Private Eye: A Tiger’s Eye Mystery (9 page)

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
.”

W
hen 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 acquired 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.

T
he 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.

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:

S
o now I
had a date and a new car. Maybe I should get shot more often.

R
espectfully Submitted
,

Tiger’s Eye Investigations

W
hen 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.

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!

T
hank 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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A
nd 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.

A
lyssa 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).

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