Hollis blinks at me. “I mean, he was with Taylor Grace while he was with you, right? It’s the most likely scenario. You can’t trust men like that.”
Do I have it all wrong? Was it a holiday-fueled hallucination? “I, uh—”
“Don’t be sad, Willow. He’s not good enough for you anyway. It’s just you and me now, making holiday magic together.” She pats my arm sympathetically.
“I need to wash the mint,” I tell her, hurrying away.
I duck around the back of the stage. Hughes didn’t run off. I know he didn’t run off. And I know I’m not wrong about Hollis. She’s been poisoning people with the toxic pumpkins. And now she’s done something to Hughes. I race around, trying to find him, but there’s no sign of him.
I’m about to head back to the Bake-Off when I hear the roar of a truck. I duck behind an elf trash can and watch a pickup back up to a pile of pallets covered with a tarp. A man dressedall in black jumps out of the still-running truck then slowly manhandles something out of the pile.
Hughes.Crap. I did have it wrong. It wasn’t Hollis. It was…
I don’t know who that is, but I don’t have time to figure it out. The murderer is busy loading an unconscious Hughes into the bed of the pickup truck.
I sneak around, climb into the cab, and floor it.
The tires squeal as the man screams, “You bitch!”
His voice is muffled, but the shots that ring out from the gun he fires aren’t. I shriek a curse, ducking as bullets ping off the car’s frame.
“Hughes!” I cry. Looking in the rearview mirror, I don’t see Hughes’s body lying lifelessly on the snow. “He must still be in the bed of the truck,” I say, trying to angle the mirror to find him.
Crash!
Snow, branches, and Christmas lights rain down on me as I drive headfirst into the Christmas tree. The tree doesn’t even budge. The truck crumples like tissue paper, though.
The man runs at me, gun raised.
I rush to rescue Hughes from the back of the truck. Branches snag on me. “I need to lift weights,” I groan as I heft Hughes’s unconscious body and stagger out. But there’s no way I’ll be fast enough. I stare as the man in black aims his gun.
Crack!goes the sound of the rifle.
The man screams. Blood spurts out of his wrist.
Is there another murderer? I look around wildly.
The man pulls the hood from his face and continues screaming. “You shot me!”
“I didn’t shoot you.”
“Yes, yes, you did,” Travis seethes. He looks crazy. “You shot me. You and Hughes, you orchestrated these murders.”
“What the—no, I didn’t!”
“That’s what I’m telling the town, and they’re going to believe me,” he snarls, spittle flying from his mouth.
Somewhere above me, in the tree, I hear a woman yell, “Go after him! I’ll take care of Hughes.”
“What do you mean, take care of him?”
Someone swings down from the high branches.
“Is that you, Maris?”
“Go!” she yells.
Once again, I curse the fact that I am not in good enough shape as I hoof it after Travis while he runs screaming and bleeding back to the Bake-Off.
