me. You go get some rest. I won’t be bangin’ around down here much today, but I’ll be here if ya need me.” With that, he sauntered down the hall to the kitchen, leaving me with more thank yous on my lips.

“Let’s get you your medication, a hot bath and then bed,” Win suggested.

I nodded, taking my coffee up the steps, avoiding the rope, and heading straight to my bedroom.

Upon entry, I was thrilled to find a small table by the bed with aspirin and a squeaky-clean glass for water. “Man, Enzo really thought of everything, huh?”

“He’s a prince among thieves,” Win remarked.

Belfry flew at me, landing on my shoulder and snuggling against my neck with a sigh. “That was some close call, Stevie! You scared the pants off me.”

I rubbed my cheek against his soft body as I made my way into the bathroom. “You don’t wear pants.”

“Doesn’t mean you can’t scare me. You okay?”

Setting my coffee on the edge of the cracked sink, I nodded. “I’m alive, thanks to Win and you. If you hadn’t called 9-1-1, Bel…” I shuddered at the thought before forcing myself to shake it off.