by A W Hartoin
Contents
Copyright
Also by A.W. Hartoin for Amazon
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Copyright © A.W. Hartoin, 2015
www.awhartoin.com
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Cover by: Karri Klawiter
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Young Adult fantasy
Flare-up (An Away From Whipplethorn Short)
A Fairy's Guide To Disaster (Away From Whipplethorn Book One)
Fierce Creatures (Away From Whipplethorn Book Two)
A Monster’s Paradise (Away From Whipplethorn Book Three)
A Wicked Chill (Away From Whipplethorn Book Four)
Mercy Watts Mysteries
Novels
A Good Man Gone (A Mercy Watts Mystery Book One)
Diver Down (A Mercy Watts Mystery Book Two)
Double Black Diamond (A Mercy Watts Mystery Book Three)
Drop Dead Red (A Mercy Watts Mystery Book Four)
Short stories
Coke with a Twist
Touch and Go
Nowhere Fast
Dry Spell
Paranormal
It Started with a Whisper (Sons of Witches)
For my fabulous grandmother, Itasca Pearl.
A woman who lived through a lot and looked fabulous doing it.
Chapter One
DEATH CHANGES YOU. It’s changed me. I didn’t think it would, but I killed a man and I’m different. At first, I thought I was fine. After all, People have tried to kill me before. I was sort of used to it or, at least, it didn’t bother me much. But I’d never killed any of my previous attackers. The worst I’d done was kick them in the junk or pepper spray them. I’d say I handled the death well until I went on a diet. Diets happen and then unhappen for me, except this one didn’t end. I couldn’t go off my diet. I couldn’t. I ate lettuce, lots of it. Then I ate tofu. I hate tofu. But I kept eating it. Death makes you eat tofu. Who knew?
“Doesn’t that hurt?” asked a low voice in front of me.
I focused on Felix behind his vegetable stand under the slim red girders of Soulard Market. He held a bunch of radishes and had a bit of straw in his scraggly blond beard. “Huh?”
“Your dog is biting your leg,” he said.
And he was. I had a big black fuzzy poodle gnawing on my calf. He chewed on my legs so often I didn’t even feel it anymore.
“He’s not my dog,” I said. “He belongs to my…my… He’s somebody else’s dog.”
“He’s still gnawing on you.”
“He’s got separation anxiety.”
Felix raised his unibrow. “You’re right there.”
“It’s not me that he misses,” I said.
Pickpocket tightened his grip while gazing up at me with shiny dark eyes. He belonged to my cousin by marriage, Chuck, who I’d kissed and then managed to alienate while working on a poisoning case in New Orleans. My father was a famous detective and sometimes I was called on to run down a suspect. In the case of New Orleans, I was paying back a favor for a friend. I solved the case but was nearly knifed. A hooded stranger with ties to the Costilla gang wanted information about Stevie Warnock, a guy who ate rocks for money and told everyone I was his best friend. As it happened, I didn’t know where my best friend Stevie was, but the Costillas’ emissary was willing to slice and dice me anyway so I shot him in the face. That was two months ago. Chuck had taken off on an undercover assignment and left me his dog, the slobbering Pick. It was a promise that he’d come back to me, but the promise had ruined three pairs of jeans, six pairs of tights, all my leggings, and my going-to-court pantyhose. I paid twenty-five bucks for that panty hose and he ruined them five minutes before I had to testify at a competency hearing for a serial killer. It was a bad day.
“You want these radishes or not?” asked Felix.
“I’ll take two bunches,” I said, trying to shake Pick off and failing yet again.
Felix bagged my radishes and I put them in my marketing cart, a gift from my godmothers, Myrtle and Millicent Bled. They supported my diet by buying me my cart and not saying a word about it, which is more than I can say for anyone else in my life.
My shiny new cart was an upright chrome affair that folded flat and could fit thirty pounds of vegetables. I tested it. So now I fit right in with the old ladies and mothers of five weaving their way through the vendors of the old outdoor market. Soulard was a comfort. It’d been the same for over eighty years, a produce paradise in the heart of St. Louis. Myrtle and Millicent had started bringing me when I was still in diapers. My mom never had the time and my godmothers had all the time in the world so I knew the vendors well even before the unfortunate events in New Orleans.
I paid Felix and attempted to walk down to my favorite lettuce vendor. That I had a favorite should’ve concerned me but it didn’t. I was mostly worried that April wouldn’t have enough to feed my habit. There was a mother with a passel of little ones eyeing the red leaf and arugula.
Back off, woman.
Pick dug in his heels and his warm slobber soaked through the leg of my only remaining pair of skinny jeans.
“Let go. What is your deal? We need lettuce,” I said while trying to pry his jaws apart. No luck.
I pulled out my cell and texted Chuck. “Your dog is biting me again. Come home and do something about it.”
My fingers stayed poised over my phone’s keyboard. I’d sunk to a new level. Next I’d be claiming a deadly illness, the black plague or Lyme disease. Not that it would work. My phone remained depressingly silent. No vibration. No Train belting out “Drive By.” Chuck didn’t answer. He hadn’t answered for two solid months, despite my daily texts. I kept expecting him to. Every single time I expected him to answer. I’m crazy that way.
Pick sat down while I texted Chuck, but he didn’t let go of my leg. You’d think his mouth would get dry, but drool was always in good supply.
“He didn’t answer,” I said. “I know you’re shocked. Try to contain the disappointment.”
Pick shifted his jaw to get a better grip and I gave in. I always did. Pick expected it. He was smarter than me in many ways.
“I’ll buy you donuts after the lettuce.”
That nutty poodle let go and licked his chops.
“You’re despicable and getting fat. What’s Chuck going to say? You know how h
e loves fitness.”
Pick yipped and began tugging on his leash. The mini donut shop sat at the end of a long row of healthy stuff and the smell of fresh frying donuts made both of us drool.
“Alright, alright.” I let him pull me to April’s ornate lettuce stand. She liked to arrange her lettuce into pictures. Today it reminded me of the ocean, waves of green going on forever.
“Back so soon,” said April. She acted like she was surprised. She wasn’t.
“I ran out,” I said.
She nodded and wisely said nothing. Going through twenty heads of lettuce in four days wasn’t normal even if my apartment was infested with giant rabbits.
I picked out an assortment of normal stuff, reds, greens, arugula, and chicory. Then I got some frisée and mizuna to shake it up. Twenty-two bunches to be on the safe side. Running out was not fun.
April wrapped it all up and I filled my cart, placing the lettuce on top of my other staples, cucumbers, tomatoes, and whatnot. I paid April and calculated how many apples and turmeric I needed for juicing. Pick tugged harder, dragging me to the right.
“Hold on,” I said, trying to picture how many wormy-looking turmeric roots I had left in the fridge.
Pick began prancing and making his I-see-someone-I-know whine. I looked up and spotted my dad standing at a stand with specialty greens like watercress and baby beet. He had his gun holster on and his hand poised like he was ready for something to happen at any second. Soulard market was pretty dangerous, all those vitamins and such. Dad was against vegetables as a general rule. He used to pay me to eat his when I was a kid so my mom would think he was eating them. A dollar per serving unless it was beets. I charged five bucks for beets. Dad called it extortion. I didn’t know what that was but even at six I knew beets cost extra.
Dad saw me, but he didn’t move. He scanned the area looking for something that he didn’t find, then he gave me a little head cock to tell me to come over. Pick dragged me to him and wagged like he hadn’t seen Dad in a month instead of a week.
“What are you doing here? Not buying veg, I assume.”
“You assume right. Let’s go,” said Dad, not looking at me but still scanning.
“I’m not done,” I said.
“You’re done.”
“No, I’m not.”
Dad grabbed my arm and looked me in the eye for the first time. “Have you seen anyone following you? Anyone unusual?”
“All my stalkers are unusual.” I smiled. Dad didn’t.
“I’m not talking about the Marilyn Monroe fanatics. Anyone who doesn’t want you to see them?” Dad was back to scanning.
“I had a couple of DBD fans yesterday. They just wanted an autograph.” Through another series of unfortunate events I ended up being the band Double Black Diamond’s new cover girl. Their fans outnumbered Marilyn Monroe’s and were happily less odd.
Dad wheeled my cart around and began taking long strides toward the exit, dragging me along with him. I yanked my arm out of his grasp. “I told you I’m not done.”
“We identified the guy,” he said under his breath.
My heart seized up. “What guy?”
“Who do you think? The guy you shot.”
“And?”
“It was Richard Costilla. The youngest of the brothers.”
I felt like vomiting but I said, “So?”
“So you have to be locked down until I fix this.”
“Define locked down.”
“You’re coming home with me. No going out.” Dad glanced around. “Sure as hell no wide open spaces. The Costillas’ want you dead.”
“Are we sure about that?”
Dad yanked me close. I hadn’t seen such fear in his eyes since I was little and ran off in Disney World. “We’re sure. You need to come home.”
“You mean your home,” I said.
“My home is your home. It always will be. The Costillas don’t play. You killed their baby brother. You think they’re just going to forget that? The kid was seventeen.”
“He was trying to kill me.”
“They don’t give a crap.” Dad spun me to face him. “You’re coming home right now if I have to wrestle you to the floor and hogtie you with zip ties.”
“No, thanks.”
“You’re coming,” he said between gritted teeth.
Richard Costilla’s face flashed in my mind. I needed a salad so bad. “I get it.”
The edge left Dad’s eyes. “I’ll buy you donuts.”
“I don’t want any donuts, but Pick wants some.”
He touched the lacy greens of my carrots that draped over the edge of my cart. “I can see that, but do me a favor and tell your mother that I bought you donuts.”
I shrugged. “Okay.”
“And that you ate them.”
“Obviously.”
“Good.” He took Pick’s leash from me and we walked to the donut guy. The smell of sizzling dough filled the air as he dropped a fresh batch in the fryer.
Dad bought a bag and leaned over to me, his broad forehead wrinkled under his red hair. “Are you sure about the donuts?”
“I’m sure.”
“How long are you going to punish yourself?”
“I’m not!” I gave my cart a hard shove and I dashed ahead of Dad and Pick. Pick yipped and his nails scraped the concrete floor of the market as he tried to follow me. My heart twisted a little. Somehow in the long weeks since Chuck left Pick with me, he’d become my dog and I hated to leave him behind but I couldn’t talk and I couldn’t think about talking. So the Costillas had marked me. I should’ve been frightened. Terrified would’ve been an appropriate response. Instead, I felt empty. I needed a salad. A salad and maybe some tofu.
Chapter Two
I’D JUST OPENED my truck door and grabbed my carrots when Dad reached me.
“Leave the freaking veg and get in the truck,” he said, huffing and puffing. Dad was rail thin but had the endurance of a guy with one lung.
“I paid for this stuff. I’m not leaving it.” I hauled out the bags, careful not to damage my delicate greens.
Dad shoved me out of the way and tossed the bags in. They bounced off the dash and windshield. He had no respect for my frisée.
“Knock it off.” I tried to worm my way back in but Dad took up a lot of space for someone so skinny.
He ignored me as usual, finished wrecking my dinner, and then tossed my cart in the bed of my truck without even folding it. I froze and stared at him. My truck was a 1958 cherry Chevy with original paint. He bought it for my sixteenth birthday, but it was really for himself. He thought a girl would never want to drive an old truck and he would end up with it, but I was on to his game and took the truck just to piss him off. He was always worrying about the maintenance and the paint since I refused to give it back and drove it every day. He obsessed like a fifteen-year-old girl with a crush on a lifeguard. “Is that a scratch, Mercy?” “Don’t eat in the truck.” “What kind of wax did you use?” He was crazy so when he threw that metal cart in the pristine bed of my truck, without a thought to the damage it would cause, I knew it was beyond serious.
“They’ll kill you,” he said. “And you won’t even see it coming.”
“Okay.”
“Follow me home now.”
“Okay.”
He turned to his car parked beside mine and his phone went crazy. It was the red alert signal from the original Star Trek series and not like something Dad would put on his phone at all.
“What the hell?” He dug it out of his pocket and glanced skyward. “Freaking Morty. He screwed with my phone again.”
I suppressed a laugh. Uncle Morty was my dad’s best friend and a computer guru of supreme ability. He loved Star Trek and all things nerdy.
“Morty can put ringtones on your phone?” I asked.
“Yes. Get in the truck now.” He looked down at the screen and paled. Now that’s saying something. Dad had zero color to begin with.
“What is it?�
�� I asked.
“Get in my car,” he said.
“What about Pick?”
“Him, too.”
“What about the leather? His nails—”
“Get in the car!” he yelled and everyone in the parking lot stared.
I locked my truck, put Pick in the backseat, and got in. Dad revved the engine and peeled out while simultaneously telling the car to dial Morty.
“Yeah,” said Morty after picking up on the first ring.
“How come you got this before me?” asked Dad.
“Does it fucking matter?”
“No. How long ago?”
“Came in five seconds before I texted you. You think I’d sit on this?” asked Uncle Morty, managing to sound petulant.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Both Dad and Morty told me to shut up. Fine. Shutting up.
“Morty, I want all you got on this.”
“I’m on it.”
I could hear Uncle Morty heave himself out of his chair. It was quite an operation. Dad ended the call and glanced at me. “Do The Girls keep an inventory at the house?”
“Huh?” I stared at him. The Girls? What did my godmothers have to do with anything?
“Pay attention, Mercy. Is there an inventory of The Bled Collection at the house?”
“Um…I think so. I saw one in the library a couple of years ago. Why?”
“Someone broke into the mansion and cracked Lester on the head.”
“Oh my god. Is he okay?”
“He’s old as dirt. What do you think?”
“Shit. Were The Girls there? What about the rest of the staff?”
Dad stared at the road as he weaved through the traffic. “Lester was alone. EMTs are on their way.”
I banged the dash with both hands. “Hurry up.”
“There’s nothing you can do.”
“Wanna bet?”
Dad hit the accelerator and yanked the steering wheel to the right, taking us up onto the sidewalk. Somehow we squeezed between a fire hydrant and the store fronts to bypass the traffic stopped at a red light. We lurched back onto the street as the light turned green and Pick slid across the backseat. I winced at the sound of nails on leather, but Dad didn’t seem to notice. He yanked right again and Pick slid to the left, making a tiny yip when he bumped the door. We hit a curb and he flew into the air only to land on all fours and slide to the right. Pick was doing that smiling pant that dogs do when they’re happy. Maybe he was used to it. I’d seen Chuck drive and he wasn’t exactly slow or smooth.