Thyme to Kill

by Tegan Maher

  Unlike me, Bear wasn’t worried about burning as many calories in three miles as he could, so he often took off in one direction or another to chase squirrels or explore scents. I didn't worry too much because he always came back, but he’d been gone longer than usual this time. I wiped my forehead on my shirt sleeve and glanced down at my Fitbit. He'd been gone for nearly ten minutes, which was unlike him. I glanced around as I ran, but didn't see hide nor hair of him.

  A little niggle of worry slithered down my neck and I came to a stop, dust poofing up from under my running shoes. "Bear," I called, my gaze running along the edge of the woods. "Come here, boy."

  I waited, hands on my hips as I let my breathing return to normal. "Bear," I called again, drawing my brows together.

  The bushes rustled as he came plowing through the brush to the tree line, tail wagging. He gave one deep bark before he turned and ran off again.

  I tapped my foot, irritation coursing through me as I called his name again. "Bear, get back here!" I huffed as I marched after him. I had no idea where he had gone, just the general direction. "Stupid dog," I mumbled to myself. Of course he picked one of the more difficult areas to traverse. There were rocks everywhere, tree branches scraped at my arms, and brambles and thick bushes made it impossible to chase him in a straight line.

  My toe caught on a root and I face-planted onto hard earth, scraping my knees and elbows. I growled and pushed myself to my feet, wiping myself off and swearing like a well-educated sailor. I closed my eyes and took a couple of deep breaths. Once my blood pressure dropped out of the red zone, I opened my eyes. "Thor," I barked as I resumed my journey.

  Nothing. Hiking through this stuff made me appreciate the manicured lawns, well-trimmed hedges, and carefully kept sidewalks of my former hometown. This was getting ridiculous. I had half a mind to leave Bear and let him find his own way home.

  I called to him again, giving him one last chance before heading home and waiting for him to return when he was ready. I spun in a slow circle, looking for any sign of him. A patch of bright orange fabric at the base of a giant oak tree caught my eye. I picked my way over that way, wondering if somebody had left a backpack or some other item in the middle of the forest. As I got closer and could see past the grass, I could tell it was a man lying on his side.

  I didn't know if he was injured or sleeping, so I stopped several yards shy of him. The last thing I needed to do was disturb some homicidal drifter without giving myself at least a little bit of a head start. "Sir,” I said leaning forward on my tiptoes to get a better look. “Are you all right?"

  The man didn't answer. He didn't even move.

  "Sir," I tried again as I drew closer to him.

  Nothing. His back was to me as I knelt down carefully and reached out to shake his shoulder. Even though I barely touched him, he flopped over onto his back, his right arm landing with a thump in the soil at my feet. I fell onto my backside, covering my mouth with my hand as I gasped. This man wasn’t sleeping—he was dead. There was no need to check for a pulse. I knew from the small round hole in his forehead and his sightless eyes that he was well beyond needing CPR.

  "This is not happening again," I whispered to myself, squeezing my eyes closed for a couple seconds. He was still there when I opened them, not that I expected Murphy to cut me any slack at that point—he was perched firmly on my shoulder, it seemed. I scrambled to my feet, glancing around. There didn't seem to be anyone else around, but that didn't mean anything. There were plenty of places to hide.

  I slipped my phone out of my fanny pack, hoping that for once, the mountains weren’t blocking the single cell tower on that end of town. No such luck. I scrambled back to the trail as quickly as I could go without running the risk of breaking my neck, glancing at my phone every few paces to check for signal. I was almost back to the lodge before a single bar flickered onto my screen. I stood stock still and dialed nine-one-one.

  The sheriff was not going to be happy I’d landed smack-dab in the middle of another crime scene, but there wasn’t much I could do about it.

  To preorder Shot Cross Buns and have it delivered to your Kindle the minute it’s released, click here!

  Sweet Murder

  Sneak Peek of Chapter 1

  USING THE HEM OF MY apron, I pulled the last batch of blueberry turnovers out of the oven and slid them onto the counter to cool. They were an even, golden brown, and a quick poke with a fork assured me the crust was light and flaky.

  Perfect. The customers at Brew4U, my best friend and cousin Raeann's coffee shop, were going to eat them up. And that was good, because right now every few bucks mattered.

  Speaking of money—I glanced at the clock on the microwave, and that cold, I’m-gonna-be-late feeling swept over me. As always, time had gotten away from me while I was baking; I only had about fifteen minutes to get to work. Panicked, I turned the oven off with a wave of my hand, then bolted into the laundry room and pulled my server's apron and work shirt out of the dryer. I changed into the tank top on my way through the living room, grabbed my purse, and bolted out the front door.

  And nearly face-planted when I tripped over our miniature donkey, Max, who was napping at the bottom of the steps.

  "Watch it, you big clod,” he snapped. “Maybe I shall kick you in the head the next time you’re napping." He yawned widely, taking most of the intimidation factor out of the threat.

  "If I were sleeping at the bottom of the steps, I'd expect to get kicked in the head," I said over my shoulder as I recovered and headed toward Bessie, my faded blue, shabby-chic 1984 F-150. Yes, shabby-chic is code for "POS." Don't judge me; it's paid for.

  And yes, the donkey talks, but we'll get to that a little later. Trust me—after you meet him, you'll be glad for the delay.

  I slid into the truck, yelping and lifting my hips when the backs of my thighs hit the searing-hot cracked leather seat. I pushed my apron under my legs and settled back gingerly, then, with an encouraging pat to the dashboard, I cranked the key. Bessie coughed and wheezed a little, but surprised me yet again when she caught and roared to life. Another check in the win column for the day. I backed out of the yard and headed down the driveway to the main road, admiring the late-morning view.

  Even with my window down, the temperature inside the truck was just this side of hellfire, so I reached across the seat and cranked the passenger window down, too. Midsummer in southern Georgia was brutal. The AC in the truck had gone out a few months back and, unfortunately, fixing it didn't even make the top twenty on the laundry list of priorities that demanded a chunk of my check.

  Still, as I rumbled out of the yard and drove past the horses grazing in the pasture, I figured I didn’t have a whole lot to complain about in the scheme of things. No matter how many times I traveled our mile-long driveway, I never got tired of it. Ancient oak trees draped with Spanish moss lined both sides, forming a canopy of leaves and limbs, and small patches of sunlight dappled the shaded road.

  I breathed a sigh of relief as I entered the tunnel of shade and the interior of the truck finally dropped below the melting point of flesh.

  Just as I turned onto the main road, I spotted a couple of deer out of the corner of my eye. When I tapped the brakes in case they decided to run out in front of me, the pedal felt spongy. Since my house sat on an overlook outside of town, much of my drive was a steady, winding descent; brakes weren't exactly optional, so I tested them again.

  I was coming up on the first of several hairpin turns, so when the pedal went clear to the floor, so did my heart. Cold fingers of panic raced down my spine as I stomped on it again, then a third time, to no avail. The truck picked up speed, and as I bounced and rattled toward my demise over potholes that now felt like craters, I had only one thought: How on earth was Raeann going to finish raising my hellion of a little sister without strangling her or hexing her into a convent?

  You heard right—I said "hex." We're witches, which you’d think would have come in handy right about then. You'd
be right, except I was too freaked out—and busy trying not to die—to pull any magic together.

  I managed to make it around the first curve, but there was another one a quarter-mile ahead. If I dropped off the road there, I would careen about three hundred yards down a steep slope and fly over a cliff into a granite quarry — assuming I didn't meet my maker by smashing headlong into a tree before then.

  Adrenaline flooded my body, and I felt like I was wearing boxing gloves as I did my best to wrangle the truck into the turn. I was almost home free when the passenger-side tire dropped off the steep berm, blew with a tremendous bang, and jerked the truck off the road.

  After that, it was all over but the crashing.

  The truck plowed through the brush at the edge of the road and kept rumbling right on over the edge. My skull thunked off the doorframe and the forward momentum shoved my knees into the dash—in the ’80s, seatbelts weren't quite what they are now. The sound of rocks and bushes scraping the undercarriage harmonized perfectly with the terror raking over my nerves.

  My head whipped forward and cracked on the steering wheel, and my seatbelt finally caught. I came so close to a giant oak that it ripped my mirror off and flung it into the truck. I scrunched my eyes shut and threw my arms up to defend my face from the incoming debris.

  Then, just when I'd resigned myself to a bone-crushing demise, the truck lurched to an abrupt stop.

  For a few seconds, I was afraid to open my eyes, then I was afraid not to. Metal groaned and I reached forward with shaking hands to shut the truck off. I poked my head out the window to see what had stopped my descent to certain death—or at least extreme agony and disfigurement—and saw that a little maple tree about eight inches thick was wedged between my rear bumper and the body of the truck.

  Bessie slid a bit, so I didn't waste any more time. I opened the door and jumped from the cab, releasing a sigh of epic proportions as I landed relatively unscathed in the soft grass. I grabbed my purse from the floorboard and just left the door hanging open, scared the movement would send the truck the rest of the way over the hill. The last thing I needed was to completely lose my transportation, and there was no way I had enough magical mojo right then to pull it back up the hill. That trick would have been a stretch on my best day, and this definitely wasn’t that.

  I bent over with my palms on my knees, waiting for my body to stop shaking enough to make the trek back toward the road. Once I had a modicum of control over my limbs, I walked up the hill a bit and collapsed onto a butt-sized rock, staring in disbelief at the sight of my beast of a truck dangling halfway down the hill from that one scrawny little maple tree. Something trickled down the side of my face and when I touched my eyebrow, my fingers came away sticky with blood. I hadn't even felt the pain until right then.

  I put my head between my knees and thanked the universe for giving me a pass, and sent a grateful push of energy to the little tree. When my hands stopped shaking and my head cleared enough to allow me to think beyond surviving, I reached for my phone and scrolled through my contacts until I found the number for Skeeter's Garage and Appliances.

  Don't let the name fool you; he meets all three of my gold-star requirements: he's good, he's honest, and he's cheap.

  After three rings, Skeeter himself answered. I'd never been so happy to hear his cheerful twang. I gave him the 411 on what had just happened and told him where I was, grateful for once that I live in a small town where the only directions required were "the curve right above Old Man Bailey's quarry on the way to my place."

  I ended the call and had turned to scramble the rest of the way up the hill when the feeling of being watched made the hairs on my nape stand up. I searched the trees and caught a glimpse of sunlight reflecting off something a hundred yards or so up the hill on the other side of the road. My gaze darted toward the glint and I scanned the spot for any other sign of movement, but all stayed still. I decided to stay right where I was, figuring it would be a whole lot harder for some ax-wielding serial killer to drag me up the hill than to just shove me in a van if I was standing conveniently by the road.

  Yes, I'm a capable witch, and I live in BFE, Georgia, where the odds of a random serial killer just happening by were about the same as going to Walmart without seeing at least one hairy butt crack. But I wasn't feeling particularly rational at that point.

  Pulling as much defensive magic into my hands as I could manage in my frazzled state, just in case, I leaned on a pecan tree and hoped Skeeter would hold true to his promise to get there in "two shakes of a coon's tail" before my paranoia got the better of me.

  Little did I know then that just because you're paranoid doesn't mean you're wrong.

  Want to keep reading? Sweet Murder is available here.

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  Other Books by Tegan Maher

  Witches of Keyhole Lake Series

  Book 1: Sweet Murder

  Book 2: Murder to the Max

  Book 3: Murder so Magical

  Book 4: Mayhem and Murder

  Book 5: Murder and Marinade

  Book 6: Hook, Line, and Murder

  Book 7: Murder of the Month

  Witches of Keyhole Lake Shorts

  Bubble, Bubble, Here Comes Trouble

  Witching for a Miracle

  Moonshine Valentine

  Cruise Ship Caper

  Cori Sloane Witchy Werewolf Mysteries

  Howling for Revenge

  Dead Man’s Hand

  Bad Moon Rising

  Enchanted Coast Magical Mystery Series

  Deadly Daiquiri

  Surfboard Slaying

  About Tegan

  I WAS BORN AND RAISED in the South and even hung my motorcycle helmet in Colorado for a few months. I've always had a touch of wanderlust and have never feared just packing up and going on new adventures, whether in real life or via the pages of a great book.

  When I was a little girl, I didn't want to grow up to be a writer—I wanted to raise unicorns and be a superhero. When those gigs fell through, I chose the next best thing: creating my own magical lands filled with adventure, magic, humor, and romance.

  I live in Florida with my two dogs. When I'm not writing or reading, I'm riding motorcycles or binge-watching anything magical on Netflix.

  I'm eternally grateful for all the people who help make my life what is today - friends, readers, family. No woman is an island.