by Alyssa Day
“Leona?” I jumped up out of my chair, but Oskar shoved me down to the floor.
“Shut up, you old hag,” he shouted. “Now I’m going to give you a present. I’m going to let you watch your granddaughter die before I kill you.”
Leona started to cry. Wrenching, helpless sobs that seemed—although I didn’t know her well—a little out of character. When Oskar turned his back to her, though, I saw the window above those boxes open, just a little bit.
“You know what I learned, Tess?” He started fiddling with the video equipment and monitors on the rolling cart next to him. “I learned that I had a better magic than my father. He could channel the magic of wood. I could channel the magic of people.”
He switched on the TV monitor, moved out of the way, and forced me to watch.
“She was my first,” he crooned. “The one who killed my mother.”
The woman in the video was lying on a cot that looked like one of the ones in this barn. She was screaming. Oskar had muted the volume, but I didn’t have to hear her to know. The strained muscles in her throat and face, her wide-open mouth…
I knew.
Something was wrong with her, but my mind didn’t want to see it. Refused to see it.
“I chopped off both her feet, one at a time, while she was awake,” he said in a sing-song voice, forcing me to see it. “And do you know what happened? She killed her cat with just the power of her pain and the force of her wail.”
This time I really did throw up. He waited until I was done and handed me some paper towels, as if he were a real human being and not a soulless monster.
“That’s when I knew,” he whispered. “I could use banshees to kill. I had to experiment, of course, and it takes a lot of them to achieve a true long-distance effect. But it’s easy enough to collect banshees when you’re hand-delivering toys across the country.”
I watched his mouth moving, but the words were buzzing in my skull like bees, and I was fighting so hard to get past the revulsion and horror so I could understand. “So you didn’t kill them? The banshees?”
He laughed. “No, silly Tess. Well, one. That P-Ops agent. She was clearly going to be a problem. But the rest of them are my employees.”
He sighed and switched off the video. “This has been fun. But now I get the pleasure of killing you before I move to my new ranch in the Idaho mountains.”
I shook my head, dazed with all this information coming at me so fast. “You didn’t kill the banshees. You use them to do contract assassinations?”
He suddenly and viciously kicked me in the ribs, and I thought I heard one crack. Pain smashed into me, and I fell, clutching my side. “What did I ever do to you?”
“I just got sick of hearing about you. Father liked you. Always talked about what a hard worker and self-starter you were. Like I needed something else hung over my head, bitch.”
He kicked me again, but I couldn’t fight back, because he still held the gun.
“And now I have to get moving, because I got a new contract tonight,” he boasted. “Five million bucks. The most ever. That makes this stupid toy business look like chump change.”
I couldn’t help it. I started laughing, in spite of the pain. “You idiot. That was us. We set that up to trap you, and here we are. You’re not going to Idaho, you’re going to jail.”
His mouth dropped open. “You what?”
“You’re going to jail. The sheriff is on her way out here right now,” I taunted him. “Better run while you still have a chance, you pathetic loser.”
He started jumping up and down, screaming.
Maybe he’d been around banshees too long. Or maybe that cracked rib had punctured my lung, because suddenly I was finding it very hard to breathe.
“What did you call me?”
I tried to laugh at him, but it just came out as a bubbling noise. “Loser. Monster. Pathetic little whiner. Can’t make the toys, poor you.”
He kicked me again and the world went red and shiny for a second.
“Shut up, shut up, shut up,” he screamed.
But I wouldn’t.
“Loser,” I whispered again.
So he shot me.
The last thing I heard before the darkness mercifully took me away from the pain was a tiger’s roar.
Chapter 18
I think I woke up when they put me in the ambulance, crying out, scared again, but Jack was there, holding my hand, and his strength and his warmth and his forest-and-spice scent surrounded me, so I felt safe again.
“I’m so sorry I couldn’t move earlier, Tess. He had a gun. I’m fast, but I’m not faster than a gun.”
I blinked up at him while the paramedics worked on me with tubes and bandages and unicorns.
That last one might have been the drugs.
There were tear tracks on Jack’s face. That might have been about the drugs, too, but I doubt it.
“Were you crying? For me?” It hurt to talk, but I suddenly needed to know. “If I’m dying, you should kiss me again. I’d really regret dying without ever kissing you again.”
He bent down and gently kissed my forehead, and I was content. I let my eyelids close but then struggled back up to consciousness. “Leona?”
I thought about that, then corrected it. “Grandmother?”
“She’s fine.”
“The others?”
“You saved them all,” he told me. “They’re all going to be okay.”
“Not all,” I whispered.
“Brenda died trying to get away from him. He confessed to it already. They fought, and he slammed her against the trailer hitch. And Alejandro’s agent died long before we got involved with this. You did good, sweetheart.”
Sparkly light started swirling in the bronze of his hair, and I smiled. If he said I did good, it must be true. “Shiny.”
When I woke up again, bright sunlight filled my room. My flower-filled, people-filled hospital room. Everybody was there except for Shelley and Jack.
Aunt Ruby rushed over to hug me and cried all over my boring blue hospital gown, which I noticed didn’t have a single duck anywhere on it.
Uncle Mike gently pulled her back. “Don’t squish our girl, honey. She just got shot.”
She promptly burst into a fresh round of tears, and Uncle Mike looked at me in bewilderment. “What did I say?”
“Men,” Leona said, coming to the rescue with tissues and hugs.
“Grandmother,” I said, trying it on.
Her face lit up with the biggest smile I’d ever seen her wear, and the resemblance to my mother was even more striking.
“Can you stay in Dead End for a while?”
She came over and hugged me, very gently. “Your friend, Special Agent Vasquez, sent some people who caught Everett breaking into my house. Between that and the voicemails he sent me, he won’t be bothering me for a while. But I have to go and wrap up a few things, and then Ned and I will be back, I promise.”
Ned, leaning against the wall by the door, waved at me, and I waved back.
I looked around the room. “Who’s going to fill me in?”
“We promised to leave that to Jack,” Uncle Mike said.
I frowned. “That would be fine, if he bothered to stop by.”
Aunt Ruby started laughing through her tears. “Oh, honey. Do you think anybody could have gotten him to leave?”
A Bengal tiger slowly stood and stretched from where he’d been lying on the floor next to my bed. I smiled at him and he yawned, showing so many shiny teeth that a nurse passing my doorway yelped.
“We’re heading out to give you some time to rest, honey,” Uncle Mike said, patting my unwounded shoulder. “We’ll be back, though. The doctor says you can come home in a few days if everything looks good.”
“Take care of Lou, please. Oh—my window!” I said, starting to worry.
“Lou is at our house, and the window guy is heading out to your place this morning,” Uncle Mike said. “Apparently I’ve also acquire
d an earless goat. You know anything about that?”
I grinned at him. “Maybe. Watch out for your shoes.”
A different nurse, one brave enough to work around a quarter-ton tiger, bustled in and shooed everyone except Jack out, and she pushed a button that sent a wave of warmth through me. I put my hand on Jack’s furry head.
“Don’t leave me,” I whispered, and he stared at me with wise amber eyes.
The third time I woke up, Jack was human again and sitting in a chair next to my bed, reading a magazine.
“Hello, beautiful.”
“Water,” I croaked.
He helped me sit up and drink a little out of a bendy straw, and then he took my hand, and I finally felt strong enough to hear it. “Tell me.”
“I didn’t kill Oskar, although it was a close thing. When he hurt you—” Jack’s hand tightened around mine until I made a little squeak.
“Sorry. But Leona is amazing. She kept yelling that we needed him alive to tell us where he buried Alejandro’s friend, and to tell P-Ops about the contracts he took, so they can get the people who hired him, too. He won’t die, since he worked a deal, but he’ll never, ever get out of prison.”
I thought about that for a minute and decided I was okay with that. I remembered the person he’d been before his mother died. I was also glad that Jack didn’t have to carry another death on his soul, but I didn’t tell him that. Maybe someday we’d have that conversation, but not today.
Jack reached out and gently touched my cheek with one finger. “Now I have a question for you.”
“Okay.”
“Will you go out with me? To dinner. Not at Beau’s. A real date.”
I gulped. “Water?”
He gave me more water and stared at me while I drank it, his eyes narrowing. “Quit stalling. It’s a simple question, Tess. Yes or no?”
Oh, boy. This could be a life-changer. If I said yes…
But if I said no…
I needed a crystal ball.
I needed…to suck it up, Buttercup.
So I took a deep breath and gave him my answer.
Chapter 19
I smiled at my wonderful, feral, kind, gorgeous tiger. “Yes.”
A few days later, when they let me out of the hospital, a brand new, red Mustang convertible with a giant blue bow on the hood, was waiting for me at home. The card said:
Don’t argue.
Love,
Grandmother
* * *
So now I had a date and a new car. Maybe I should get shot more often.
* * *
Respectfully Submitted,
Tiger’s Eye Investigations
Buy the next book in the Tiger’s Eye Mystery Series-
Evil Eye, coming Summer 2016
When Jack Shepherd, tiger shape-shifter, former rebel soldier, and current private investigator, finds out about a threat to his more-than-a-friend Tess Callahan, any pretense of being civilized goes out the window of Tess's Dead End Pawn Shop.
A nightmare of pirate treasure, conflicting loyalties, and deadly secrets stand between Jack, Tess, and the killer, and solving this mystery might just cost Jack his life. But nobody threatens Jack's family, and sometimes it takes a tiger’s eye to see the truth.
For Our Readers
Win a sterling silver book locket that you can personalize! As a bonus, purchase the titles of the other SilverHart authors listed below to be entered multiple times. Each locket is unique!
Enter Here
Also from SilverHart Publishing:
* * *
Prime Target – Marquita Valentine
Dog Collar Crime – Adrienne Giordano
Love and Protect – Lori Ryan
Thank you!
Thanks so much for reading my book! I hope you had as much fun reading it as I did writing it.
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Acknowledgments
And in other thanks…
Thanks to Liliana Hart and Scott Silverii for their kindness and patience in the face of my life exploding.
Thanks to my editor, Heather Osborn, who is even amazing at the last minute, and to my cover artist, Lyndsey Lewellen, for this wonderful portrait of Tess.
Thanks to my family, Judd, Connor, and Lauren, and thank goodness this was our last Navy deployment.
Fair seas to everyone.
About the Author
Alyssa Day is the pen name (and dark and tortured alter ego) of author Alesia Holliday. As Alyssa, she is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, and she writes the Warriors of Poseidon, League of the Black Swan, and Cardinal Witches paranormal romance series, in addition to her new Tiger’s Eye Mysteries paranormal mystery series. As Alesia, she writes comedies that make readers snort things out of their noses, and is the author of the award-winning memoir about military families during war-time deployments: Email to the Front.
She has won many awards for her writing, including Romance Writers of America’s prestigious RITA award for outstanding romance fiction and the RT Book Reviews Reviewer’s Choice Award for Best Paranormal Romance novel of 2012.
Alyssa is a diehard Buckeye who graduated summa cum laude from Capital University Law School and practiced as a trial lawyer in multi-million dollar litigation for several years before coming to her senses and letting the voices in her head loose on paper.
She lives somewhere near an ocean with her Navy Guy husband, two kids, and any number of rescue dogs. Please visit Alyssa at her website, follow her on Twitter (she’s very chatty there!), or on Facebook(warning: dog photos regularly appear).
@Alyssa_Day
authoralyssaday
www.AlyssaDay.com
Also by Alyssa Day
THE TIGER’S EYE MYSTERY SERIES
Dead Eye
Private Eye
Evil Eye
(July 05, 2016)
* * *
THE WARRIORS OF POSEIDON SERIES:
Atlantis Rising
Wild Hearts in Atlantis (a novella; originally in the WILD THING anthology)
Atlantis Awakening
Shifter’s Lady (a novella; originally in the SHIFTER anthology)
Atlantis Unleashed
Atlantis Unmasked
Atlantis Redeemed
Atlantis Betrayed
Vampire in Atlantis
Heart of Atlantis
Alejandro’s Sorceress (a related novella)
* * *
THE LEAGUE OF THE BLACK SWAN SERIES:
The Cursed
The Curse of the Black Swan (a novella; originally in the ENTHRALLED anthology)
The Unforgiven (coming soon)
The Blessed (coming soon)
* * *
THE CARDINAL WITCHES SERIES:
Alejandro’s Sorceress (a novella)
Denal’s Enchantress, coming summer, 2016