Page 34 of Bobbing for Bodies
“Aw, come on,” the masked man growls. “I’m supposed to be the scary one here,” he whines, and yet we continue to dismiss him.
Stella takes a few brazen steps my way. “He didn’t have a problem with Hunter.Idid.” The baby in her arms whimpers, and she takes a moment to soothe him. “Hunter was supposed to give me enough money to live off, and instead, I was stuck at that dive bar dancing for dollars. You think I wanted to twirl around that pole all night? But Hunter didn’t care. All he wanted was to take my son away from me. He wanted him. He was trying to steal him away.”
I shake my head in disbelief. “I’m his good friend, and I didn’t even know he had a kid. That can’t be true,” I howl over the whirl of the chainsaw.
Jonas snatches her by the elbow a moment. “I told you he wasn’t out to get you. You’re paranoid, and you have been ever since you had the baby.”
“Enough!” Stella raises her foot and shoves it into his stomach before whipping past me and out of sight.
I’m about to dash after her when my feet are knocked out from underneath me. The zombie doll goes flying, and my hands slap down over the ground before I inadvertently kiss damp Honey Hollow soil. I scamper to my knees as Jonas tries to leap over me, and I reach up and grab ahold of the bottom of his jeans.
Jonas falls to the side, knocking down the man in the hockey mask with him. The chainsaw bounces wildly behind them as I scramble to my feet.
And just as I’m about to hightail it out of there, Jonas snatches up the roaring weapon and jabs it my way.
“Don’t move!” he shouts at the top of his lungs, and every cell in my body is suddenly immobilized. “This isn’t about you. Leave us alone. Stella needs help. She’s been a different person ever since she had the kid.”
“You’ve been with her as long as she’s been with Hunter? I don’t get it. How did that not strain your relationship? You must really love your girlfriend.”
“Girlfriend?” His head ticks back as if I threw him for a loop. “Stella’s not my girlfriend. She’s my sister. I’m trying to get her the help she needs.”
It’s as if time stands still, and this entire night turns on its ear once again.
“You’re trying to help her. She’s not well.” I shake my head. “You didn’t kill Hunter, did you?”
The man in the hockey mask takes a swipe at Jonas, and he swings the weapon the man’s direction. A part of me says run—and another far more logical part says he can outrun me even with a chainsaw in his hands.
I snatch the zombie doll off the ground and toss it in the air at him, and he slices its head off without hesitation. The man with the hockey mask knocks the chainsaw out of his hand and wrestles him to the ground. As much as my feet are twitching to bolt, those handcuffs Keelie gifted me catch the light, and an idea springs to life. Perhaps not a good one—in fact, one that can backfire spectacularly, but I pluck the handcuffs free and fall to my knees.
“What the hell are you doing, lady?” A muffled cry comes from our masked friend.
“This is a citizen’s arrest!” I bark over the roar of the motor. Jonas continues to struggle, but he’s effectively pinned to the ground. It takes two tries to leash his left wrist with the cuff. “Get his hands together!” I scream at the masked man, but Jonas is working hard to overpower him, and I don’t have another moment to think about it. Instead, I cuff his wrist to the man in the mask and run like hell.
The maze goes on forever, spookier, darker, and with no sign of that useless squirrel. Instead, I wise up and follow a couple of screaming teenagers right out the exit. My feet stumble to a halt as I pant into the night while surveying the landscape.
To my right sits the open pumpkin field, to my left a midway with games and an entire legion of large round barrels filled with water. Apples bob lightly along the surface as they wait patiently for the nighttime festivities to fully commence. The apple bobbing competition is the one that crowns the night. It’s a long-standing tradition that the McMurrys enjoy right along with their patrons.
A glowing beam of light twitches near the base of those apple barrels, and I can’t help but give a weak smile as I spot my furry friend. It seems to tick its head for me to follow it as it scampers over to a mob of people in the thick of the midway and, low and behold, leaning on a post, I spot a head of long, dark hair, that curvy body. The sequin of her bodysuit gives her away like a disco ball spraying out a spasm of light in our dimly lit world.
Every muscle in my body propels me in that direction, and before Stella can bolt I’m on her. The child isn’t anywhere in sight, and my heart thumps wildly, almost afraid to see what she’s done.
Stella makes a run toward the barrels, and I’m right on her tail.
“You killed Hunter!” I scream up over the music, incensed that she had gotten away with it for so long.
Stella stops cold next to a barrel, her wild pants pumping from her in long, white plumes.
“He wanted to take Travis away from me. I was just some disgusting breeding factory to him.”
“Not true. Hunter would never look at another human being that way. Especially not the mother of his child.”
“He looked at me that way.” A dark laugh strums from her as her eyes glisten like shards. Stella looks every bit like a woman unmoored. “He thought I was trash because of what I did for a living. Sure, it was great when he first met me, but once I had the baby, he didn’t think I was fit enough to raise it.”
“Is that why he needed so much money? He was giving it all to you?” I ask as I continue to cautiously inch my way toward her.
“Ha!” she belts it out into the night. “He wasn’t giving it all to me. He was giving it to a fancy lawyer in Ashford. He was trying to get full custody. He wanted me permanently out of the picture. I had to take things into my own hands and make sure it was him who never got to raise our son.”
My gut wrenches just hearing it. “You didn’t want to shoot him, did you?”