String of tears, p.29
String of Tears,
p.29
He pulled her tight and whispered, “No, this is definitely an us. Open your mind, and you can see for yourself whether it is for real.”
She crinkled her brows, then heard a little knock on a mental door. Instinctively she opened it, and there he was, standing without clothes, without physical form, but only in energy. She gasped in joy and kissed him in both forms. “It really is real, isn’t it?”
“It really is,” he murmured. “Now remember that bed rest thing.”
“Oh, I do.” She giggled. “Can we really do it in this form too?”
“Let’s find out,” he whispered. As he lowered his head and kissed Jewel, he swung her up in his arms, carried her over to the very physical bed and proceeded to make love to her until she was crying out in joy.
Just as he was ready to take the last plunge, he whispered, “Link.”
She opened the door and whispered, “I’m already here.”
“So am I.”
As he plunged one more time deep into the soft folds of her body, he felt his world coalesce around him. It didn’t explode, but instead it united all the pieces of her that he had experienced as shattered, still pulling herself together again into one semblance of wholeness, and then, surrounded with his own energy, she whispered, “I love you.”
This concludes Book 22 of Psychic Visions: String of Tears.
Read a sneak peek from Inked Forever: Psychic Visions, Book 23
Inked Forever: Psychic Visions (Book #23)
Tasmin’s business isn’t for everyone. Yet she recognizes the value she offers for grieving families. Still, the subject isn’t something most people are willing to talk about. However, over time, her business has grown through word of mouth—much to the horror of her family.
Until a detective walks in, inquiring about a piece that had been stolen overnight. This is the first inkling she has that someone is out to destroy her business. Unfortunately it won’t be the last …
Detective Hanson MacGyver isn’t sure what to make of Tasmin, yet he understands the need for licensed morticians. However, how she got into the process of preserving tattoos for grieving family and friends is something he has never seen before and isn’t comfortable with. Live and let live works for him as a motto, but, when her works in progress start showing up in public locations and not in a good way, he knows they have someone who hates what she is doing … or hates the owners of the tattoos.
Something’s off about the whole mess. And that’s just on the surface. When both Tasmin and Hanson dig deeper, a whole lot more is going on underneath. And none of it is normal or nice …
Tasmin opened up the shop door, twisting the sign to Open. Then she propped the door wide open to let out some of the formaldehyde fumes, turned on the lights, and headed to the back room, where she put on the coffeepot. With that dripping she rinsed a cup and waited for the pot to fill before she filled her cup. When she turned back again, a man, a huge presence, filled the room. Yet she felt no fear.
He stared at her and asked, “Tasmin Rhone?”
“Yes, that’s me.” She walked toward him with a cup in her hand. “What can I do for you?”
“I understand you run a very unique business.”
She snorted at that. “Yeah, something I fell into.”
He hesitated and then asked, “I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me how?”
“No, not really. What are you, a reporter?” Such disgust filled her voice that she immediately tried to change her tone. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it quite that way.”
“I’m not a reporter. I’m a cop.”
At that, she froze, looked up at him, and frowned. “I have a business license, and everything is in order. Even my taxes are paid.”
He held up a hand. “That’s not why I’m here.”
“Sure,” she quipped. “In my experience, cops don’t usually come by for any good reasons.”
He relaxed slightly. “That may be, but I’m not trying to make your life more difficult. However, I do have a few questions for you.”
“Yeah, about what?”
He hesitated and then added, “One of the pieces that you’re preserving.”
She groaned. “Look. A licensed doctor did the cuttings. I have all the paperwork, including the legal stuff,” she stated. “Man, I have more paperwork than you can shake a stick at,” she declared, her tone somewhere between mildly irritated and pissed. “It’s all legal, I assure you. Who is it you’re talking about?” She looked around. “I have quite a few cuttings here. As I told you, I keep a lawyer on tap to help me with this.”
“I get that,” he replied, then looked at one of the framed pieces. “That’s your uncle, isn’t it?”
“I hate the way you say that,” she admitted. “That is a piece of my uncle’s artwork, yes,” she stated cautiously.
“Right.” The cop turned and looked at a couple others on the wall. “Have you ever had any bad press over this?”
“Lots,” she answered succinctly. “People don’t want to see tattoo preservation as an art form.”
“It is very personal,” he noted, looking at her, “and it crosses all kinds of boundaries that make people uneasy.”
“Yes, I get that, but what does that have to do with you?” He hesitated. She crossed her arms, then took a sip of her coffee, her eyes watchful.
“Has anybody tried to stop you from doing this?”
She shrugged. “Not really. Most people don’t know all the details, except for those interested in having their ink preserved.”
He nodded. “So there have been no attacks on your shop or anything like that?”
“No. Why?” she asked curiously. She looked around and frowned. “I mean, everything seemed normal when I opened this morning, but I haven’t really had a chance to get started. This is my first cup of coffee since I was a little late coming in, but now you’ve got me worried.”
“Could you take a look around, please?”
She stared at him for a moment, then slowly nodded. “I gather you won’t tell me anything until we get that far.”
“No, it would be nice if I could clear something up first.”
She put down her coffee cup and glared at him but walked around, checking to make sure everything was as it should be. Then she headed to the backroom, to her workshop.
When she got into the workshop, she flicked on all the lights, looked around, and said, “It looks okay in here.”
“What about artwork?” he asked.
“I’ve got four pieces in progress right now,” she stated, as she turned to look at the pieces she had saved.
“I’ve got two that are here.” She pointed them out. “Then I’ve got another one in the drying room.”
She walked into the drying room, frowned, and look back at him. “That one’s missing.”
“Missing?”
“Yes,” she cried out as the realization really hit her. “Oh my God, it’s missing-missing.” She frantically went through the shop. Then she turned slowly, looked at him and asked, “You knew it wouldn’t be here, didn’t you?”
He hesitated.
“Stop,” she cried out. “I don’t know what’s going on, and I don’t know what this has to do with you. I don’t know anything about it, but I’m missing a piece that matters a lot to somebody, and I will wind up in a shitstorm if I don’t find it.”
“I think I can help you with finding it,” he said, “but it might have been damaged.”
She stared at him, then he pulled out his phone and showed her an image of a beautiful tattoo.
She nodded. “Yes, that’s it,” she cried out in relief. Then she looked at him in shock. “What do you mean, damaged? How did you get it?”
“It was found in one of the fountains downtown,” he explained, “stretched out and nailed into the bottom of the fountain.”
She stared across the room, her bottom lip trembling, her gut twisting at the image. Ever-so-slowly afraid she’d break and rage at him, she whispered, “What?”
He nodded slowly. “Somebody decided that preserving the art was the right thing to do, but private it was not,” he noted, “and he put it out for public display. Do you want to tell me who this artwork belongs to?”
She swallowed hard. “A model, a beautiful model who ended up with cancer and died twelve days ago. I got the legalities taken care of on behalf of her family, with all the paperwork, and the surgeon cut the tattoo off her back, and it was sent to me to preserve for her family.”
He nodded. “So, do you have any explanation as to how it went from your shop to a fountain where this model’s tattoo is now on display for the rest of the world to see?”
Find Book 23 here!
To find out more visit Dale Mayer’s website.
Simon Says…: Kate Morgan (Book #1)
Welcome to a new thriller series from USA Today Best-Selling Author Dale Mayer. Set in Vancouver, BC, the team of Detective Kate Morgan and Simon St. Laurant, an unwilling psychic, marries all the elements of Dale’s work that you’ve come to love, plus so much more.
Detective Kate Morgan, newly promoted to the Vancouver PD Homicide Department, stands for the victims in her world. She was once a victim herself, just as her mother had been a victim, and then her brother—an unsolved missing child’s case—was yet another victim. She can’t stand those who take advantage of others, and the worst ones are those who prey on the hopes of desperate people to line their own pockets.
So, when she finds a connection between more than a half-dozen cold cases to a current case, where a child’s life hangs in the balance, Kate would make a deal with the devil himself to find the culprit and to save the child.
Simon St. Laurant’s grandmother had the Sight and had warned him that, once he used it, he could never walk away. Until now, her caution had made it easy to avoid that first step. But, when nightmares of his own past are triggered, Simon can’t stand back and watch child after child be abused. Not without offering his help to those chasing the monsters.
Even if it means dealing with the cranky and critical Detective Kate Morgan …
Find Simon Says… Hide here!
To find out more visit Dale Mayer’s website.
Author’s Note
Thank you for reading String of Tears: Psychic Visions, Book 22! If you enjoyed the book, please take a moment and leave a short review.
Dear reader,
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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, Hathaway House series). Her thrillers will keep you guessing (Kate Morgan, 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).
Dale honors the stories that come to her—and some of them are crazy, break all the rules and cross multiple genres!
To go with her fiction, she also writes nonfiction in many different fields, with books available on résumé writing, companion gardening, and the US mortgage system. All her books are available in print and ebook format.
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STRING OF TEARS
Beverly Dale Mayer
Valley Publishing Ltd.
Copyright © 2022
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ISBN-13: 978-1-773367-16-3
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