Simon Says... Jump (Kate Morgan Thrillers Book 2) 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

  Excerpt from Simon Says… Ride

  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.

  Detective Kate Morgan has settled into her position and, although straining under her new caseload, is working hard. Simon is still a big question mark in her world—and his “gift” even more so. Dealing with a frustrating series of drive-by shootings has brought a three-year-old drive-by case to the forefront …

  Simon had hoped that his visions would have stopped, especially now that the police had solved the pedophile murders. No such luck. But these new visions are confusing, chaotic, and nonsensical. Unwilling to share yet more disjointed and meaningless information with Kate, he keeps it to himself. Until he sees a pattern and connects to a woman, … one who is suicidal.

  While Kate understands his physical and mental torment, she’s underwhelmed by the lack of detail in his latest visions—until she looks into another issue and finds out that the number of suicides are higher than normal, as in way higher …

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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, BC; Third Monday in July

  Detective Kate Morgan, a homicide detective for just over four months of her thirty-two years of life, walked slowly across the Lions Gate Bridge—officially known as First Narrows Bridge. Parked off to the side were several cruisers, their lights flashing in the gloomy light. It was not quite morning, and vestiges of the night still clouded the air around her. But the pair of ladies’ white three-inch-heeled pumps, placed carefully at the side of the railing of the bridge, shone with an eerie glow.

  It was a well-known fact that suicide victims who jumped off bridges often took off their shoes, placing them to the side, as if shoes couldn’t get wet. But nobody thought about their coats or anything else. Sometimes they left purses, keys, or wallets, anything to identify that they’d gone over the bridge, in an effort to help find closure for families and friends, if the body never surfaced.

  As Kate walked toward the group of police officers, standing and talking in a huddle, one turned to look at her and nodded. “Good morning, Detective.”

  “Morning, Slater,” she murmured, recognizing the officer from her earlier department, her gaze still on the woman’s pumps. “Did we find the body?”

  He nodded. “The divers are bringing her out now.”

  Kate stepped closer to the railing and looked over. “If she’d been any closer to the park, she would have hit the rocks first.”

  “Right,” he said. “Most of them jump from the middle of the bridge.”

  Kate looked out and saw that they were not much farther than the lions mounted on either side of the bridge, heading toward West Vancouver. “Depending on the force of her fall, she might easily have hit the rocks, just under the surface,” she murmured.

  “We’ll find out soon enough,” he said.

  “Any identification left with the shoes?”

  “Not that we know of.”

  Kate nodded. “Sure seems to be an awful lot of jumpers already.” She had done a quick search a few days ago, and the stats had stuck with her.

  “This year has been pretty tough on everybody.”

  “I know, but we’ve had what? A fifty percent increase in jumpers from last year?”

  Two men nodded. “A lot of businesses went under, and people are suffering financially, not to mention the mental health aspect.”

  She sighed. “And there’s never enough we can do for them either.”

  “Were you called in on t
his?”

  “No, I heard it on the news. I was already close by.”

  “Ah, that explains it. I’m surprised to see you here so fast.”

  She waited until everything was dealt with as much as they could on scene, while they waited on the coroner. At that point, she walked back to where she had parked up the hill. Not very many places to get out of the way of the normal heavy traffic, but she’d parked on a service road. She would have to go across the bridge in order to get back where she needed to go. But that was all right; it wasn’t a very long turnaround.

  She quickly drove across the bridge and turned around to head back into Vancouver. Instead of going to the office, she headed to False Creek area, to a small harbor café that should be open by now. She parked, got out, and walked, the brisk air hitting her senses, the saltwater breeze lifting her hair. She watched as the sun rose, its light shining on the city she loved so much.

  Picking up a coffee, she found a bench and sat. She had a morose feeling inside, once again confronted with the realization of just how many people willingly took their own lives because they felt that was better than any other option, unable to see a way out of whatever hell they were in. It made her sad, but it also made her angry.

  She’d never gotten to that point herself, but she’d gotten close, and she certainly could understand it. As she sat here, she recognized a man’s voice behind her, ordering coffee at the counter. She waited, knowing that he would come in her direction.

  Finally he stepped up beside her. “May I sit?”

  She nodded with a half smile. “Why not?”

  “I haven’t seen you in a few days.”

  “It’s been busy,” she said, with a wave of her hand.

  “Why are you here so early now?” Simon St. Laurant asked.

  “Why are you?” she replied, her eyes going wide.

  He smiled. “Deflecting a question with a question, huh?”

  “Are you a lawyer now?”

  “No, God help me,” he said. “That would not be what I would choose to do. Not in this lifetime.”

  “Neither would I,” she said. “In some ways it was simpler in the olden days. Guilty was guilty, and they were swiftly handled,” she said, shaking her head. “Now the lawyers get in on it, delaying justice, and criminals carry on with their lives, without ever being punished, filing one appeal after another.”

  “It doesn’t sound like you have much faith in the judiciary system.”

  “Oh, I have a lot of faith in it,” she said. “It’s the process that I struggle with sometimes.”

  He nodded slowly. “It’s got to be frustrating when you keep taking bad guys off the streets, only to see them there again, free to commit more crimes. Then it’s up to you to go back out and hunt them down once more.”

  She looked over at this man, someone she was struggling to keep at arm’s length. But the more she tried to do that, the less it worked. After all, she’d found her way to his corner of the world, hadn’t she? As if her body had a mind of its own. She sipped her coffee and studied him over the rim of her cup. “Why are you up so early?”

  “Couldn’t sleep,” he said. He spread his arms along the back of the bench, studying her. “Why are you?”

  She shrugged. “I was awake already and heard news on the scanner about a jumper.”

  He winced. “That’s always tough, isn’t it?” Then his gaze sharpened. “But you’re a homicide detective,” he said. “So surely suicides don’t come under your domain.”

  “All unattended deaths are investigated.”

  “So you just follow police scanners for fun? Don’t have enough cases now, so you have to go find new ones?”

  She laughed.

  “You’re just not ready to tell me.”

  She shrugged. “It’s probably nothing. I guess I’m wondering if there’s anything to be done for the mental health problems we have in town,” she murmured, giving him a partial answer.

  He looked over at her, then reached a hand across to cover one of hers. “You know that you can’t help everyone, right?”

  “Wasn’t planning on it. Yet I care about a lot of things,” she said, “and kids are number one.”

  “Missing kids, you mean.”

  She glared at him. She still couldn’t believe she had opened up enough to tell him about Timmy. Then, given Simon’s history, it had seemed like a good idea at the time.

  “That’s better,” he said, with a nod. “I was wondering what was going on that made you look so maudlin.”

  “I wasn’t,” she protested.

  “Were too.”

  “Was not,” she snapped back. He left it at that. After a moment, her shoulders eased. He was right. “I guess just seeing another jumper …” she said. “I mean, it’s like there’s one every day right now.”

  He looked startled at that. “Is it really that high?”

  “Not quite. If I were to count all the bridges on the Lower Mainland, it’s especially bad,” she said. “It seems much higher than normal.”

  “Well, last year was bad overall, and this year has been a pretty ugly one so far too.”

  “I know,” she said, “and I get that people are losing their loved ones, their businesses, their homes, plus their families are breaking up. We didn’t even need the pandemic for all that to happen, yet just so much else is going on all the time. The pressures of today’s world are immense, and handling it all seems to be a special skill set that a lot of people don’t have. And, all too often, I think drugs and other enabling issues help bring it all down too.”

  He shrugged. “And again, there’s only so much you can do.”

  “I know,” she said. “A whim sent me down there. I hadn’t been there at that wee hour of the morning in a long time.”

  “Why would you ever be in that area at that hour?” he asked in surprise.

  “When I was a teenager,” she said, “sometimes I would go sit on the bridge.” He sat back and stared. It wasn’t hard to understand what he was thinking … She shrugged. “I never really considered suicide,” she said, “but I did know several people who had completed the job, and it always shook me to realize that death was the best answer they saw. I’d sit there and ponder what the attraction was. That water is cold, dark, and often rough. What a way to go.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know.”

  “You didn’t know because I haven’t told you. I haven’t told you much,” she said, with a shrug. “It’s not like we know each other.”

  He snorted at that. “Knowing each other requires taking time to be with each other.”

  “You mean, not just screwing like minks when we’re together?”

  “Well, okay, that’s pretty damn nice too,” he said. “But getting to know each other, that’s a process that takes time.”

  “Well,” she said, “it’s also a process that requires I open up a little bit—and you too.”

  At that, his lips turned down, and she nodded. “Right,” she said, “not exactly your style either.”

  He frowned. “Maybe,” he said, then turned the subject away from him. “Was there anything different about this suicide scenario?”

  “No, not really,” Kate said. “She was pretty close to the shore and got caught up in some driftwood. So, instead of floating past or sinking, she was held right there for the divers.”

  “At least her family will get some closure and can lay her to rest,” he said.

  “True, yet it still makes me angry.”

  “Except anger isn’t the emotion I’m seeing on you right now,” he said. “It’s more what I would call defeated. As in, already too emotionally involved.”

  She shook her head. “I’m definitely not,” she said, with half a smile. “But maybe weary. I just turned in all the reports and follow-ups on the pedophile case, which was a long and difficult case.”

  “You solved it pretty damn fast, considering.”

  “It should have been solved a long time ago,”
she said, staring off into the distance. “So many more victims because it wasn’t.”

  “And again, not your fault. You weren’t even a detective then. What’s it been? Four months now?”

  She nodded slowly. “Four and a half.”

  “Well, you’ve already shaken things up in the department and earned a commendation for having done so well.”

  “Yeah, and I appreciate that,” she said, “but I wish instead that the kids had been helped.”

  “Don’t we all,” he said heavily.

  She smiled at him. “See? You’re no better.”

  “Hey, you’re the one who’s making me depressed this morning.”

  She laughed. “Well, I’m heading off to work anyway.”

  “Did you get any sleep last night?”

  “I did,” she said, “but it was a …” She shrugged. “It was a rough night.”

  He frowned, as she got up and walked away. “You could say goodbye, you know.”

  She reached up a hand and, without turning around, called out, “Bye.”

  She walked to her vehicle and then drove on to the station. She needed to shake off this funky mood, but just something bothered her about the last case and the final paperwork she’d had to hand in. The court cases would go on forever, since they had unearthed so many perverts who were involved in the pedophile ring. That was the good thing. It was a good thing, yet, at the same time, it was difficult because none of the bodies had been that of Kate’s long-missing brother. And even though Simon St. Laurant, a reluctant psychic, whose abilities had just blossomed in this thirty-seven-year-old developer and philanthropist, had mentioned the name Timothy from his visions, it had been a different child.

  There had never been any other mention of her brother Timmy, who had gone missing so many years ago from the schoolyard. He’d been supposedly under her care—though she herself was only seven at the time. Still, her mother had blamed Kate for the rest of her life, and it was just one of those things that Kate didn’t shake off easily. Having this last case involve a child with the same name had opened old wounds. She could ask Simon if he had any information on her brother, but could she accept whatever he might say? She struggled to understand and to believe the little he’d offered on the case as it was.