Shadow Man: Grayson Duet: Book One
Page 1
Shadow Man
Cause and consequence:
Two words that haunt me.
When I was stolen, I learned to hate.
When he saved me, I learned to fear.
I ran from him, following a trail of the dead, from Miami all the way to Colombia.
Now I’ve fallen into darkness again,
and he’s the only one I see.
But he’s a shadow man.
A bad man.
A soldier.
A killer.
The red right hand to the devil himself.
We’re a dirty contradiction:
I’m the girl who can’t be touched,
whom he refuses to set free.
We’re a dangerous obsession:
There’s damage running deep in both of our souls.
Caught up in a cartel war I want no part of.
Trapped between love and hate.
One night will change everything...
For years, Joseph Grayson killed in the name of Dante Santiago.
Now, he kills for me.
Copyright © 2020 by Catherine Wiltcher
www.catherinewiltcher.com
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All characters and events in this publication, other than those in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review. The information in this book is distributed on an “as is” basis, without warranty. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this work, the author shall not have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in this book.
ISBN: 978-1-9164455-9-8 (eBook)
Cover design by: Steamy Designs
Editing by: Amanda Marie Edits & Light Hand Proofreading
The Santiago Trilogy
Hearts of Darkness
Hearts Divine
Hearts on Fire
Grayson Duet
Shadow Man
Reckless Woman
Standalones
Devils & Dust
Hot Nights in Morocco
Unwrapping the Billionaire
Anthologies
Men of Valor
Contents
Foreword
Soundtrack
Prologue
1. Joseph
2. Joseph
3. Anna
4. Anna
5. Joseph
6. Anna
7. Joseph
8. Joseph
9. Anna
10. Anna
11. Joseph
12. Anna
13. Anna
14. Anna
15. Joseph
16. Anna
17. Joseph
18. Anna
19. Anna
20. Joseph
21. Anna
22. Anna
23. Dante
24. Anna
25. Anna
26. Joseph
27. Anna
28. Dante
29. Anna
30. Joseph
31. Joseph
32. Anna
33. Joseph
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Devils & Dust
About the Author
Also by Catherine Wiltcher
Foreword
Shadow Man is a dark romance containing mature themes. It’s Colombian cartel warfare. It’s heartbreak warfare. It’s raw, violent and lawless, and there are trigger warnings for sexual abuse, sexual assault and drug use (in one minor scene toward the beginning).
Although this is the first part of a duet, Shadow Man has a HFN. The two books are connected by the characters and the unfolding storyline.
The duet can be read as a standalone, however it references past events and characters. For readers who have followed the Santiago saga so far, Shadow Man takes place six months after the events in Hearts on Fire, and concludes before the start of Devils & Dust.
This is a story of how the broken found solace in the empty spaces of one another.
This is a story of how the shadows learned to rule...
Soundtrack
Texas Sun — Khruangbin
bad guy — Billie Eilish
Cold Little Heart — Michael Kiwanuka
The Chain — Fleetwood Mac
The Archer — Taylor Swift
In My Time of Need — Ryan Adams
The Promised Land (Live) — Bruce Springsteen
Stop This Flame — Celeste
Monster — Walking On Cars
The moon in tarot card readings is ambivalent. It knows the answer, but there’s never a big reveal. Others argue it’s the tarot version of a leap of faith, encouraging you to take your own path in life, to go with the flow and expect the unexpected...
Prologue
Anna
My moon is broken.
There are no quarters.
No crescents...
There’s an ugly, formless shape where a perfect circle used to be.
When I was a little girl, monsters came awake at night, breathing life into the dark corners of my bedroom. My mom would stroke my head and whisper sweet words before opening up my curtains and pointing to the sky.
“Anytime you feel scared, honey, look for the moon,” she’d say, her voice as soft as cashmere. A decade later, the disease would take a hold of her vocal cords, scratching its six-letter name into her flawless .45, but back then it was still open arms and chocolate shakes. “The moon will take care of you, Anna. She’ll guide you to the safe and warm.”
I held that belief close to me, and then I held it to ransom the night I was taken from my apartment, six months ago, and thrown into hell; the night my world tipped upside down and shook me out, along with all my loose hopes and dreams.
The place where I was held captive didn't have windows. My hands couldn’t pray for mercy while held down to a dirty mattress…and the monsters? They turned out to be real and so much scarier than my childish mind could ever have imagined.
Moon.
Pieces.
Less than pieces... Dust and matter.
I don’t know how to fix me.
I don’t know how to fix me.
Every night since, I’ve lain awake watching a fraud burn bright and silver in the sky. It can’t control the tides of my life. As such, my breakers have grown rough and unpredictable.
Then there’s him.
The one who rescued me.
Joseph Grayson.
A soldier.
A killer.
The red right hand to the devil himself. The man who holds his secrets in his chilly gray-blue eyes, as if they’ve been frozen solid into place and nothing can defrost them.
I was just another job to him. But when he busted me from my cage, something shook and jolted between us. There was a touch. Words. A promise I can't recall, because I make it my business not to remember much of anything anymore. I know we set fire to a supposition, though. I felt it in the deep, deep places of my soul. We fused together in the flames, and now neither one of us can look away.
That night I became another of his secrets: The broken woman who can’t be touched, whom he refuses to set free. I fight destiny, but at the same time I welcome it in like a stray dog with a vicious bite. I have a sneak
ing suspicion I’d be even more lost without it.
We’re not friends.
We’re not lovers.
He keeps me out of the worst kinds of trouble as I make an even bigger mess of my life—drifting in and out of various rehab centers and hunting for my moon.
But my white knight rides a black horse with bloody scars and rent colors, and there’s a sheet of glass separating the damage running deep in both of our souls.
We were destined to dance in the dark forever until my world tilted for a second time, dragging my shadow into my sun.
1
Joseph
Past
“The winds of change are coming, Joe. You hear me, brother? They’re blowing through Texas like a twister, and we’re gonna be riding it straight outta this dumb fuck town together.”
Cash is sprawled out on the bale next to me, chewing on a piece of straw. He’s staring out of the open barn doors with that look on his face again, as if our one-way ticket is already blowing up the dirt road, rattling the broken white fences out by the haystack, scattering Ma’s stupid-ass chickens, and covering her rusty pickup in a thick layer of dust.
He says stuff like this all the time, but I figured out long ago that his words are a battle cry for a war that never comes.
Today is different.
Today, the air feels heavy and wet. It’s dripping down my bare arms like melted wax. Like that time in Sunday service when I sat too close to Preacher John’s prayer candle and it poured hellfire onto my skin.
Sitting up suddenly, Cash swaps the straw for a crumpled Marlboro from the top pocket of his blue flannel. He lights it with a steady hand, looking like a sixteen-year-old John Wayne, but way cooler—with an angry expression and impatient eyes that never stop searching for a way out. Pa would smack the colors outta him if he caught him smoking his cigarettes again, but Pa ain’t around right now. It’s payday, so Pa’s at the bar until closing time.
Ma calls Cash her restless boy. She’s always telling him to stop chasing after a peace he’ll never find. Pa calls him a stupid son-of-a-bitch, and tries to beat the discontent out of him every chance he gets.
I call him lucky.
Lucky that he can see an escape, where all I see are those same broken white fences closing in on me.
We all suffer Pa’s temper, but Ma takes the most of it. If Cash ever makes it past the mailbox at the end of the driveway, it’s gonna be up to me to put myself between her and Pa’s fists. I ain’t going with Cash, no matter what he says, and that certainty cuts me to the core. I made that promise to myself the night Pa broke Ma’s jaw. I ain’t leaving behind something I can’t make right. And I will make it right... Someday I’m gonna be big enough to break his jaw right back. Someday I’m gonna be big enough to buy happiness the old-fashioned way—with blood on my knuckles and a smile on my face.
Cash is stone silent as he takes drag after drag, flicking ash at the ground like he’s spittin’ on someone’s grave. He’s got more of that faraway look in his eyes, and I’m guessing he’s reflecting on that choice I’ll never make. Leaving Ma doesn’t tear him up on the inside like it does to me, but something’s keeping him tied here. Not that he’ll ever share... Cash has a river of secrets running through his veins that start and end with freedom.
“You gotta ride those damn twisters every chance you get,” I hear him muttering.
“But how d’ya know they’re the good ones, Cash?” I ask him. It’s best to humor my brother when he’s like this. “How d’ya know they're not just gonna tear up the ground and shit?”
“You just do… Listen, don’t sweat it, you’re a smart kid, Shadow.” He says it like there’s forty years separating us, not four. “You’ll figure it out.”
Am I? Will I? I watch him grind his smoke into the loose straw. Shadow’s been his nickname for me for as long as I can remember. It's kinda funny 'cos I’ll be what’s left when his shine goes away.
“I’m good for nothing,” I say, dropping my gaze to the tin soldier in my hand. “Least that’s what Pa’s always telling me.”
“Yeah, well, Pa’s full of shit. Why d’ya wanna listen to that drunk old fart for?”
I tense so hard that my shoulders start aching. There’s a note of red in his voice.
More wax drips.
Now I want a twister to come. I want it to sweep everything we hate and fear about Shitsville, Texas, into the next state. I’m done being afraid all the time—afraid of what Pa’s fists are gonna do to us next, of Cash’s looks, of Ma’s hopelessness. My heart feels sore and angry from the minute I wake up until the lights go out again. Every emotion my twelve-year-old mouth can't express gets shoved inside it. I’ve always been short on words, but I feel everything. It’s a constant drip. It’s a faucet that never shuts off.
“Look sharp,” hisses Cash, nudging me as the screen door on the white house opposite swings open. “Incoming.”
“Joey! I need you to make a delivery to Bill’s place.”
Ma’s voice carries clear and strong across the yard. She’s wearing a brown dress, and her blonde hair trails flat and lifeless to her shoulders. If I looked down any further I’d see her feet rooted to this place as deep as mine.
"Sure thing, Ma," I yell back.
Bill’s our nearest neighbor who lives about half a mile away. Ma has a side hustle going on, but Cash and me ain’t allowed to ask questions about it. We deliver the shit, and we keep our mouths shut.
I peeked once. I couldn’t help myself ‘cos it stank to high heaven. Green and sticky and more precious than gold, judging by the look on Bill’s face when I handed it over to him.
Taking the package, I make it all the way to the end of the track, and then something nameless is driving my toes into the ground and spinning me back around. That same nameless lifts my hand in a wave to a watching Cash.
He lifts one in return, extending his middle finger at me with a cackle of a laugh that sends Ma’s stupid-ass chickens clucking and running again.
“So long, Shadow!” he yells.
“So long, Sun,” I murmur, my words lost to an absent Texas breeze. There’s a twister coming today for sure, but it’s coming by another name. I don’t know it yet, but I can already feel it turning in my bones.
It’s the last time I ever see Cash alive.
* * *
It’s gone seven by the time I make the drop. I follow the tumbling sun all the way home, with the dark from the cornfields casting long and skinny across the track dividing our two properties. It gets me thinking about math class last week, and how our teacher, Miss B, told us to go find shapes and angles in everything.
There's gonna be a prize for the kid with the longest list. It's got my name all over it, ‘cos me and Cash have found loads:
The alphabet letters on my bedroom wall.
The coat hangers in my closet.
The spokes on my bike wheels.
The shape of the boxes inside my heart that hurt the most.
Turning into the driveway, I count the slanting roof on the feed barn as one, and then the incline of Pa’s Ford jutting out from the porch like a stuck blade as another.
Why is he home so early? Closing time ain’t for another couple of hours.
Angles. Angles. Angles. I’m gonna win that prize for sure. My footsteps sound like applause on the loose stones as I celebrate my future victory.
Why is everything so silent?
The screen door is wide open.
Sharp angle.
There’s a crimson stain throwing shadows across the doorway.
Scary angle.
I stop for a second and stare at it. I can feel the dark from the cornfields creeping slow and steady across my body.
“Ma?” I call out tentatively, heading toward the front steps. “Cash? Where are you guys?”
More silence.
More steps.
I pass by Pa’s sawn-off shotgun. It’s lying, discarded, next to the open screen door. Spare shells cover the gro
und next to it, like seed scattered for a steel bird.
There’s a body lying just inside. My breath catches on an inhale, and it don't release so easy.
Facedown.
Brown dress.
Elbow bent to form a perfect triangle with a blonde head soaked in red paint.
“Ma?” I whisper again.
No answer.
My gaze jerks left. The pool of paint around Cash’s body catches in the fading light, giving it edges. Angles...
There’s an explosion in my chest. It steals my balance away from me. Stumbling backward, I collide with another body. Hunkered down, knees drawn up to his chest; his eyes all wild and crazy like that mustang Cash broke last summer. The same red paint covers his hands and arms.
Not paint.
“Pa?”
He glances up, but I know he’s not seeing me. I’m just another ghost to him already.
“My twister made me do it, Joey,” he says, all mournful. “The voices. The damn voices.” His lips won’t stop moving as he rocks, back and forth, like a wounded animal.
No no no!
The pain train’s gathering speed inside of me, and its destination is a town called agony. This is the storm I’ve been waiting for. The madness in Pa’s fists has finally moved to his brain.