The Killer of Oz

by Chelsea Field

  The next morning I rose early and found Mum once again in the kitchen. This time though, Dad was safely occupied fixing the wobbly part of the fence he believed Lucy was escaping through. A much better activity than getting into trouble with Etta.

  Lily had gone home to sleep in her own bed but had plans to join us later, and Connor was awake but checking in with his security team.

  Breakfast would be a communal affair, so Mum and I carried mugs of tea out to the porch overlooking the garden. We were joined by Dash, Herbert (who we leashed to one of the posts), and even Prince slunk out to lie in a sunbeam and glare at us through slitty eyes.

  Gertie’s large cage would be wheeled out later so she could enjoy the sunshine and fresh air too.

  Herbert vacillated between nibbling at the lawn and bounding back to clamber over our legs and laps like we were just part of the landscape.

  The only sore spot was the top third of the ugly new water sculpture jutting over the lavender bushes.

  Mum expertly avoided spilling her tea as Herbert head-butted her elbow. “Connor’s very different from us, you know,” she mused in a quiet tone.

  I felt a thread of anxiety worm through my torso. “I know. But—”

  “I didn’t say that’s a bad thing,” she interjected. “The way he’s worked so hard to fit in with our crazy family tells me plenty. He cares deeply for you.”

  “I know,” I said again in a softer voice.

  Mum crinkled her eyes at me and put her mug down to take my hand. “The mother hen in me wishes I could keep you here under my wing and take care of you forever. But it gladdens my heart to know you’ve found a good one this time. Someone I can trust to take care of you when I can’t.” She squeezed my hand between both of hers. “And someone you can take care of in return. I get the feeling under that tough exterior of his, he needs you as much as you need him.”

  I put my mug down and dragged my chair closer so I could lean my head on her shoulder. Only because I was too big to sit on her lap nowadays. “Thanks, Mum. You’re wiser than any mother hen.”

  She stroked my hair. “Hmm. Seeing as Helga got her head stuck in a fence this morning, I’m not sure that’s saying much.”

  I hid a grin and patted her arm. “That’s not so bad. We all get ourselves into sticky situations sometimes…”

  “Yeah, but the bit of fence her head was stuck in was a meter off the ground.”

  I snorted. “Oh.”

  “Lucky Dash told me about it, otherwise we’d be having roast chicken tonight.”

  I surrendered to laughter and hugged her tight. “Okay, okay. You’re a hard woman to compliment, but the point is, I love you to pieces.”

  27

  It was a few days later when Connor and I were lying contentedly in bed following an afternoon “nap” that I gave him the good news. “You’ve really won my parents over, you know.”

  He grunted, but it was a pleased grunt.

  “Do you think… would you ever consider moving to Australia?”

  With me was the unspoken addendum to that question.

  Connor rolled onto his side and propped himself up on an elbow to look at me.

  “Maybe you should ask me that later—say, more than a week after we caught a serial killer who’d been using Australian dangers to take people out for years without anyone noticing.”

  “We caught a serial killer in America too!” I protested.

  “Hmm,” he said, unconvinced by my perfectly rational counterargument. “Does this question count as that secret I still owe you?”

  “No way,” I snapped in a knee-jerk reaction.

  Oops. Maybe that should’ve been my question. I hadn’t come up with a better one.

  I rifled through my brain. What’s your most embarrassing moment? The thing you least want to tell me? How do you really feel about Herbert? Do you believe the Taste Society is good or evil? Do you think you’ll ever want kids one day? Where is this relationship going?

  I thought them over and dismissed them all.

  “I’ve got it,” I said.

  Connor tensed involuntarily.

  I let the moment draw out to watch him squirm. Then started talking.

  “Since arriving in Australia, you’ve adjusted to the chaos of my family, won all of them over—including the goat—rescued me from a croc-infested river, stopped a smuggling ring, caught a serial killer, returned Mum’s garden to its near-original condition, and prevented Etta from shooting anyone. All without shooting anyone yourself too. So I was wondering…”

  I paused for breath.

  “Is there anything you can’t do?”

  Connor considered for a moment.

  “I can’t whistle.”

  His delivery was deadpan.

  But the admission filled me with an improper glee. I immediately decided I would tease him about this trivial flaw for ever and ever.

  Then we heard Dad shouting that the pony had escaped his yard again, and we rushed out to help before the little beast could wreck the garden.

  “It’s a pity you can’t whistle,” I said as we ran. “Dash’s herding skills would be super handy right now.”

  Connor shot me a dirty look.

  “Though before we catch Lucy, maybe we should arrange for him to knock over that awful water feature first…”

  Now the look Connor shot me was amused.

  I grinned back.

  Together, we would tackle one problem at a time. This week, we’d deal with the superficial evils of a naughty pony and a tasteless statue.

  Next week, we’d deal with Stalenburg.

  From the Author

  I hope you loved THE KILLER OF OZ. That way I can rub it in my brother’s smug face since he scoffed at me when I first started writing at the tender age of sixteen. If you want to help me make sure he gets his comeuppance, take a minute to leave me a review or mention this book to a friend who’ll also enjoy it. That’ll show him.

  As a small token of my appreciation for everyone who already did this for other books in the series, I drew you this picture of my brother choosing to feed his leg to a crocodile rather than feed my self-esteem. Enjoy!

  My brother would prefer to feed his leg to a crocodile than feed my self-esteem

  Acknowledgments

  A huge thank-you to all my readers for sticking with me this far into the series. I hope I didn’t put you off coming to Australia. Most of us are friendly, and I promise our wildlife hardly ever kills people. And to my fellow Australians, I suggest embracing blissful ignorance. I mean, those brown snakes you see all the time can kill an adult in fifteen minutes, but just don’t climb any ladders and you’ll probably be fine.

  To my beta team, John, Rosie, Tess, Bec, Naomi, Mum, and James, who have read every single early draft I’ve written. Bet you didn’t realize when you signed up for this gig that the series would go on so long. Suckers.

  Thank you.

  Special shout out to Mum for all the hours you spent brainstorming this book and all the occasions you allowed us kids to raise orphaned animals in the house.

  Thanks to my proofreaders and final pass editors at Victory Editing for being as fault-finding as Aunt Alice—except in a useful kind of way.

  To my extraordinarily marvelous husband, I’m running out of adjectives, but I’m so grateful for you every single day.

  And to God, who made the heavens and the earth—and even Australia for some reason. Thanks for inventing words while you were at it and then letting me play with them for a living.

  Excerpt from EAT, PRAY, DIE

  (Book 1)

  I stepped inside one of Los Angeles’s high-rise buildings for the chance to turn my life around.

  It was a sweltering day in September, the kind that had my clothes clinging in places they weren’t designed to cling, and I should’ve been thinking about the job. About what I would be doing. The honor of protecting someone from harm.

  But facing my fears didn’t come naturally to me, so I was
thinking about my hair instead.

  I crossed the lobby and entered a waiting elevator. I wasn’t equipped like someone in the protection business. No gun. No Taser. No combat or defense training. I didn’t even have any muscles worth acknowledging.

  I did have a hard knot of nerves in my stomach though. Would a bad guy be intimidated if I threatened to release the butterflies?

  The elevator shared none of my misgivings and shot skyward.

  I patted my unruly, shoulder-length hair—a nervous habit I’d developed over twenty-nine years of experiencing it having a mind of its own. Some strands were stuck to my neck, subdued by sweat, but the rest was likely poking in all directions. I watched the golden numbers light up one by one. In typical Los Angeles fashion, even the damn elevator was more glamorous than me.

  The nagging concern I might be underdressed rose with every floor I passed.

  I patted my hair some more.

  Twenty-three lit up, and the doors slid open with a quiet whoosh, reminding me of one of Aunt Alice’s disapproving sighs. Aunt Alice and her perfect children never had problems getting their hair to behave. They were probably above sweating too.

  The corridor ahead of me didn’t look to be any more sympathetic. It was insulated and silent, far removed from the heat and bustle of the street below and untouched by my mounting tension.

  Ignoring the way anxiety had me projecting my feelings onto an inanimate building, I squinted at my palm. The number I’d written there when my handler set up the meeting had faded from an embarrassing number of bathroom breaks in the hours since. But I could just make out the smudgy figures: 2317. I walked until I found the matching plaque and made sure my shaking hand gave a firm, audible knock.

  “Come in.”

  I took a moment to steel myself, then shouldered my way through the heavy door.

  The room where my fate would be decided could’ve been plucked from a European design magazine. Floor-to-ceiling windows filled the space with natural light, all the better for calling attention to the distinct lack of furniture. Despite the generous square footage, it was furnished with only two expensive-looking chairs and a sleek rosewood desk with nothing on it but the token MacBook Pro.

  I fought back a smirk. Where did this guy keep his stuff?

  The man in question was seated behind the desk and looked so unenthused to meet me that I wondered if I’d misread the smudged ink after all. He was dauntingly handsome, with none of my insecurity, and dark hair that was cropped far too short to even think of misbehaving.

  The no-nonsense style seemed at odds with the swankiness of his office, hinting he might be more practical than the decor suggested.

  My gaze dropped to his eyes. They were the stern gray of an overcast wintry morning—the likes of which I hadn’t seen since moving to California—and just as unsympathetic. The clean-shaven square jaw and broad shoulders did not soften his image.

  I finished admiring his jawline and noticed his gaze was roaming over me as well.

  For a fleeting second, I wished it was his hands doing the roaming. Then I remembered why I was here.

  This was the guy I would be endangering myself to protect. If he hired me anyway. If he didn’t, maybe I could talk him into pushing me down the elevator shaft on the way out.

  Judging by the cool expression on his beautiful face, he might be amenable to the idea.

  My concern had been warranted. I was underdressed. The conservative navy-blue dress and heels I’d chosen to make the most of the slim build and blue eyes I’d inherited from my mother seemed drab compared to his sharp, tailored suit. Sure, I’d inherited the dress and shoes from my mother too, but I had been hoping they were old enough to pass for vintage.

  By the time we’d finished our mutual assessment, his mouth had formed a hard line.

  I forced myself to meet his eyes.

  “Isobel Avery, I take it?” he asked.

  “That’s right.”

  He didn’t react to my Australian accent. Some Americans found it charming. My potential client wasn’t one of them.

  Actually, he didn’t look as if charming was even in his dictionary.

  Nor did he look like he needed me to defend him. A notion intensified by the fact that my knees were wobbling, and I was betting his weren’t.

  He didn’t invite me to sit, and I wondered if that was so he could gauge my competence level by my traitorous knees. I sat down anyway, lifted my chin, and put on my best impression of professional indifference.

  “What experience do you have?” he asked.

  I resisted the urge to lick my lips before answering, leaving me acutely aware of how dry they were.

  That seemed unfair when the rest of me was still damp with sweat.

  “I’ve been selected for you by the Taste Society,” I said. “That’s as much as you need to know.”

  In other words, none, zilch, nada. I’d just finished eight months of intensive training, and aside from that, I was as green as a queasy leprechaun.

  This job would either be my saving grace or the final rut in a long road of potholes.

  One step at a time, I told myself. First get the job, then concentrate on whether you can pull it off.

  I stared at him, willing him to say yes.

  “I’m not in the habit of trusting others’ judgment,” he said instead. “Why should I start now?”

  Good question. Especially since the Taste Society had sent him a rookie. But I couldn’t tell him that, so I took a stab in the dark.

  “Because it’s efficient, and you’re short on time.”

  This guy would prefer to pull out his fingernails than ask a girl for protection. Which meant he’d postpone asking until there was no other choice. Until he couldn’t afford to delay any longer. Or so I hoped.

  Waiting to learn whether my guess would pay off was almost as painful as the job training.

  He relented at last. “You’ll have to do, I suppose.”

  I let out the breath I was holding. It wasn’t the most affirming offer I’d ever received, but desperation is a wonderful substitute for rose-tinted glasses.

  It turned out desperation was a wonderful substitute for self-respect and self-preservation too.

  He stood up and withdrew two envelopes from his inner breast pocket. I took them from him and caught a whiff of cold, biting citrus and sun-warmed leather. It figured he smelled good. The envelopes were toasty from being against his chest, and for a brief second, I imagined slipping my hand under his jacket to the place they’d vacated.

  I needed to get out more. But entertainment hadn’t been high on my priority list of late.

  “The first envelope is from the Taste Society,” he said. “They asked me to give it to you if I approved you for the job. You’ll start at breakfast tomorrow. Before that, have my stylist give you a makeover.” He scanned me again. “A big one.”

  Jerk.

  He didn’t pause to let the insult sink in. “The stylist’s number and my schedule are in the other envelope.”

  “Anything else?” I asked, not keen on hearing his answer.

  “Get a tan.”

  “Sorry, I don’t tan.” Also compliments of my redheaded mother.

  “You do if I say so, sweetheart. You’re in LA now, and I’ve got a reputation to maintain.”

  Ugh. Sweetheart. “No, I mean my skin goes bright red, then white again. So your options are beetroot or potato.”

  “Then get a spray tan.”

  “I’m allergic,” I lied. He’d already given me the envelopes, and I figured it’d do him good to broaden his horizons. I smiled sweetly. “So if it’s all right with you, I’m gonna go ahead and live to a ripe old age as a potato.”

  I couldn’t tell if the barely perceptible shift of his eyebrows was from anger or amusement.

  “You chose an interesting profession for that.”

  I brushed aside his comment and headed for the exit. He was probably just being funny, right? Sure, that was the interpretation
I’d go with. Never mind that nothing in the past few minutes had pointed to him having a sense of humor. All the same, recruitment had told me the job wouldn’t affect my chances of longevity too much, and despite rumors to the contrary, I was taking their word for it.

  I was broke, not suicidal.

  In a last-ditch effort to resuscitate my dreams of leaving a positive impression, I paused at the door and gave my new client a wave. “See you tomorrow.”

  He didn’t reply, but when I glanced back, I saw his contempt for my appearance hadn’t stopped his eyes from following my ass on the way out.

  Find out more about EAT, PRAY, DIE on Amazon here.