by Dale Mayer
“I guess not, sir. I haven’t seen him since.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Well, he was pretty-damned worried about you when he came in to the hospital yesterday.”
“I think he was afraid that I might die on his watch.”
He shrugged and said, “Get yourself suited up, and we’ll see you at the media show.”
“Three-ring circus, you mean. That’s all it is,” she said.
“Its politics,” he said, his voice hardening. “And you will be there. Both you and Rodney.”
She shrugged and then winced because the last thing she should do is move that shoulder.
He laughed at her. “See there? If you weren’t so stubborn,” he said, “you’d be home in bed.”
“Fuck that,” she said. “An awful lot needs to be settled up in this case yet. So much paper to fill out, reports to write …”
“There is,” he said. “Not the least of which is that we’ve pulled in seven others from that chat room.”
“Do the names match up with the notebook?”
“They do, indeed,” he said with a fat grin, “and make sure that you’re there.”
She glared at him. “But, sir—”
He returned the glare. “No,” he said. “Dismissed.”
She turned and walked out. She didn’t bother going to her desk, just headed outside to the front of the police station. She stood here for a long moment, watching the hustle and bustle of the street and the traffic, something inside her calming down. This was her city. Her streets. And these were her people. She would do her damnedest to look after them. Even when they didn’t want her to. But the children in the hospital really broke her heart.
With that thought, she turned and her feet headed in the direction of the hospital all on their own. As she walked in, she found the family of the latest boy they’d found, Leonard. Was Simon here too? She saw him, happy at first, then remembered it was his ex-fiancée’s nephew. She stiffened and glared at him. He glared right back.
But the aunt had absolutely no problem showing her emotions. She raced over and tried to hug Kate, but, when Caitlin saw the shoulder sling, she stopped and smiled. “I really just want to say, Thank you for finding him.”
Kate smiled and nodded. “Hopefully he’ll get some help and recover from this without too much trauma.” She didn’t even go into what he might have gone through. Nobody wanted to go into that. She quickly escaped and headed up to the little girl’s room. As she arrived, grateful to see no greedy group of people gathered around, a young woman sat off to the side of the hospital bed. Kate looked at her and asked, “And who are you?”
“I’m her mother,” she said, tears in her eyes.
At that, Kate stopped and stared. “Verified by DNA?”
She nodded and whispered, “Yes. She’s my child. I was only seventeen when I got pregnant. At the hospital my parents told me that she’d died, but apparently they gave her to my sister for some damn reason, who then passed her on to someone else,” she said. “But I’m here now, and I’m much older. I’m stable and have nothing to do with my parents. I’ve grown up a lot, and nothing is more important than my little girl.”
Kate looked at the little girl and said, “Let’s hope that the rest of the years of her life are a whole lot easier than the first few she’s had so far.”
The mother had her jaw locked down, a small tic playing on her face. She nodded and said, “I am committed to making sure of that,” she said. “My family will have nothing more to do with her.”
“Good,” she said. “Because, somewhere in the middle of all that, she ended up on the street and then got sold into this nasty life.”
“That wasn’t my fault,” the mother said, standing up determinedly.
“I know that,” Kate said, noticing the shining wedding ring on her hand. “Your husband?”
“He’s talking to the doctors right now,” she said. “We want to know how long before we can take her home.”
“And is he on board with this little girl?”
“Very much so,” she said, with a loving smile. “I’m not sure I can even have any more children,” she said. “Giving birth to Samantha here was really hard.”
“Well, let’s hope you realize what a gift you have.”
“Like I said, Detective, I don’t have anything to do with my parents anymore,” she said. “This is my life, and I will protect my child.”
With those words, feeling much better, Kate stepped out of that room. Four children alive, several dead, and God only knows how many more to be found in this case. She stepped into the little boy’s room to see him sitting up and eating some Jell-O. She laughed at him because his face was covered in green goo. More food was going into his face than his mouth. But his mother sat beside him, laughing. They both looked up when Kate came in, and the mother immediately bounced up, took one look at her injured shoulder, and cried out.
Kate hushed her. “It’s fine,” she said. “I’m fine.” She walked to the opposite side of the bed. “I had to stop in and see my favorite patient.” The little boy reached up his arms, and she winced, knowing this would hurt her arm for sure.
“Really?” But she came closer and, wrapping her good arm behind him, tucked him up close, grabbing both of his dirty hands in hers. She kissed him on the cheek and rocked him gently, subtly checking the inside of his left wrist. The mark was there.
The mother had tears in her eyes. “He’s acting so normal,” she whispered to Kate.
“A child’s mind is a wonderful thing,” Kate said. “Just love him, take care of him.”
“I will,” she said, “and thank you.”
With tears pooling in her eyes and uncharacteristic emotions flooding her heart, Kate quickly made her escape back outside. When she walked outside the front entrance to the hospital, a Porsche pulled up in front. As she stopped and stared, Simon hopped out, complete with his own sling, leaned over the hood, and asked, “Can I buy you lunch?”
She frowned at him.
He frowned right back. “I know. It’s not a good idea.”
“It’s a terrible idea,” she said.
He nodded. “So, lunch it is. Come on. Let’s go.”
She hesitated and then shook off her doubts. As she got in, she said, “I have to be at the police station at three.”
“Wow, try not to sound so eager,” he said.
“I’m not,” she said. “I’m supposed to get some award.” She said it in such a grudgingly harsh tone of voice that he laughed really hard, which made her smile. They were still grinning as they headed out of the parking lot. A whole lot of worse things she could be doing with her day. She looked over at Simon and said, “You know that it’s still a bad idea.”
“I know,” he said, “but I figured that we’ve made it this far, so we might as well see what comes next.”
She had to admit there was something to his logic. She had no idea what came next, but she knew what had come so far—and what was coming next—looked to be a damn good deal.
This concludes Book 1 of Kate Morgan: Simon Says… Hide.
Read about Simon Says… Jump: Kate Morgan, Book 2
Simon Says… Jump: Kate Morgan (Book #2)
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, esp
ecially 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 …
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 this?”
“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 at her in shock. It wasn’t hard to understand what he was thinking…
Find Book 2 here!
To find out more visit Dale Mayer’s website.
Author’s Note
Thank you for reading Simon Says… Hide: Kate Morgan, Book 1! If you enjoyed the book, please take a moment and leave a short review here.
Dear reader,
I love to hear from readers, and you can contact me at my website: www.dalemayer.com or at my Facebook author page. To be informed of new releases and special offers, sign up for my newsletter or follow me on BookBub. And if you are interested in joining Dale Mayer’s Reader Group, here is the Facebook sign up page.
Cheers,
Dale Mayer
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About the Author
Dale Mayer is a USA Today best-selling author, best known for her SEALs military romances, her Psychic Visions series, and her Lovely Lethal Garden cozy series. Her contemporary romances are raw and full of passion and emotion (Broken But … Mending series). Her thrillers will keep you guessing (By Death series), and her romantic comedies will keep you giggling (It’s a Dog’s Life, a stand-alone novella; and the Broken Protocols series, starring Charming Marvin, the cat).
