Free 2 Weeks 'Til Eve (2 'Til Series Book 3) by Heather Muzik

the neighborhood—”
    There was a click on the line and a scuffling sound
and a few unintelligible grumbles, then her father’s voice right over her
mother’s. “Can you hear me? I’m on the crap cordless phone in the bedroom.”
    “I hear you, Dad.”
    “They’re wanted posters. Tons of them. Wrapping the lampposts
up like presents. And the sign at the front of the neighborhood too. It’s
plastered with them. Covered the whole thing up.”
    “Wanted posters?” Catherine eked out. All sound was
coming to her as if through a tunnel. Her parents’ voices. Her own. Suddenly
her mind was filled with thoughts of a murderous madman on a rampage in her
sleepy little hometown, where her parents still lived.
    “Do not bother her with that, William. She has more
important things—”
    “Are you guys safe there?”
    “Oh, we’re just fine,” her father pshawed. “ You might want to stay out of Chesterton for a while, though.”
    “Me?” she blurted in shock.
    “Do not worry her,” her mother chastised her father.
“It is nothing, Catherine. Nothing serious at all.”
    “What is going on?” she demanded of both of them.
Someone needed to fess the hell up.
    “They’re for you,” her father said bluntly.
    “They are not police-issue,” her mother clarified.
    Her father again. “There’s a bounty out on your head.”
    “A bounty?” Incredulous. “Who would do something—this
has got to be some kind of joke.”
    “Catherine Hemmings, a.k.a. ‘The Cake Devil’.” As if
her father was reading it right off the poster to her.
    “Cake Devil?” Catherine felt a bit faint and sat down
in her chair at the table. This was something Tara would do, all in fun, to get
a rise out of her…. But Tara had been the mastermind behind the whole cake
robbery; her prints were all over it. “Rachel Craig,” she breathed. Still mad
about a cake that didn’t even survive long enough to make it to Catherine’s
wedding anyway. A cake that was hers first . And in the end nobody got to
have it. No need to make a federal case out of a defunct baked good.
    “So you know,” her mother said, in a tone that told
her Elizabeth Hemmings knew exactly how worthy her daughter was of the alias.
    “We never liked each other but that’s still a little
harsh,” she choked out.
    Her mother humphed in response. “You do realize that we
have to live here,” she added. “I run into people. Your actions reflect on me
as a mother. I raised you better than that.”
    Her father then: “They’re calling your mother—”
    “Never mind what they call me,” Elizabeth Hemmings
asserted boldly, showing she was above name calling and all the snarky things
that her daughter was still up to her eyeballs in. “Just tell me why you would
steal a bride’s wedding cake? How would you feel if someone had stolen yours?
Not that anyone would, seeing as how it was… questionable.”
    “It was delicious,” her father offered.
    “It fell apart and rolled away,” her mother said with
a twitch.
    “Only some of the Ding Dongs. The rest was still
perfectly sanitary and edible,” Catherine objected.
    “And I love a good Ding Dong. Your mother won’t buy
them for me.”
    “I just don’t understand you,” Elizabeth Hemmings
said, ignoring her husband. “I know that you girls had something to do with
that. You and that Tara who is always getting you into trouble.”
    Catherine felt like a little girl being reprimanded
all over again, and she suddenly felt a visceral desire to protect Tara and
herself by throwing the other names under the bus. Her mother obviously thought
that Lacey and Georgia had nothing to do with it. 
    “I just hope that such things are behind you now. You
are a mother and young ears and small eyes are always about.”
    It was my wedding cake first, Catherine thought
righteously, thinking of the craziness of planning her wedding and then losing
everything. The whole thing. All she wanted was the cake . Her cake,