Bad Bites: Donut Mystery #16 (The Donut Mysteries) (18 page)

Chapter 26

“Now that we’ve got that settled, there’s something that I’ve been
meaning to ask you,” Jake said as we leaned our backs against the jammed
door.
 
The water was up to our
waists now and increasing at an impressive rate.
 
Some water was probably leaking out around
the door’s edges, but Jake had been right.
 
It wouldn’t be enough to save us.
 
If I had to guess, I’d say that we literally had just a few minutes left
to live.

“Now’s the time to ask, then,” I said, trying to keep my tone light.
 
This might be the end of me, but I was
not going to let it define my last moments.
 
I’d taken life head on at every
opportunity in my past, and if I were meant to die tonight, then at least I’d
face it on my own terms.

“Hang on.
 
It’s here
somewhere,” he said as I watched him pat his pockets, obviously searching for
something.

“Take your time.
 
I’m not
going anywhere,” I answered.
 
Gallows humor seemed to be my go-to position in my final minutes of life.

“Here it is,” he said as he retrieved something from the front pocket of
his jeans.
 
“Suzanne, I’ve been
wanting to do this for a long time.
 
I love you.
 
When I lost my
wife and the baby she was carrying, I never thought that I’d be able to love
again, but you’ve shown me that my life wasn’t over, and for that, I’ll be
eternally grateful to you.”

“Jake, what are you saying?”

“Something that I should have said months ago.”
 
He started to go down on one knee, but
with the rising water, it was nearly impossible.
 
Still, I had to give him points for
trying.
 
“Suzanne, will you marry
me?”

I couldn’t believe it.
 
Jake’s
timing was impeccable, but there was no doubt in my mind that the proposal was
sincere.
 
“You’re not just asking me
because it looks as though we’re about to die, are you?”

“Honestly, I was going to ask you anyway,” he said.
 
“Why do you think I brought the ring
with me up here?
 
I don’t mean to
rush you, but the water’s forcing my hand.
 
What do you say?”

“I would be honored,” I said, crying again as he slipped the ring onto my
finger.
 
It felt right there, as
though my hand had been incomplete without it before.
 
I didn’t worry about Jake’s past sorrows
or even my bad marriage to Max.
 
All
I could think about what that this man loved me and wanted to spend the rest of
his life with me, even if it could be measured by the sweeping second hand of a
clock.

“Yes.
 
Of course I’ll marry
you,” I said.

I kissed him, but he broke it off quickly.
 

“What’s wrong?”

“Not a thing in the world,” he said with new enthusiasm.
 
“Now that you’ve said yes, I’ve got a
brand new reason to get us both out of here alive before you can change your
mind.”

“It’s not happening, mister.
 
You’re stuck with me now, forever and always.”

“How about we see if we can stretch that out a little then, shall we?” he
asked as he began attacking the door with renewed vigor.

Chapter 27

Whether it was the added water pressure against the door or the fact that
Jake and I now had something new to live for, I was amazed and delighted when
the door finally started to budge under our dual efforts.
 
Once it was open a touch, the force of
the water shoved it the rest of the way open, sending us both to the floor of
the lodge in a mass of water.

Our troubles weren’t over yet, though.

We were out of the flood, but now we were directly in the heart of the
fire.

Chapter 28

“Stay low,” Jake said, “and crawl toward the back door.”

“I can’t see,” I said as the smoke continued to blind me.
 
Where was the exit, and how were we
supposed to find it?

“I’ll go first.
 
Grab my
ankle.”

“Got it,” I said, and then we didn’t speak again.
 
We both needed to save our breath for
the arduous journey, even if it was just a matter of feet.

It felt to me as though it took an hour, but I knew that we were only in
that inferno for a scant minute before we tumbled out through the back door.

Jake had somehow managed to find our way out.

We were free of both the flood and the fire.

Now it was time to rectify things with Shelly Graham.

Chapter 29

“Where is everybody?” I asked as I looked around us.
 
The clearing was empty, and I wondered
where Grace and the others had all gone.
 
It had finally stopped raining, but the temperature had plummeted, and I
felt myself shivering uncontrollably in the cold.

“Suzanne, lower your voice.
 
We
need to speak softly now that we’re back outside,” Jake said as he helped me
stand up again.
 
“Are you okay?”

“Considering what we’ve just been through, overall I feel like I’m doing pretty
well,” I said.
 
As I brushed at the
mud on my jeans, I felt my engagement ring catch on the denim fabric.
 
“Now that we’re alive, do you still want
to marry me?”

“More than ever,” he said fiercely.
 
“But first we need to catch Shelly before we can celebrate.”

That was all I needed to hear.
 
I started hurrying into the darkness, ready to tackle the woman with my
bare hands if I had to.

“Hang on a second,” Jake said as we managed to stumble a few steps from
the lodge.
 
There was enough light
from the fire to show us the world outside in shades of red and yellow, casting
an eerie glow over everything around us.

“What are we waiting for?” I asked him.
 
“We have to help Grace.”
 
The crackling sounds of the fire were
getting closer, and it seemed that the old lodge was about to be completely
consumed at any moment.
 
It was
ironic that I’d been praying for the rain to stop all day, and now, when we
needed it the most, it had completely disappeared.
 
The fire was burning unchecked now,
consuming everything within its reach.

“I need a weapon in my hands before we do this,” Jake said as he looked
around to see what he might be able to improvise.
 
“She’s armed with my handgun, remember?”
 
After a few moments, he bent down and
picked something up off the ground.
 
In the growing light from the fire, I could see that it was a plank of
wood as big as a bath towel, charred completely on one end.

“What is that?”

Jake peered at it in the dim light.
 
“It must be from the lodge.
 
It says ‘STORM’ on it, and that’s exactly what it’s going to bring down
on Shelly for trying to kill us.”

“To be fair, she only tried to kill you,” I said as I corrected him.
 
Even as I spoke, I wondered about why I
was arguing semantics at a moment like this.

“Maybe so, but how long do you think it would have taken her to set her
sights on you?”

The idea of Shelly coming after me startled me.
 
“Why would she want to hurt me?
 
I was no threat to her.”

“Don’t underestimate yourself.
 
You were scoring some points with your investigation, and it wasn’t going
to be long before she was going to perceive you as a threat.
 
Besides, what would have happened if I
had died back there and you hadn’t found me in time?”

I didn’t even have to think about it.
 
“Firstly, I would never have believed
that you would have let yourself be trapped like that accidently.
 
I would have known that someone had pinned
you down there. And secondly, I wouldn’t have rested until I found what had
really happened to you, and made the killer pay dearly for it.”
 
The thought of how close I’d come to
losing Jake was scary now that we were out of the water and the fire.
 
Even though I knew that we weren’t out
of the woods yet, I was starting to like our chances.
 
After all, Shelly had to be feeling
pretty good about her plan right about now.
 
She had no idea that her efforts to kill
Jake had failed, and in the interim, we’d figured out that she was Chester’s
killer.

Jake just smiled.
 
“You would have
continued to be a real threat to her to the point where she would have had to
get rid of you sooner rather than later.”

“I suppose you’re right,” I said.
 
“Now that you have your weapon, are you ready to go after her?”

“Let’s not burn another second,” Jake said as he started off into the
darkness.

I wasn’t crazy about his choice of words, but I loved the sentiment.

At last, we were going to take action and do something about the
seemingly calm older woman who had turned out to be a crazed killer.

Chapter 30

“I just hope that no one else is dead,” I said as we were walking when
Jake shushed me.

He pointed to a nearby clearing, and I could see Shelly holding the rest
of them at gunpoint, including Grace.
 
It appeared that they had been talking for quite a while.
 
Why was she waiting to get rid of
them?
 
Was she playing some kind of
cruel cat-and-mouse game, or was she simply working up her nerve to shoot them
all in cold blood?
 
Either way, it
appeared that our window was closing quickly.

If we were going to save the others, we had to stop her, and fast.

“That’s enough talk,” we heard Shelly say as we approached the group.
 
Jake motioned for me to stop where I
was, but I shook my head and continued for a few more steps alongside him.
 
The clouds had finally broken, and half
a moon allowed us to see well enough around us to act.

Jake scowled as he pointed one finger to the ground, but again, I refused
to stand idly by while my best friend’s life was being threatened, and I
certainly wasn’t going to wait on the sidelines while Jake fought my battle for
me.
 
If my fiancé was going to put
his life at risk, then so was I.
 
I understood
that I lacked his specialized training, but then again, I wasn’t exactly
helpless.
 
After all, attacking an
armed killer with a piece of wood was too risky to even think about, and if I
could increase his odds of success even by a little bit by being a distraction,
then I was going to do it.

“But I thought you had an alibi,” Grace said, demanding an answer.
 
She might be about to die, but she
wasn’t going to go without at least knowing the truth.

“I made it all up.
 
So sue
me,” Shelly snapped.
 
“When I got to
the library, I parked around the corner and used the back entrance so we could
have a little privacy before everything got started downstairs.
 
It was mostly pure luck that nobody saw
me go in or out.
 
Chester had told
me that he wanted to talk to me before the celebration, and I actually thought
he was going to propose!
 
He tried
to dump me instead, so I took his favorite knife that he was going to use to
cut the cake and I used it on him instead.
 
He wasn’t going to get away with throwing me away like that.
 
I wasn’t going to let myself be
humiliated by a clown!”

“Hang on a second,” Grace said to Shelly belligerently.
 
“I want to know if you were the one who
sent him that postcard.”

“Yes, it was me, not that it did any good.
 
I don’t even think he could help
himself.
 
I suppose once a fool,
always a fool.”
 
Shelly took in a
deep breath, and then she added, “There’s no use postponing it any longer.”

“Who are you going to shoot first, Shelly?” I heard Grace ask, obviously
taunting her.
 
“You don’t have the
guts to do it face to face, do you?
 
That’s why you keep talking.
 
It’s a little different when it’s premeditated, isn’t it?
 
Sure, you stabbed your boyfriend in the
chest, but after all, he’d cheated on you.
 
You don’t have any reason to kill any of us except to protect your
precious freedom.
 
I for one don’t
think that you can do it.”

What was she doing,
daring
Shelly
to shoot her?
 
I wasn’t sure, but I
thought that just maybe Grace was trying to provoke the killer enough so that
she could make her own move.
 
I was
proud of her bravery, but I hoped that she didn’t get herself killed before
Jake and I could intervene.

“Shut up, Grace, or you’ll be first,” Shelly said in a growling
voice.
 
The gun moved toward my best
friend, and I felt my entire body go rigid.
 
Was Shelly about to shoot Grace?
 
At the last second, her aim moved away
though, this time straight at Maggie Hoff.
 
“Now that you mention it, there is somebody here who deserves this more
than the others,” Shelly said fiercely, and then I saw her hand tense as she
pulled the trigger.

For the next few seconds, everything seemed to happen in slow motion.

Nathan shoved his wife to one side even as he took the bullet meant for
her.
 
I couldn’t see where it hit
him, but he crumpled to the ground like a rag doll, so I knew that it was
serious.

Jake leapt forward at that moment, and I’m proud to say that I was right
beside him.
 
It added another level
of warmth to my heart seeing Grace attack the killer from the front even as we
sprang at her.
 
From behind, I hit
Shelly’s legs as Jake swung the burned sign at her head, all of this happening while
Grace was two steps away.
 
When I
hit Shelly, her arm flew up, and Jake knocked the gun away, though I suspected
that he’d been aiming for her head.
 
Shelly went down in a heap, and the gun went flying into the darkness.

Jake hurried to recover his weapon as Grace and I moved toward Nathan, still
lying on the ground.
 
Maggie had pulled
his head into her lap, and she was sobbing uncontrollably.
 
Kevin stood there in shock, and Vince
almost instinctually moved behind him, as though putting space between himself
and everyone else.
 
Was he actually
trying to use the man as a human shield even after the killer had been
disarmed?

Jake finally came up with the gun, but when I turned back to where Shelly
had just been, I saw that she was now gone.

I realized too late that I should have stayed with her, and my mistake
had allowed her to escape.