The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and I jerked my head around to see Pandora, her back arched, having a stare down with another cat. The other cat was a raggedy looking ginger-colored thing with wild yellow eyes. Three other cats stood about five feet away behind it.

I’d heard there was a feral cat colony around here and I guessed these cats were part of it. I noticed a small black and white kitten that couldn’t have been more than six months old with a torn-up ear and my heart tugged. They looked well-fed, though, and I wondered briefly how they found shelter and what they ate.

I stood motionless, not knowing exactly what to do. Pandora and the other cat must have come to some sort of agreement, because they stopped making their noises and the other cat and his minions backed up.

Pandora trotted off after them and I could just barely make out a trail into the woods. The train tracks were back there somewhere—it would be a perfect get-away route for the killer! The tracks wandered behind several buildings then crossed Main Street at the other end of town. The killer could have run down them, then popped back out onto the street as if he had never been near the library.

I rushed in after Pandora, scanning the ground for something that could be the murder weapon.

She stopped in front of me and that’s when I saw it.

It had been thrown off to the side and was half-buried in the leaves, but I recognized the part of it that was sticking up … it was the heavy metal embosser Lavinia used to emboss the pages of the books with the library insignia. The library had three of them and, apparently, no one had noticed one was missing.

I stepped off the trail toward the embosser, bending down to get a better look. Yep, that was definitely the library’s embosser. A thread of navy blue fabric caught on one of the screws flapped in the wind … and was that blood on the side?

My heart thudded in my chest as I reached out to pick it up …

“Stop right there! Put your hands in the air, stand up slowly and turn around!”

Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

A steely gray glare coming from the broad shouldered behemoth who was holding the gun on me rooted me to the spot. Adrenalin shot through my body as my mind registered a chiseled jaw, trim waist and sheriff’s uniform.

Sheriff’s uniform?

Augusta was the sheriff here, and this guy sure as heck wasn’t Augusta.

“Who the hell are you?” I probably should have asked more nicely, but I was mad … and a little scared.

His left eyebrow quirked up and I thought I saw a smile tease the corners of his lips.