Dewitched (Witchless In Seattle Mysteries Book 3) (23 page)

“Stevie! Look out!”

Those were the last words I heard just as someone burst through the dining room window, the glass shattering into a million pieces all over the brand-new hardwood floors.

I was taken so utterly by surprise, I almost couldn’t move until the person who’d crashed through the window came at me, full steam ahead. His face was filled with fury, his eyes bulging and wide.

“Stevie, get out!
Gooo
!” Win yelled.

For the briefest of fleeting moments, I cursed my predicament. Would I never learn to wear my work boots all the ding-dong-dang time? Even when I slept? I was never taking them off again. In fact, I was going to have them waterproofed so I could bathe in them, too.

Because my fuzzy slippers just weren’t cutting the mustard when it came to fleeing the crazies. Just once, I’d like to be caught by a madman in my sneakers.

But upon instruction, I flung the door open and barreled down the steps, flying along the walkway as the beat of heavy footsteps followed me in close pursuit.

“Who the heck is that?” I squeaked in my panic.

“Forget that for now! Get to the car, Stevie! Get in the car!”

I mentally measured the distance to the car as I ran, my legs pumping so hard I thought they’d fall off. I clung to the keys, pressing the fob to unlock it, thankful I didn’t park it in the garage tonight.

My feet began to sink into the softened lawn, my slippers becoming more of a detriment by the second. The lights flashed on my little Fiat, signaling she was ready for entry, so I made a lunge for it, deciding all those stupid kettle exercises Win made me suffer three times a week were actually paying off.

I stopped patting myself on the back when I felt a hand grab onto my hair and yank me backward, slamming me against a hard chest.

Argh! I needed to run more and build up my speed. Either that or get some bionics. Did I have enough money in the bank for bionics?

“Stevie! Hold on to those keys and thrust backward. Got that? Up and back. Nail him right in the eye!” Win yelled.

And I did just that. Reaching behind my head as he grabbed me around the throat with his arm, I thrust. I thrust so hard, I also had to give Win credit for the jousting sessions he forced me to take. Because wow, whoever this particular crazy was, he squealed like a pig, so it must have hurt.

“Jab to the ribs! Give it to him hard with your elbow. Do it!”

Again, I did as I was instructed. I uppercut him in the ribs with my elbow with everything I had in me. And then I was free, running the rest of the way to the car and flinging the door open.

“That’s my girl! Now shut the door! Shut it and lock it and move it. Get to the police station
now
!”

I slammed the door shut, catching the edge of my bathrobe in it, to immediately find my attacker was right up against the window. His eye bleeding profusely, his face a mask of rage as he pounded on the glass over and over.

He began to step up his game, slamming his fist against the window even harder, and what came next was my downfall.

Getting a clear view of him as the motion sensor lights on the front of the garage flashed on, I gasped.

Just before the glass of the window broke, smashing to smithereens and flying into my eyes, I knew exactly whom I was facing.

There was no mistaking who he was. He looked just like him.

In fact, other than his height, he was a carbon copy of him.

* * * *

“Stevie! No time to waste! Key in ignition
now
!”

My hands, shaking like two leaves battered in a rainstorm, fumbled as I tried to jam the key into the ignition while he screamed at me, pulling at my hair, trying to wrench me from the car.

“Why couldn’t you keep your nose out of it, you stupid woman?” he screamed at me as he attempted to drag me through the window.

The glass cut into my shoulders, the force he used to yank at my hair making me dizzy.

“Stevie! Use your free hand and grip the steering wheel. Grip it hard! Use it as leverage and get that key in the ignition!”

I did as instructed, my cold, clammy hands slipping before I got a good grip and manage to yank myself far enough over to reach the ignition.

But then he yanked harder, wrapping the length of my hair around his wrist and pulling with such force, some of it began to pull from my scalp. “He deserved to die! That scum deserved to die for everything he put me through!”

Shrieking, I found myself enraged. “Let! Go!”

I was trying to grow my hair out, for Pete’s sake! But that thought gave me the fuel I needed to jam the key in the ignition and twist. The sound of the engine turning over was the sweetest sound I’d ever heard.

But just one thing. I sort of forgot to put it in reverse. The second Win yelled, “Reverse, Stevie!” was the second I jolted forward after putting my sloppy slippered foot in the kitchen, resulting in my attacker letting go—and me crashing into the garage door.

Wood splintered in every direction, my heart slammed against my ribs painfully, and my attacker’s roar of anguish as he ran toward me, his form flashing in my side-view mirror, almost made me freeze.

Except for Win, who was right there in my ear again. “Reverse, Stevie! Put this baby in reverse and put your foot to the floor!”

I put the car in reverse by feel, praying I’d done it right, grinding my foot to the floor. We zoomed backward so fast, everything around me flashed in a blur. I steamrolled down our long driveway, narrowly missing the gate to the left of it that led to the beachfront of our property.

There was a thump, a
loud
thump—a loud, sickening crack of body against metal when I realized he was on the roof. Somehow, he’d launched himself onto the roof!

“Drive, Stevie! Put the car in drive and go! Drive as fast as you can make the car go for the most impact. Don’t think. Don’t look at anything but the road ahead of you, just drive fast and then slam on the brakes and knock him off!”

I’d gotten quite good at following Win’s directions in times of stress. He was almost like my boxing coach, directing me from an invisible sideline. So as the rains slashed at my face and the wind from the speed I was traveling froze my skin, I thought I had this one in the bag. I dug in my pocket and as I picked up speed, swerving and swaying the car to attempt to knock my attacker off, I found my phone and held it up, just about to dial 9-1-1.

That is, until the bad guy reached in the broken window and wrenched the steering wheel to the left, managing to gain control of it for just enough time to have us headed straight over the low guardrail and down the rocky path leading to the beach.

My tiny car took some licking, bucking, scraping, and rocking until I realized I hadn’t taken my foot off the accelerator, and as my attacker clung, we were headed straight for the water.

“Stevie! Slam on the brakes!” Win roared.

But my reaction time was too late. We plowed into the freezing cold of the Puget, plunging nose first to its frigid depths.

The moment the water hit my skin, I lost all good sense and began to struggle not only to act, but to think.

As I sank into the water, my pulse racing, I got as stupid as a girl sitting on the bleachers waiting for some guy to ask her to dance at prom. I froze, the icy water enveloping me until I was under its black waves.

“Stevie! Open your eyes, Stevie! Open them, Dove!”

But I couldn’t. I don’t know
why
I couldn’t, I just couldn’t. My lungs began to burn, my limbs growing light and weightless as I rose to the ceiling of the car.

“Stevie Cartwright, you will open your eyes
now
!” Win bellowed, his tone angry and harsh with impatience. “Don’t you chicken out on me! Open those baby blues!”

With everything I had in me, I forced my eyes to open, the water rushing into them, stinging, making me very aware. But I couldn’t see anything! It was pitch black and murky.

And then Win, with calm, orderly instructions, said, “Listen to me, there’s not much time, Dove. Feel to your left. That’s it. Reach your hands out. That’s the window. It’s broken. You must swim through it, Stevie, and you must do it instantly! Don’t hesitate, listen to me. Swim, Stevie, swim!”

I didn’t think I had it in me, my arms feeling as sluggish as they did, my chest and ears about to burst from the pressure of the water, but I jetted forward, feeling my way to the frame of the window, the ragged opening cutting my hands.

“Use it, Stevie, use the frame to push out and up!”

My biceps ached and my legs threatened to seize up on me, but I pushed for all I was worth, pistoning upward.

“Push, Stevie! Puuush! You’re almost there!” I heard Win encourage as the pounding of my heart matched the pounding in my head.

I broke the surface with a gasp, a harsh, water-filled, desperate breath for air until I found buoyancy. The water threatened to drag me back to its depths, but Win yelled, “Kick, Stevie! See the shore, the lights of the house? You’re not that far. Kick harder. Use your arms! The water is too cold to linger!”

Okay, so here’s the truth: I’m not the greatest swimmer, but add in the bulk of my clothing, a head rush to beat any drug-induced high, and the ice-cold temps of the water, and I was a recipe for a
Titanic
-like disaster. No one was ever going to invite me to join the swim team.

But I pounded that water with my hands like I
wanted
to be on the swim team. The lights grew closer, but my body grew more tired by the second.

“No, Stevie, no! Spies never give up! Push, Stevie,
push
!”

My limbs burned with the ache of such laborious physical activity, and just when I didn’t think I could take another stroke, I felt the rocky bottom beneath my feet.

“Out, Stevie! Get out. You have to get out and get back to the house! You must warm up!”

Which was easy for Win to say, and if I lived to tell the tale, I’d bet swimming lessons were in my near future if my spy had anything to say about it.

Gasping for air, fighting to get as much into my lungs as I could, I stumbled and tripped the rest of the way to the shore. It was so dark, I almost couldn’t see where I was going but for Win’s instructions and the vague lights of our house.

“Get out, Stevie! Don’t stop now. Move, Dove! Move!”

The shoreline appeared as though rising up to meet me. Either that or I was falling forward with exhaustion. As I hit the ground, the rocks scraped my face and palms, already bloody from my escape from the car.

So I wasn’t expecting what came next. And I suspect neither was Win. Because he didn’t fire off a warning.

A fist like iron struck me on the side of the head, knocking it back on my shoulders and leaving me seeing stars.

And then I was being dragged forward, over the rocks, over the debris, into the sand, where my attacker threw me like a dead fish.

“
W
hy wouldn’t you just stay out of it?” my attacker screamed into the night. “You should have never gone to the prison. He told you, didn’t he? He told you! He had the letter! He told you!”

The man fell down beside me, leaning over me, his eye still bleeding, salty water falling from his face onto mine.

“Stevie, don’t freeze up! Catch him unaware. Don’t listen to him prattle on. Wrap your arms around his neck and put him in a chokehold, then snap his neck!”

But I think what Win wasn’t quite grasping was the fact that I couldn’t really feel my arms very well at the moment. In fact, I could only wiggle my fingers. But my eyes? They worked just fine as my attacker glared down at me.

So I whispered, “
Why?
” It was all I could manage.

Gripping the lapels of my sodden bathrobe, he hauled me up so our faces were mere inches apart. “Because you interfered! You were at that prison today, asking all kinds of questions of that stupid Ralph! Why else would you be there? He told you about me, didn’t he?”

“
How?
” I spat the word, using all my energy. “How did you know I was there?”

Gripping me harder, his hands shook with his rage. “You know how!” he bellowed. “I saw you! All my life I didn’t understand these visions. All my life I was afraid of what they meant. I was alone. Always alone!”

Visions?
Sweet Jean. Was it
his
magic my mother had smelled that night?

“Admit it! He told you, didn’t he?”

Told me about
him
? “
Who are you?
” I asked on a gasped breath.

He shook me like a ragdoll, my whole body limp as a wet noodle. “You
know
who I am! I’m that shyster’s son! The son whose mother locked him away in boarding school after boarding school because she was ashamed of me! Because she was too far along to abort me when she realized she was pregnant! I’m the one with the mom who thought I was ‘weird’ because I see things. I’m the son whose existence was filled with nothing but misery and pain! The son they were
ashamed
of. The son they tortured with his illegitimacy and made him feel dirty just for existing! All because that scumbag knocked her up and ran off with my grandfather’s money!”

Seeing him so closely, I knew what I’d thought earlier was spot on. There was no denying it.

This was Bart Hathaway’s son.

And if he was Bart’s son, he was, at the very least, half warlock. Aw, hell on a stick.

“Visions?” I croaked, my lips cold and stiff. That word stuck out in my mind like a sore thumb. Still, I wasn’t sure I was hearing right.

“Yes,
visions
!” he spat at me, water spraying from his twisted mouth. “I can see the future, you idiot! I had a vision today of you going to the prison to see Ralph!”

As he gave me another hard shake to emphasize his point, I managed to respond. “You’re a warlock?” I was still astonished. This man had spent his entire lifetime without any guidance at all. Without anyone from the coven to aid him.

He stopped as suddenly as he’d begun, his grip loosening ever so slightly. “I don’t know what I am!” he cried, hoarse and raw. “I don’t understand any of it and no one will help me!”

“Stevie! I need you to dig deep, Dove! Stop sympathizing with the poor bad guy and do something! Dig as deep as you can and
do something
! Reach beside you, there are rocks. Large rocks. Hit him with one. Warlocks can die, too! Don’t mess around with this one, Stevie,
please
!” Win hollered, his tone pleading.