Copycat Killing: A Magical Cats Mystery Read Online Free PDF Page A

some of the dirt from my hair. For a moment the movement made the world spin again.
    “I think there’s a pretty good chance.” He made a face and pointed at my hand. “Do you mind? Can I take a look at that?”
    I held out my arm and he unwound one end of the scarf. Blood had soaked all the way through the material. “There was a smallpox epidemic in this area back in 1924,” he said. “I know there’ve been a couple of other unmarked grave sites from that time found in this part of the state.”
    He inspected the cut, made a face and folded the fabric back around my hand. “It doesn’t seem to be bleeding anymore.” He squinted at my face and then reached over to brush dirt from my forehead.
    I jerked back, involuntarily, and sucked in a sharp breath between my teeth.
    He pulled his hand away. “Sorry. I’ll let the paramedics take care of that.”
    “Could you pull my left boot off, please?” I asked. “It’s full of mud.” I’d been trying to toe off the heel with my other foot but it wasn’t working.
    I held up my leg and Marcus grabbed the bottom of the rubber boot and pulled. It came off with a loud sucking sound and clumps of wet earth fell onto the grass. There was more dirt stuck to my sock. I shook my foot and sent a spray of it into the air.
    Even in the heavy woolen sock I was wearing, my ankle looked swollen. Marcus set the boot down and reached for my foot. “Does this hurt?” he asked, gently bending it forward and back.
    I winced. “A little.”
    “How about this?” His fingers carefully probed my ankle. He had big, warm hands with strong fingers and a surprisingly gentle touch.
    I was pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to be liking this so much. “It’s…um…it’s all right.” I pulled my foot back and reached for the discarded boot.
    He handed it to me as the ambulance arrived, followed by the first police car. I recognized Ric, one of the two paramedics. He’d taken care of me the previous winter when I’d almost been blown to pieces in an explosion out on Hardwood Ridge. He remembered me as well.
    “Ms. Paulson, what happened?” he asked, crouching down in front of me.
    I explained about the hill collapsing, while his partner checked my pulse and looked into both my eyes. Once they decided I didn’t have any life-threatening injuries or broken bones, they began bandaging the cut on my hand and cleaning the various abrasions on my face.
    “How’s your cat?” Ric asked as he carefully tweezered bits of gravel from my forehead. “Still sneaking into your truck to ride shotgun?”
    I’d taken Owen with me the day of the explosion. Like me, he’d almost been caught in it. Everyone assumed he’d stowed away in the truck and I’d let the assumption stand.
    Marcus knew the cat didn’t like to be touched by pretty much anyone other than me, but one of the police officers on the scene hadn’t taken his warning seriously. It was a wonder I hadn’t regained consciousness to find Owen shackled in a set of kitty-sized handcuffs for assaulting a police officer.
    “Sometimes,” I said. “Mostly he’s just terrorizing the birds in the backyard.”
    Ric grinned. “He hasn’t gone head-to-head with any more police officers?”
    “Thankfully, no. But he does have a stare-down going with a golden Lab that lives up the street.”
    I flinched as he pulled out a sliver of tree bark embedded in my skin.
    “Sorry,” he said softly.
    I looked over his shoulder, focusing on watching Marcus work to distract myself while Ric continued to gently clean my forehead.
    Marcus was a good police officer—meticulous and very observant. I thought he was too rigid sometimes, and he tended to come across as cold when he was working on a case, something I knew firsthand because I’d gotten tied up in two of his past investigations.
    He’d thought I had no business being involved in either one of them. The fact that I hadn’t wanted to be involved in a murder, or that he’d been