by Gillian Zane
Shark
Karma Inc. Case 2
Gillian Zane
Contents
Shark by Gillian Zane
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Thank you
About the Author
Books by Gillian Zane
Shark by Gillian Zane
A PARAJUNKEE PUBLISHING eBOOK
SHARK. Copyright © 2016 by Gillian Zane. All rights reserved.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Any names or characters, businesses or places, events or incidents, are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Editing by Raw Books Editing Services
Cover Design by Parajunkee Design
www.GillianZane.com
[email protected]
::: created in the USA :::
To Fr. Pacey. I’m pretty sure this isn’t the Purgatory/Hell you pictured when you condemned me to it, but who’s keeping track?
To do a great right do a little wrong.
William Shakespeare
Chapter 1
Silly Little Bartender
“Where are we going now?” I asked in a whisper.
“To the police station.”
My heart thudded in my chest, the blood pumped through my ears in a rush of sound and sensation. I wasn’t prone to panic attacks, but I didn’t have a plan for this situation. Being in control was tantamount to my well-being and without a plan things were definitely out of control. I needed to get things under control, now. My hand moved to grip the door handle. What would he do if I made a run for it? If I jumped out of the car? I imagined myself rolling across rough pavement like in the movies. How much damage could I do to myself? I was already dead.
In this form I hadn’t injured myself before. Would I heal, or was I still bound by the rules of the flesh? Could I die, again?
“Don’t even think about running.” His voice was harsh and accusing.
I had never been spoken to like this before. Like a criminal. I swallowed nervously, licking my lips as my mouth wet dry.
“Why are we going to the police station, Drake?” I asked, surprised my voice was so steady. My throat was so parched it should have come out raspy. I was a mess on the inside, but my body was as still as a stone, except my hands. I looked down and saw my fingers shaking. I slipped my hand into the handle, gripping the metal release to hide the tremors.
All I had to do was tug and push and then I would be gone.
“Because you won’t tell me the truth. If you won’t tell me the truth, maybe you’ll tell a police officer. Cassandra was a cop. They’ll be really interested in information about her case, they protect their own. And if you know anything, they’ll be dying to get it out of you.”
He wouldn’t look at me while he was talking to me. He gripped the steering wheel, staring forward into the dark night with his jaw clenched like he would rather be screaming at me than calmly stating the facts.
He couldn’t think I had anything to do with the death of Cassandra Mercier? My death. The urge to laugh inappropriately was hard to fight back. A choked sound came out of my mouth instead as bile rose in my throat. If he only knew the truth. If only I could tell him the truth. It was impossible. Telling him would get me demoted, and there was nothing worse in the world than a demotion in the Afterlife.
I pulled on the handle again. He had them locked and they wouldn’t open while we were moving. I felt trapped, trapped by circumstances I had no control over.
“I didn’t do anything. They can’t find out anything because I don’t know anything!” I protested. I knew the police wouldn’t be able to find anything on me, but I couldn’t let Drake bring me to the station. There would be too many questions, questions I didn’t have answers to. Not to mention it would be from people I might have known when I was living, people I might remember. I wanted to find out about my past, but not this way. Not like this.
“You’re covering something up,” he fired back.
I drew in a deep breath and tried to even myself out. I had to make this work. I had to outthink this man. Out maneuver him. A man that made his living outthinking and out maneuvering everyone around him.
“What are you going to tell them? That I don’t know how to use Google?” I said in a low voice.
“Funny girl.” He glared at me, his jaw clenched in frustration.
The intensity of his scrutiny was almost palpable. He wanted to figure out what the hell was going on. He wasn’t alone.
“No, really. What are you going to say?” I turned in my seat to face him, my legs sticking to the soft leather of the seat. “That because I couldn’t figure out how to find my friend on the internet, that you think—I, what? Killed Cassandra?” The dash lights played across his face as I scrutinized him, trying to figure out what he was thinking. All I could see was his profile, but his agitation was evident in the way he held himself.
He swallowed and took me in. His eyes were piercing, like he was trying to figure me out. He didn’t say anything and my insides clenched. Did he really think I was guilty?
“It’s a logical conclusion. You reek of lies,” he said.
“It’s not, it’s a paranoid conclusion. And now you can smell lies?” I huffed and crossed my arms over my chest. “I can’t believe you think I’m guilty of murder,” I said under my breath. Appalled by how disappointed I was that he thought I was a bad person. For some reason I didn’t want him to think I was a bad person.
“Tell me what I should think then,” he said.
It came out as a growl. He wanted me to prove him wrong. Hope flared in me. He wanted to believe me.
“I didn’t even know I…she was killed!” I cried out in frustration, almost slipping and giving myself away.
But it was the truth. And I could tell he felt the truth in my words when his eyes widened slightly and his fingers relaxed, his hands no longer gripping the steering wheel in a death grip.
The truth. It had to mean something. I didn’t know I was murdered. I couldn’t get more authentic than that.
Murdered. Shit. I had been murdered. I had been killed. The knowledge seeped into every pore of my being. I had known I was dead. How could I not? But I had assumed it was something mundane. A car accident. A choking on a random cherry pit. A slip in the shower. Not murder. How does a person deal with news like this? Something so important? Someone had killed me.
“I didn’t know she was murdered,” I whispered, more to myself than to Drake. I tried to think back on any part of my life that would give me some insight into what happened, but there was nothing. Only fuzzy shadows of memories that would come into focus sporadically then fade into obscurity.
“You really didn’t know?” He believed me. Relief flooded through me.
“I didn’t know,” I repeated. I looked down at my lap, pulling on the hem of my short, inappropriate dress. The dress I had worn to seduce Bishop, to lie and trick my last case. No wonder Drake thought I was a liar. Embarrassment about what I had done washed over me. There had been so many ways I could have handled Bishop. I chose to lie.
Drake made a sound low in his throat, a growl of impatience, or was it anger? I couldn’t tell. The tires squealed, peeling out as he veered to the right, slamming me into the door with the force of his turn. He braked hard in the parking lot of a local Stop and Rob. He disengaged his seatbelt and let the belt fling against the window roughly.
“Then tell me what the hell you are hiding!”
I didn’t know how to react to his mood swings, whether to be afraid, or to appease him. All I knew was I wanted him to trust me.
“Look, you don’t know me, Drake, I get it. But you’ve gotta believe me. I hired you to find out what happened to Cassandra. Nothing else. I know my story is a little odd, but there’s a reason I hired you. Why would I hire an investigator to find Cassandra if I was involved with her disappearance? How does that make sense? Do killers generally hire investigators to find the people they killed?” I tried to sound as sincere as possible.
He ran a hand over his face and into his hair, pulling at the dark locks. He hadn’t shaved and the stubble along his jaw made him look even more dangerous.
“You’re right.” The words were barely a whisper, as if they pained him, or he didn’t believe them himself.
“What?” I asked, more to get him to repeat himself than to clarify.
“You’re right. For some reason I believe you. But what are you hiding, Ms. Hail? Do you routinely get it on with co-workers on the bar?”
I reeled with the change of subject as my cheeks heated in embarrassment at the thought of him witnessing the scene earlier. I said nothing. What was there to say?
“Do you?” he pressed.
“No.”
“Then what? Because I see a little, vapid bartender that likes to fuck degenerates and doesn’t know how to use Facebook. What should I really be seeing and why do I give a fuck?” The foul language from his usual professional demeanor made me flinch. He turned his big body in the seat and regarded me with curiosity. I didn’t know how to answer him, even if the question was meant for me, or just him voicing his suspicions out loud.
“What you see is what you get,” I replied even though I didn’t want to be that girl. It was a role I had to play, my soul depended on it.
“But that’s not true. I smell the lie.” The animosity was gone from his voice. His anger had faded, replaced with curiosity. A curiosity that was going to get me in trouble because I was a mystery he wanted to solve.
Danger! Danger! The word flashed in my brain like a neon sign.
I couldn’t be a mystery. If he dug too deep what would he find? My life, or really, my afterlife depended on my new identity. He couldn’t know the real reason I was pretending to the girl he thought I was. If the Powers That Be found out he was getting too close I would be demoted. Demoted meant a one way ticket to more hell-like jobs, I did not want that. I had to win him over. I wanted to win him over. Drake Greco was a man I wanted on my side.
Maybe it was his strength I wanted on my side. Or was it more materialistic? Those ridiculously dark and penetrating eyes were still looking at me like he didn’t know if he wanted to protect me or break me. I shivered and looked away from him, not wanting to notice these things about him. The way his shirt pulled tightly across his muscled chest because of the way he was sitting and staring at me.
“Should I be insulted or complimented? I’m either some dumb girl, or a liar,” I sighed, folding my arms over my chest and trying not to make eye contact with him. I looked out the window and realized I didn’t know where I was. It was some kind of industrial area outside of the city.
“I don’t believe you’re a vapid little girl, or a bartender. I believe you’re pretending to be a vapid bartender. And I don’t know why, that’s the mystery of you, Ms. Hail. But what’s really screwing with me the most, is that I can’t come to grips with why you would hook up with that Bishop character, especially after I watched him pilfer half the cash register the other night.” He said the last part through clenched teeth.
Again the flaming cheeks. Again the embarrassment of what happened with Bishop. Bishop had been a job, but Drake didn’t know that. He thought I had hooked up with Bishop because I wanted to. Because I was attracted to that kind of man.
“You don’t know me. Bishop, well, I thought he was–” I froze with the lie. I didn’t have a nice thing to say about Bishop or a justification for why I would be attracted to him. “Hot,” I finished lamely.
“Dammit, Cassidy.” His hands bunched into fists.
Would he hit something? The anger was building in him again. I could feel it radiating off him, rippling around him as if it had a life of its own. I sat back in my seat, a pull in my gut said something wasn’t quite right with this man. I studied him with wide eyes, realizing I couldn’t see an aura. Had I ever seen his aura? I didn’t think so. I had to concentrate sometimes, but it was almost second nature now. Drake Greco didn’t have an aura. An aura was something I could see around every living person. But not him.
There was nothing. Nothing positive or negative around him. I couldn’t tell if he was good, or bad, or in between. I could look at any living person and know what kind of person they were, but not Drake. My insides fluttered, doubt worried at the back of my mind. Why had I missed this about him?
“What? What did I do now?” I glared at him.
“Hot? That’s your reason? One minute you’re concerned about your friend, the next minute you’re hooking up with Bishop on the bar? Tell me the damn truth.”
I had to give him something. I wanted to give him something. I didn’t want him to see me as that girl. But there was nothing I could give him without damning both of us.
“I have my reasons. Leave it there, please. My secrets I keep for a reason, they don’t concern you. I’m not trying to hurt anyone. I’m just, well, it’s complicated,” I said quietly.
“I can’t leave it, I’m sorry. Can you tell me one thing, Ms. Hail?” I looked at him, my eyebrows raised, waiting for his question.
“Are you really some silly, young bartender from the ‘burbs?”
“I’m not a bartender anymore,” I said self-deprecatingly. I had been fired twenty minutes ago.
Chapter 2
Ulterior Motives
Drake dropped me off ten minutes later at one of my access points. I directed him to the condos near the bar. The same building Bishop and his girlfriend had brought me to not that long ago. He didn’t seem surprised when I told him the address. He smoothly parallel parked the car at the curb, but left it running, and then got out to walk me to the door, even though I protested.
“Seriously. If I thought you were being chivalrous I’d be grateful, but I know you have ulterior motives,” I said, as he followed me to the lobby.
On the drive over, we had reached some kind of unstated agreement. He was going to continue to push and I was going to continue to keep quiet. But from what I could tell, he now believed I hadn’t been involved with Cassandra’s–my death. And that was all that mattered. I had enough on my plate already, and I didn’t need a murder investigation hanging over my head.
“I’m being chivalrous and I have ulterior motives. Just leave it at that.”
He threw my earlier phrase back at me and reached for the door handle. I blocked his hand, using my body as a barrier, not wanting him to follow me inside the lobby. I moved between him and the door. I turned to face him, staring at him defiantly, trying to convey with a look that this was where I was drawing the line.
“Why? Why do you care, Drake?” I looked up at him. I was above average in height, considered tall for a girl, but he still towered over me.
“I don’t like to be lied to and I don’t like a mystery. I’ve made it my goal to find out what happened to Cassandra, and I have a feeling you’re intertwined with that mystery.”
“I got fired tonight. I don’t have money to pay you. And even if I did, consider this your final notice-- you’re fired.” I tapped his chest to accentuate my message. It had the opposite effect. The stre
ngth under my fingers had my eyes widening and my palm splaying across the soft material of his shirt. The feeling of soft luxury wrapped around corded strength put a little hitch in my breath and made me wonder if this was what petting a wild animal with a soft pelt felt like. A wolf or bear…definitely a predator.
He grabbed my hand and frowned at me. His dark eyes studied my face, the mystery he couldn't solve. I was between him and the door, his big body blocking me from going forward, the door at my back blocking my retreat. I was caged. We were so close and the nearness of him tingled against me, as if he was giving off waves of power. It was throwing off my equilibrium. If he let go of my hand, would I fall over?
My hand warmed under his firm grip. He opened his mouth to speak and I took in a breath to brace myself, breathing in the scent of him. Citrus and mint, with an underlying hint of what might be sage. I fought the urge to take a deeper breath, he smelled delicious.
“I’m considering it pro bono work now.” He flashed a darkly predatory grin and I snapped out of my smell induced swooning. His words were a cold splash of reality.
“Why would you do this?”
He stepped back from me, only a tiny step, but he released my hand and left me to find my own balance. With his sudden absence, I fell back slightly as if the gravity that had held me in place for so long was now absent. When I listed, he grabbed by arm to steady me. The touch again sent those traitorous tingles across my skin. My flesh broke out in goose bumps and I fought the urge to sigh.
What was he doing to me? This wasn’t a normal reaction for me. It had to be some trick, some kind of manifestation I wasn’t aware of. He wasn’t human, so what was he? And was he able to manipulate me? What other explanation could there be?
“Are you okay?” he asked, like he didn’t know what he was doing to me. Like he wasn’t trying to intimidate me. Like he wasn’t using his threats and his big, muscled body to make me feel this way. If I wasn’t so stubborn I would be rubbing against him like a cat in heat, spilling my guts and begging for a little bit of attention. Spilling my secrets to the big strong, dangerous, man.