Hallow Haven Cozy Mysteries Bundle Books 1-3 by Mara Webb (books to read fiction .txt) 📕

Ryder is another absolute knock out. You could grate carrots on his abs, he has a jaw you could carve glass with and I think his lips look like two rose petals snuggling. Greta claimed him though, so I think he is still off limits to the rest of us, good luck!”

She nudged me through the door and a bell rang to alert the owners that a customer had entered. I turned back over my shoulder and spotted Kate sprinting away towards Pete’s Za.

“Welcome to ‘Opt Out’, what are you looking for today?” Behind the counter emerged a vision of a man with the most flawless skin of anyone I’d ever met. He looked airbrushed. “Are you Sadie Adler, the new peacekeeper?”

“So I’m told,” I said, fighting the urge to drool of the statuesque man before me.

“A pleasure to meet you, I’ve missed Greta terribly since her passing. She really was a treasured customer and a great hiking partner,” he smiled.

“I’ll be sure to pass it on,” I grinned.

“Huh?”

“Oh nothing,” I said quickly. “I’ve been led to believe that Greta’s car is still up on the mountain road, could you take me up there to inspect it?”

“Anything you need, I’m at your service,” he said, stepping out from behind the counter and revealing his muscular legs emerging from his dusty green shorts. Dang. “Heading out!” he yelled to someone in the back. He received a grunt in response, then guided me back out towards the door. “Here, take these,” he said.

He passed me a pair of hiking boots from the nearest shelf, in my size no less, and a pair of socks to wear underneath them. He had correctly assessed that my flipflops were not appropriate footwear for a mountainous walk and as soon as I had laced up the boots, we were good to go.

“Why hasn’t her car been moved for forensic analysis?” I asked as we began to walk towards the tree line.

“We don’t do fancy stuff like that here; we deal with things among ourselves. It has pros and cons, as all systems do,” Ryder sighed. “Problem with moving it is that the islands are all part of some eternal border dispute. Greta’s crash happened right on a boundary line so no one could agree on who’s land she was on, in order to avoid an all-out war breaking out, it was agreed to leave it up there.”

“It seems like people around here are constantly trying to provoke a fight over something, if they all cared about Greta so much then surely, they would want to get to the bottom of this.”

“They do, but it’s all geopolitical. If one family accuses another of killing the peacekeeper then it could all erupt from that. The only person that gets to identify the guilty party is you,” Ryder said, guiding us upwards. The weather was getting cooler beneath the tree canopy and I was grateful for it.

I turned a few times to look at how high up we were, the view grew more beautiful each time. It wasn’t hard to see why Greta found it easy to fake an interest in hiking to come up this far with a hot guy and the cool breeze in the shade.

“Have you tried any magic yet?” Ryder asked. He said it so casually that I almost forgot that it was strange.

“No, have you?” I joked.

“Of course! Greta and I would come up here on hotter days and tame the weather together. She taught me a lot, she spoke about you on occasion too,” he grinned. It was so strange to me that I had a relative living here all this time and I hadn’t known.

When Wes had dropped me off, he mentioned that I was related to many of the people here. That meant Greta wasn’t the only one, right? Did I have living relatives lurking on these islands? It hit me like a sugar rush, I wasn’t totally alone with only a ghost for company.

“We’re almost there,” Ryder said, bringing my mind back to the task at hand.

The path through the trees guided us towards the road. We had walked this way for the shade, but strong sun beams were able to strike the dirt where a beat-up car had crashed. This had to be Greta’s car. It wasn’t on the road, not really. It had veered off the side and only one wheel remained on the track, there was enough space for vehicles to drive around it.

The bumper was in contact with a tree, but as if it had rolled gently towards it. As we got closer I could see damage to the metal work but it wasn’t what you would expect from a collision. If Greta had driven into this tree then the hood would be dented where contact had been made. I got close enough to touch the dents and dips in the bodywork.

I looked inside the car. She’d had the windows down so I could lean in without having to touch the door handle, this seemed important as all the forensic shows I’d ever seen were big on ‘preserving the crime scene’, but then I remembered that no scientists would be inspecting this car.

There was a soda cup in the central cup holder with no lid, I recognized it as the same container that Kate had handed me a lemonade in. Did that mean the last place Greta went before this was Pete’s Za? The airbag hadn’t gone off either. I walked around to the other side of the car and could get a better view of the driver’s seat.

“How tall would you say Greta is? Was?” I said, shrugging as I continued to struggle with the concept that she was both past and present tense.

“Maybe 5’3?” Ryder replied. “I know her shoe size but not her height.” He smiled his disarming smile and I had to force myself to look away and back towards the driver’s seat. It was too far back for her to have