Second Sight (Prescience Series Book 1)

by Denise Moncrief

  COPYRIGHT

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the prior consent of the author in any form other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, character, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved including the right of reproduction, distribution, or transmitted in whole or part in any form or means, or stored in any electronic, mechanical, database or retrieval system, or otherwise, without the written permission of the author.

  Contact information: info@denisemoncrief.com

  SECOND SIGHT

  Prescience Series: Book One

  Copyright © 2017 by Denise Moncrief

  Electronic Edition

  Paranormal Romantic Suspense

  Cover Design: SelfPubBookCovers.com/CloudyChais

  Cover is copyright and trademark of the author, used under license owned.

  SECOND SIGHT

  Desperate to begin a new life, Jerilyn Bowman changes her name and goes off the grid. Sparks fly when Det. Nick Moreau confronts her about her identity and then seems to follow her wherever she goes. When a stranger dies while gripping her chin in his hand, passing to her the gift of prescience, she begins to witness awful crimes before they happen.

  Jerilyn’s claim that she’s able to see the future both frustrates and fascinates Nick to the point he can’t get her out of his mind. Are Jerilyn’s claims of second sight a cover for her own crimes? Will Nick discover the truth before Jerilyn becomes the killer’s next victim?

  ACKNOWLEGEMENTS

  Special thanks to my long-suffering family, Larry, Katy, and Eric, who have put up with my many writing moods and have encouraged me to pursue my publishing dreams anyway.

  I’d also like to acknowledgment all the readers who have enjoyed my books and given me encouraging feedback. I write because it’s an obsession. I publish because I want someone to read what I write. My readers are why I do what I do. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

  SECOND SIGHT

  Table of Contents

  Start

  Cover

  ACKNOWLEGEMENTS

  Part I - The Seeing 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

  Part II – The Knowing Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Part III – Epilogue Chapter Thirty

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  OTHER TITLES BY DENISE MONCRIEF

  BONUS MATERIAL

  Part I - The Seeing

  Chapter One

  New Orleans, Louisiana

  June 2014

  Blue streaks and long spikes protruded every direction out of the ponytail elastic on top of Jerilyn Bowman’s head. Black lips and nails added to the dark, don’t-you-dare-mess-with-me look. Jeri had adopted the carefully crafted image on the day she decided to stay in New Orleans.

  The persona she projected wasn’t her. Not at all. It was a disguise. In high school, she was a brainiac. Sensible clothes. Responsible habits. Excellent grades. Jeri knew herself well enough to know her true nature was somewhere between good little girl and badass bitch.

  Her parents wouldn’t understand her choices, and she wasn’t going to try to explain. Not when the secrets they had kept from her for years were the main reason she wanted to keep them out of her life. So when she dropped out of medical school to bartend, she hadn’t told them about her decision. As far as she knew, they still believed she was studying anatomy and medical ethics at Tulane Medical School.

  She slid a glass across the bar toward a regular customer. “Here ya go.”

  Among all the tourists who ordered nothing but Hurricanes and Sazeracs, the local guy was a bit of a challenge. He always had a new drink for her to mix. Today’s choice was a concoction he called Royal Blood. She’d mixed his drink, adding a sticky red liquid that resembled strawberry syrup from a glass tube he’d brought with him. The mess smelled horrible and looked practically toxic.

  Without looking at her, he grunted, lifting his drink and letting it hover near his lips for a long moment before taking the first sip. When he lowered his glass, a line of gooey red outlined his upper lip.

  “Is that the way you like it?” She didn’t expect him to respond. The weirdo rarely spoke more than a few words.

  He dropped a ten on the counter. Despite his homeless appearance, he was always a good tipper. Jeri’s shift ended at six in the morning, and the weirdo was always her last customer. The man stopped for a moment to gaze out the front window. No telling at what he was staring. He stood so still Jeri thought he might have died standing up. Then, he jerked, dropped something in the trash bin near the door, and exited the bar, leaving the place empty of customers once again.

  The weirdo’s empty glass went into the soapy water behind the bar, discoloring the bubbles with a tinge of pink. She grabbed a damp towel and began wiping down the counter for the last time just as the night bouncer Herb turned over the closed sign in the window.

  Until recently the bar had never closed, open 24/7, but ever since a brawl on the sidewalk outside had migrated into the bar at six in the morning and someone had taken a bullet right inside the door, the owner had closed it from six a.m. until ten a.m. every day. Darwin had grumbled that he didn’t want to spend his mornings watching his business and that no one should be up that time of day making trouble. If he didn’t take care of his business, it didn’t get taken care of, so he said. Hell, it wasn’t like Darwin stuck around much after midnight. He usually missed all the late night/early morning excitement that the bouncer handled without the boss ever knowing about it.

  Jeri’s bare wrist slid across a few drops of the red slimy substance she’d put into the weirdo’s drink. Her head jerked up, her gaze darting across the empty bar toward the other side of the room. For a split second, she saw a woman lying on the floor. Her glassy eyes stared straight into Jerilyn’s soul. Jeri dropped the wet towel and rubbed her fists over her eyes. When she opened them again, the woman had disappeared.

  “Herb?”

  The bouncer turned toward her. “Huh?”

  She pointed to the spot where she’d seen the woman. “Is there someone lying on the floor over there?”

  It wouldn’t be the first time someone had passed out and woke up the next morning sprawled out on the floor right where they had fallen. That was another early morning joy that Darwin usually missed out on.

  Herb squinted in the direction of the darkened corner of the room. “I don’t see nobody.”

  The front door popped open, pushing Herb back a few steps, and a man entered. Herb groaned. Jeri had distracte
d him, and he hadn’t locked up fast enough.

  She nodded toward the sign on the door. “We’re closed until ten.”

  When the man’s gaze met hers, Jeri’s breath completely left her. His brilliant blue eyes held her stare. It was too bad he was so hot. He smelled like a cop.

  Jeri remembered those gorgeous eyes. She’d seen him once before. He’d come into the bar one night with another cop. The two of them had tried so hard to appear as if they were just two guys getting a drink together and had ordered a beer on tap while they had scanned the crowded bar. They hadn’t found whoever they were looking for and had left their drinks behind practically untouched. She would have been glad to give them a go cup. There was no sense in wasting a perfectly good mug of beer.

  She forced a smile and dumped the day-old cherries and orange slices into the trashcan beneath the bar. “What can I get for you, officer?”

  Herb made a noise of disgust and locked the door with an angry twist of his wrist. Since he’d done time, first in the Orleans Parish jail and then at Angola, Herb had not been a big fan of law enforcement. He stood near the door with his beefy arms crossed over his broad chest. Herb had pumped so much iron during his incarceration that no one dared mess with him, not even cops.

  The cop blinked and then grinned as if he had been caught in a criminal act. Before he spoke, he pulled a stool back from the bar and took his sweet time depositing his butt opposite her. One flick of his wrist gave her a quick peek at his ID. He tucked the badge back into his pocket and shoved a picture across the still damp bar.

  “Have you seen her hanging around the Quarter?”

  Jeri glanced at the picture and then raised her gaze to meet the cop’s eyes. Believable lies were all about projecting confidence. “Nope.”

  So her parents had figured out that she had dropped out of Tulane. It had taken them long enough. She lifted the weirdo’s glass out of the soapy water and began cleaning it, trying to keep doing her job and appearing as casual a possible, while her heart pounded at a furious pace.

  The cop sighed and pointed at the photo. “Jerilyn’s parents are worried about her. I would like to tell them she isn’t dead.”

  It was a strange time of day for the cop to be following up on a missing person case. Didn’t he have more serious crimes to investigate at six in the morning?

  As if on cue, the high-pitched wail of sirens caught her attention. She turned her head toward the street for a second and then returned her attention to the cop. “Sorry, I can’t help you with that.”

  He leaned across the bar and whispered. “What do I tell them, Jerilyn?”

  Jeri drew her brows together and crinkled her nose as if he had confused her. “You think I’m that girl?” She glanced at the picture again. “Maybe I look a little like her, but that’s not me.” Not anymore. “My name is Olivia.” She had paid a guy a nice fat sum of money to become Olivia.

  He pushed his stool away from the bar. When he stood, she calculated he must be at least six feet tall. She dared look straight into his blue, blue eyes. He smiled again, and she almost smiled back.

  “Well, Olivia…if you ever want to pass any news along to Jerilyn’s parents, here’s my card. Give me a call anytime.”

  He was gone before she could shove the card back at him. She nudged it to the end of the bar with a long, black-painted fingernail and then watched it float into the trash bin.

  Give me a call anytime. She snorted with contempt.

  If he weren’t a cop…if he wasn’t looking for her, she might think the man had just hit on her. But he was a detective, and cops were pros at deception. He could easily fake interest to fool her into talking to him. She knew how they were because her father was a high-ranking officer with the Nashville police. No doubt, that was why the local PD was giving her particular missing person case personalized attention.

  She glanced at the name on the card as it lay face up on top of the fruit. Det. Nicholas Moreau. Just her luck the hottest guy she’d ever met was a cop. She snatched the card from the trash and slipped it into the pocket of her jeans…just in case.

  ****

  Nick wasn’t surprised that Jerilyn Bowman had refused to acknowledge her identity. She’d been untraceable, obviously living off the grid. No social security record of wages. No activity in her bank account. A driver’s license with an out-of-date last known address. No forwarding address. No activity on her credit card. No doubt, the bar owner was paying her in cash.

  After weeks of searching for her, he’d recognized her earlier that week from her photograph. If he and his partner hadn’t gone into the bar looking for a suspect, he might never have found her.

  Nick smiled. Her physical transformation from college girl to Bourbon Street bartender had been clever, but not quite clever enough. He’d followed her movements for the past few days and had determined that she had fully immersed into her new life. She was almost twenty-three, legally an adult. No one was holding her captive. She appeared to be independent. In cases such as hers, the missing person wasn’t truly missing.

  Nick was doing a favor for a friend of his in the Nashville PD. The girl’s father, who was a deputy commissioner in Nashville, had bellowed and blustered so much for action that the NOPD cop assigned her case had tuned him out and let the file sit on his desk without any follow-up. The deputy commissioner had done an end around and asked one of his officers, who just happened to have a friend on the NOPD, to call Nick. So Nick had promised his friend that he would look into it, and he had, on his own time.

  The woman was using the name Olivia Hammond. Where had she acquired the fake identity? He’d have to follow up on that and do a records search.

  He sauntered down the street toward his parked car, in no hurry to get to his desk in the Major Crimes squad room. Any second, his phone would vibrate with a call from his partner. Waylon Petrie was the third new partner he’d had since Charlotte Soileau left the New Orleans Police Department a few years back. Somehow Nick always got stuck training a rookie detective in the field.

  Nick shook his head at what Charlotte must have gone through training him. She had made him a better detective, and he had tried to cover for her while she recuperated from a serious injury, but his efforts hadn’t been good enough. After several months of rehab, Charlotte had left the job and moved back home to Wakefield. Never being a person to stay idle too long, it had only been a few months after Charlotte quit the NOPD that she ran for sheriff of St. Denis Parish and won the election.

  Just as he had predicted, his phone vibrated with a call from Petrie.

  “The captain wants to know where you are.”

  Nick checked the time. He wasn’t late. Not yet. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.” More like twenty, traffic being what it was that time of morning. The Quarter might be a little drowsy, but the rest of the city had already had its early morning jolt of caffeine.

  His captain, Ed Moreau, was never happy when Nick was late for the morning briefing. He could only push the limits of Ed’s patience so far. The boss was his uncle.

  “Forget coming in. We have a DB in the Eighth.”

  Why couldn’t the guy just say there was a dead body in the Quarter?

  Now, Nick understood the wail of sirens he’d heard in the background of his conversation with Jerilyn. “What’s the address?”

  Petrie told him, but Nick didn’t hear it. The sight of Jerilyn Bowman leaving the bar had distracted his attention.

  Nick rubbed his forehead where a fresh headache had formed. “I’m already on Bourbon. I can hear the sirens on Dauphine. I’ll meet your there.”

  Chapter Two

  Jeri grabbed her backpack from behind the bar, stepped out into the dawning day, and headed toward Canal to catch the bus. She’d found that Bourbon Street never slept, but there were times when it took a nice little nap. As it turned out, early morning was her favorite time of day. That’s when the fast pace slowed to a languid crawl.

  Sirens wailed one street over o
n Dauphine going in the other direction toward Esplanade. The atmosphere was heavy with moisture, and a hazy fog seemed to hover over the Quarter, making the entire scene seem unreal, like the set of a horror movie. The stench of the previous evening’s partying hung in the air. She wrinkled her nose at the smell of rotting food as she passed a dumpster ready for the day’s garbage collection. The heels of her boots rang on the concrete sidewalk making enough noise to raise the dead, and the desire to be invisible raced through her psyche.

  The guy and his blood red drink had creeped her out. She’d caught Herb the Bouncer’s eye when the dude had ordered it, and Herb had made a psycho face behind the guy’s back. The weirdo had seemed rather harmless until he had ordered that bloody drink.

  After Herb had locked the door behind the cop, he’d set about dumping the trash. That’s when he’d found the glass that had contained the weirdo’s bloody drink mix. She’d stopped him from throwing it into the dumpster, thinking that she’d take the tube home and clean it up. The piece would fit in well with the rest of her collection.

  It was pretty in a dark sort of way, a tall cylinder wedged into an ornate metal base. The glass hadn’t been on the base when the weirdo had handed it to her, but she couldn’t separate the tube from the base no matter how hard she tugged. There had to be a trick to pulling the two pieces apart, but Jeri was too tired to figure it out, and she didn’t want to break it. She’d shoved the thing into a plastic bag and wrapped it in the soiled bar towel before stuffing into her backpack.

  It had been a long shift, and Jeri’s imagination had obviously been working overtime. Her nerves were still on edge from the freaky vision of the dead woman and the encounter with the cop. The wail of sirens had clamored in the background of their conversation, adding another layer of tension to the interview.