Simon Says... Hide (Kate Morgan Thrillers Book 1) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Books in This Series

  About This Book

  A Behind-the-Scenes Glimpse into Dale Mayer’s Simon Says Series

  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

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Excerpt from Simon Says… Jump

  Author’s Note

  Complimentary Download

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  Books in This Series

  The Kate Morgan Series

  Simon Says… Hide, Book 1

  Simon Says… Jump, Book 2

  Simon Says… Ride, Book 3

  Simon Says… Scream, Book 4

  About This Book

  Introducing a new thriller series that keeps you guessing and on your toes through every twist and unexpected turn….

  USA Today Best-Selling Author Dale Mayer does it again in this mind-blowing thriller series.

  The unlikely team of Detective Kate Morgan and Simon St. Laurant, an unwilling psychic, marries all the unpredictable and passionate elements of Mayer’s work that readers have come to love and crave.

  Newly promoted detective Kate Morgan stands up for the victims in the world, never backing down or giving up. From a family of victims, Kate will not tolerate those who take advantage of others. The worst ones prey on the hopes of desperate people to line their own pockets.

  And when Kate finds a connection between more than a half-dozen cold cases to a recent case—where a child’s life is in jeopardy—she’ll make a deal with the devil himself to protect the child.

  Having the gift of Sight, Simon St. Laurant knows that once he uses it, he can never walk away. But when nightmares of his own past are triggered, Simon can’t stand back. Determined to help, Simon vows to save these children—even if it means dealing with the cranky and critical Detective Kate Morgan.

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  A Behind-the-Scenes Glimpse

  into Dale Mayer’s Simon Says Series

  With this new Simon Says series, it seems some background information from me, the author, might be in order. For one, Vancouver is a city where I have many happy memories of my decade-plus years growing up there. As an army brat, I spent most of my childhood years in Vancouver, as I ventured into adulthood. For all the good memories I do have, several are not so good. That’s partly what brought this series to light.

  The city of Vancouver, like all big cities, has the wonderful surface layer that hides a dark underbelly. The contrast between dark and light has always interested me. I write on both sides of this coin constantly. The good against the bad, the light of day against the dark of night. The positive versus the negative. The funny compared to the dark. Laughter paired with suspense. It keeps me happy and the words flowing.

  I was at a conference with several friends years ago, and I mentioned I wanted to do a new thriller series. The ideas easily flowed forth—which they do naturally with me anyway. But this time, my two main characters, Kate and Simon, fully popped into my mind, both the physical appearance of both as well as their personalities. I didn’t touch the concept for another full year, until I sat down and wrote the first book, Simon Says … Hide. Then self-doubt hit, and I pushed it aside, ignoring it for another year. But Kate hammered away at me inside my head, wanting more page time, so I sat down to write the next four books of this Simon Says series.

  Writing fiction, particularly crime fiction, presents its own challenges, especially when you marry that with the fiction license—joining reality with imagination. Meaning, I did my best to line up truth and facts and yet kept my license to create needed bits of information to ensure that the story worked. Remember. These are stories. They are not real cases, not real people, nor real events. In fact, given urban density, at the time you read this story and the others in this Simon Says series, the Vancouver street names, traffic patterns, and even beaches and community neighborhoods could well have changed.

  I do thank the Vancouver Police Department for their patience in answering my multitude of questions throughout the writing of this series. They were very helpful in sorting out the divisions between the various community and law enforcement groups that work together to protect and to serve and to keep safe Vancouver and all the neighboring cities.

  Remember. All these people, places, events are fictional, creations of my mind. I wrote these stories for entertainment purposes only.

  Enjoy!

  Dale Mayer, Author of the Simon Says Series

  Chapter 1

  Vancouver, First Monday in June …

  Newly minted homicide detective Kate Morgan sat on one of the many benches positioned in this child-friendly park, watching the kids play on the swings in downtown Vancouver. She’d passed her first three months in her new position amid the craziness of too many murder cases to count. Vancouver, BC, was like any big city around the world and had its share of criminal activity. The city had its issues—just being on the coast and blending many different nationalities—yet somehow it all worked. Plus it was home for her. Always had been.

  Because of those life-and-death issues, Vancouver had three homicide units, usually with six or seven detectives in each unit. She chuckled. At one time, the two other units called themselves Team Canuck or Team Flames, showing how hockey crazy Canada got. She didn’t know what her unit used to call themselves, as she was the odd-one-out still. New enough to know her place and not so new to misunderstand the team needed time to meld.

  Her ever-assessing gaze watched two men on a bench on the far side of the park. One got up, tossed a bright yellow ball at the other and then, with a raised hand, turned and walked away.

  Her focus flitted to the storm approaching in the distance, assessed its threat, and dismissed it. Rain was part of the reality when living on the coast. The more pressing threats in her world were the two-legged predators. She’d known the dangers ever since her younger brother had disappeared, even now, twenty-five years later with still no trace of him. She kept a copy of his file on her desk, as a reminder of the work she’d dedicated herself to. Timmy was always close to her heart. She could only hope to get closure, as she worked to give closure to others.

  Sudden movement on her left had her watching a lean man of average height, walking into the park and staring at the kids on the swing. Something about his gaze set her nerves on edge. He was slightly turned away from her, only letting her see his jeans and well-worn jacket with the upturned collar. He perched on a nearby bench seat, seemingly fascinated by the boys’ antics.

  The single male on the far side stood suddenly and strode her way, tossing the yellow ball and catching it smoothly with every step. He gazed at the street beside her, unconcerned for the kids or other adults. His focus was internal. From the power suit he wore, business deals most likely.

  As she turned back to the other man, he’d disappeared. Her gaze zipped to the boys at the swings. T
hey were still there. Relaxing slightly, she studied the park exits. Both men had left at the same time. From opposite sides of the park.

  It shouldn’t have meant anything.

  But it felt like it did.

  Her phone rang just then. Rodney, one of her team. “We found another one. Prepare yourself. It’s a little boy.”

  *

  Tuesday

  Simon St. Laurant had had a bad week. He twisted in bed, kicking off the blanket. His body shimmered with sweat. He drifted in and out of sleep. He’d been up until two in the morning in one of his friendlier gambling games and had crashed soon afterward. Now it was five in the morning, and the last thing he wanted was to be awake. He rolled over, pulled the sheet over his sweating body, and closed his eyes.

  As he tried to fall asleep again, he drifted down the same godforsaken dark street, just a halo of light coming from the streetlamps across on the other side. A small man, holding the hand of a very young boy at his side, walked quietly down the street. The little boy asked, “When will we be there?”

  “We’ll be there soon,” the older man promised.

  Something was just so damn wrong about that picture that Simon kept telling the little boy to run, wanting to reach out and drag him to safety. But, even as Simon reached out a hand, he saw that it wasn’t real, that he wasn’t there, that he couldn’t grab that little boy and escape. As the older man walked under the streetlamp, Simon caught the hungry look on the man’s face. A predator’s look. Yet not clear enough to identify him.

  Simon woke immediately, sat up, and groaned in frustration. “Why that same goddamn freaking nightmare?” he cried out, before flopping to his back yet again.

  He was exhausted, his mind overwhelmed, as he drifted once again into the deepness of sleep. This time he landed in a small room, with lots of toys on the bed and on the floor. A bed that broke his heart because it had a plastic sheet for the little kids who might wet themselves. A blanket was atop the bed but was otherwise empty. Simon’s mind knew that a light was on the side of the room and that Simon would see the child soon, but he didn’t want to go there. He kicked himself out of the dream, sitting up again, shuddering in the dark. “Damn it,” he muttered, rubbing his eyes. “What fresh hell is this?”

  Almost as if by asking that question, his body stiffened. He fell backward again, and this time he was in a different room, and the bed was bigger. It had little pink roses around the base and unicorns across the headboard. A little girl sobbed her eyes out, curled up into a tiny ball, hugging a teddy bear. The problem was that fancy little bed was completely out of place, surrounded by bare concrete walls and old cracked floors. The lack of carpet or any other niceties suggested this would not be a nice little home for her.

  Instead Simon saw the bloodstains on the mattress around her, the pain and the terror in her heart, and the loneliness in her soul. He wanted to hold her and to tell her that it would be okay. But the same words rippled through his mind: Hide. He’s coming.

  Then everything went dark …

  When he woke again, he lay in his bed, staring at the ceiling, dry-eyed, but felt as if he’d bawled his entire life away. Every part of his body hurt, especially his soul. He sat up, felt like he was thirty years older than his thirty-seven years on this planet. Thirty-seven years of pain and fighting to get the upper hand, trying to make sure that he wouldn’t be a victim in this world again.

  Years ago he’d sworn to be a victor instead. He played the game, but he didn’t let others play him. That wasn’t part of his new reality. Not anymore—not for a long time. He looked down at his bed, the bottom sheet literally pulled off the mattress and twisted beneath him, while the top sheet was crumpled on the floor beside him.

  “Looks like I had a party—and not the fun kind,” he muttered, as he slowly straightened. He stretched, turned to get the kinks out of his neck and his back. A bad night had the effect of turning his spine into a pretzel that he could spend hours trying to untwist. He needed a hot shower to complete the job. Yet every time he went under the water, he kept seeing images of the boy that he’d seen in the first nightmare this morning.

  It made no sense, when he’d seen many other children throughout his lifetime of nightmares, but, for some reason, he identified with that one. That night terror always upset him because he didn’t know that child. It wasn’t Simon as a child, and he didn’t understand the dialogue, didn’t remember it from his own life. What he did know was that these nightmares had to stop.

  If he had a friend who was a doctor, he might have talked to him or her, but unfortunately he didn’t even have that. In truth, speaking out loud of this weakness, … in the wrong hands, that knowledge could crush Simon. As he walked naked to the shower, he knew something had to change; he couldn’t keep going on this way. The nightmares had restarted suddenly, for no current reason, and they were getting stronger, clearer, and more traumatic to view.

  He should get away for a few days. Book a gambling cruise to take his mind off this mess. Maybe see Yale there. Simon’s gaze caught sight of the yellow child’s ball that Yale had tossed to Simon, the two men out of the blue both at the park yesterday.

  Simon often walked that corridor and had come upon his old friend, looking sad and depressed. It had been nice to see Yale unexpectedly. Normally they’d be in on the same poker games or cruises, but he hadn’t seen his old college friend in over six months.

  Much happier after their visit, Yale had laughed, as he’d tossed him the ball, and said, “For old times’ sake.”

  With a shrug, Simon stepped under the rain showerhead and let the hot water slosh over his head and down his back to the tiles below.

  As soon as he was dry and dressed in lightweight pants with a linen shirt, perfect for summers in Vancouver, he picked up his blazer, flipped it over his shoulder, and headed out. He needed coffee in a big way, but he also had to escape the solitude of his own thoughts, preferably out in public, where he could disappear into the crowds. He walked off the elevator, crossed the lobby, and headed toward the front door, held open by the doorman.

  Once outside, he stopped for a long moment, lifted his head, and sniffed the early morning Vancouver air. The nearby harbor, with that scent of salt, plus the noise and the bustle of city life, all of it melded together beautifully. With a smile he turned and headed toward his favorite coffee shop.

  Chapter 2

  Kate walked toward the open room, the bullpen full of desks, singled out her own, and threw herself into her chair, her fingers hitting the keyboard with the same ferocity.

  “Wow, bad night?” Owen asked from behind her.

  She shrugged, as she logged in to check her email. “Aren’t they all?”

  She was the newest member to the division, supposedly worked within an active base team of six—with access to an analyst and two assistants—plus Sergeant Colby Stevens, the head of their team. One of the assistants was out on leave, so the temporary replacement was sinking deeper under the workload each day.

  “Thought you went out with your new guy last night?” Owen teased her.

  “In your dreams,” she snapped back.

  He was the one happily married member of the team, with one boy and one girl, the perfect little family. That alone was enough to get a rise out of her. How the hell did he manage that with this job? She really wanted to know. She barely had time to braid her thick hair each day, keeping it out of her way. Plus he never missed a shift, but yet somehow he was there for all his kids’ special events and birthdays. When he was on the job, he was fully here. Yet it seemed that he gave his all to his family. They were lucky.

  Now she had more reason to hate his teasing. She knew he had a huge grin on his face, particularly if he thought he’d gotten a rise out of her. Her love life was a constant joke. Because there wasn’t one. She tried to keep the team out of it, but it was damn near impossible. This is what happened when you worked closely with guys. Two women were in the group, her and Lilliana. And, if ever two w
omen were opposites, it was them.

  Kate liked to consider herself a fighting machine, but, in truth, she had to work harder, faster, than anybody else, just to prove herself to the others. She was tall, lean, didn’t give a damn about makeup or looking good. It’s not what she was here for. She was all about the job. Lilliana was one of those pretty women; blonde, coiffed, makeup perfectly applied, always looked good—even though she was a detective. Yet she was as smart as Kate was. Although there was just something about Lilliana that made the guys like her a whole lot more.

  Kate could read fast and could digest information quickly, but her real talent lay in solving puzzles. It had taken years of dedication to become a detective. It was a coveted position, and, anytime an opportunity came up, it meant somebody else had retired, quit, or unfortunately died on the job. And that’s what had happened to the detective she replaced. He’d been killed during the investigation of a major crime. It had taken the department six weeks to hire somebody to replace him, and, even now, she felt the disapproval of those around her.

  Not so much disapproval because it was her as much as she was someone else.

  She would never fill Chet’s seat. It just wasn’t possible. He’d been six-five, a 280-pounder, with a ready laugh. A guy everybody had loved. He’d done his job well and had been on the force twenty-five years. According to the others, he’d wanted to die on the job; he just didn’t want to die ten years early.

  “Chet always came in with a smile on his face,” Rodney said from her side.

  She winced at that. “And for the one-hundredth time,” she said, without turning around, “I’m not Chet.”

  “Is that not the truth?” Lilliana said on a laugh as she walked in. Somehow she always looked put together. Her jeans were high-end, her shirts designer.

  It was all Kate could do to arrive clean, as few holes as possible in her jeans and her T-shirt, and no way would she ever show up in heels. She shook her head. Not that they had to wear the same uniform, as if still street cops, but Lilliana had these clothes that somehow made her look like a professional, whereas Kate always felt like she was barely getting the hang of things.