Secrets that Simmer

Secrets that Simmer

(Urban Dwellers #2)

By Ivy Sinclair

Copyright 2016 Shadow Creek Press

Cover design by Aria Tan

eBook edition, License notes

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“
Claws of Shame
is the number one title on the Copper City Times and USA Today bestseller lists! You made it to the top again!” The tinny voice coming out of the speakerphone was still larger than life. Not unlike the woman attached to it. Tony Atwood stared at the speakerphone and imagined he could see his agent’s face there.

Paula Larson was one of the top agents in Copper City. She represented only the top non-fiction authors in the country. She had an uncanny knack for being able to spot talent, and she bragged about it every opportunity she got. Of course, it had been Paula’s over-the-top, exuberant confidence that had made Tony want to sign with her. He understood how to navigate larger-than-life egos. More than one person in his life had told him that he was the same way.

“Well, that is great news,” he said neutrally. In all reality, it was great that his book had hit the bestseller lists again. It was his third straight release that went straight to the top of the charts. He knew that he should be thrilled. He stared at the bottle of champagne that was waiting on the sidebar across the room from him that had come special delivery from Paula. She knew how to work her clients to keep them happy. It was what made her such a good agent.

“You better start working on the next one. The fans are ravenous,” Paula said. “My office has fielded at least two dozen marriage proposals today. It’s crazy. You are a nonfiction author, and women act like you’re a rock star. You make my job easy, kid.”

At that, Tony had to chuckle. Paula might act as if it was a bother getting Tony’s fan mail, but secretly he knew she was thrilled. If he was successful, she was successful.

He knew that part of the infamy of his reputation had to do with his family. Another piece of it had to do with the fact that he was part of a trio of men who were frequently featured in the media for different reasons. He liked to think that the biggest chunk, of course, had to do with his own charismatic personality, though. “Well, are any of them from attractive, yet intelligent women?”

“This isn’t a dating service, Tony. Stop wasting your time hiring escorts that are half your age and find yourself a nice girl to settle down with. You’re not getting any younger,” Paula said. She said it like she was 80 years old. Paula was actually just slightly older than Tony, and she was a looker herself. If he was attracted to someone exactly like himself of the opposite gender, he and Paula would’ve been a perfect match. That was probably another reason that he had hired her, but was also the reason he’d never date her.

“Thanks for the good news, Paula,” he said. He was eager to get off the phone now. It wasn’t as if Paula was much of a chatter anyways, but he had some thinking to do. “I’ll call you in a week or so. I should have the outline for the next story by then.”

He and Paula said their goodbyes, and he hung up. He slowly walked across the room and opened the bottle of champagne. He looked around him. He knew that he could’ve gone to the club, and Eric and Kyle, his two close friends and the rest of the trio of the Urban Dwellers, would have gladly celebrated his success with him. That was what he had done for the last two books. But this time felt different. There was something about publishing this particular book and achieving this success that left him feeling restless.

He walked over to the bay of windows that overlooked Copper City. He had insisted on an office on the top floor of one of the tallest buildings in downtown. As he looked across the sea of skyscrapers, he knew that the only one that was taller was the building that housed Carmichael Industries. He and Eric had a kind of merry competition about who sat on top of their world. It was the same as it had always been. He and Eric were by far the most competitive with each other, while Kyle had always observed quietly from the sidelines. It was a strange relationship that had been built on an event that they’d never forget but would never overtly discuss again.

He knew that was what was probably itching at him. The book had been based on a real-life case where he had provided expert testimony. All of his books were based on interesting cases that he felt showcased his work and expertise.

Tony was a well-known expert in shifter psychological behavior. It had been the core of his studies, and he had made a special major of it at Harvard. Given the connections that he had through his father, he quickly shot to the top of the rankings. He was sought after in every high profile trial that had to do with a shifter in the world. He only took on certain cases and only of a certain variety. His interest focused on shifters who were accused of murder, and primarily on shifter men who killed human women. He studied the cases, and he studied the men involved because he was looking for something. About three years ago, he had decided that in order to continue to increase his fee and interest in funding his work, it made sense for him to write a book.

Tony’s first two bestsellers had to do with serial killers who had murdered members of their immediate families. He was the star witness for the defense, and, in both instances, his testimony ensured an acquittal, although there was a stipulation that had required the men to go into therapy for their conditions.

That was something that unsettled a lot of people about Tony. He took a critical eye to the whole mentality of what it meant to be a shifter living in a world that was dominated by humans. Through his work, he had identified several new theories and behavioral diagnoses that were shifter-specific. His research was the foundation for a whole new spectrum within the psychology field. He knew that there were still many people in the world, especially practicing psychologists, psychiatrists, and doctors who thought he was full of shit. That was why he had to so methodically back everything up with research.

The case for the last book, though, had been different. It dealt with serial killer Michael Markham. Michael Markham’s name would go down in the annals of history as probably the deadliest serial killer of the century. It was determined that he had killed over three dozen women before he was apprehended, and, as it turned out, he happened to be a panther shifter. The prosecution argued that the fact that he was a shifter had nothing to do with his desire to kill. They said that he was a psychopath from day one. If anything, his shifter heritage did nothing but amp those behaviors up to an extreme.

Tony’s arguments, that had sat at the core of the defense’s case, was that it should be viewed as exactly the opposite. In his evaluation, Markham was a panther shifter who had never completed the transition to full shifter. It was rare but possible. Therefore, he was a man caught between two worlds.

Markham testified that he had huge gaps in his memories and no recollection of any of the murders that he had been accused of.  Tony had corroborated that Markham was suffering from extensive memory loss brought on by the fact that he had a severe chemical imbalance due to his inability to phase. There was no way that he could make clear and logical decisions when his body’s physiological make-up was so askew.

Markham had gotten off with a sentence of temporary insanity. It had been a huge coup for Tony, and he was fielding more inquiries then ever from pharmaceutical companies and even government entities interested in funding his further research. But writing the book and delving deep into the dark pit of Markham’s psyche had taken everything out of him. He wasn’t so naive as to not recognize that was likely due to a similar parallel in his own life at a time when he hadn’t been that different from Michael Markham.

He shook those thoughts away. He was nothing like Markham. If he repeated it enough, he thought for sure someday he’d believe it. He needed to do something different. The doctor inside of him prescribed getting drunk and getting laid.

“Sitting here alone isn’t going to help you with the second part of that,” he said to the glass in his hand. A night with a beautiful woman in his bed seemed like just the ticket. On that note, he knew that he was going to head to the club after all. It was still early, though, and he wondered if his friends were even going to be there.

Kyle had recently found his mate and spent less time in the club now that he had turned over operations to their new club manager. Eric was out of town but was due back that evening. Tony felt restless, and he knew what he wanted to do then. It had been several weeks since he had let his wolf run free.

“I want to go out to the park,” he said in a text to his security guard.

The text quickly came back that they would be ready for him as soon as he came down. Tony needed to stretch his legs. It’d been far too long. The liquor and the women could wait.

Maggie O’Hara was beat. It had been the longest week of her life. That probably wasn’t true, but it surely felt like it. It had been one brutal day after another in the longest trial that she could remember in recent history. Now that she was starting to make a name for herself in the DA’s office, she was being assigned more cases than ever. She thought occasionally about moving into private practice, but she knew there were so many people who needed her help who couldn’t afford expensive law firms. She didn’t want to have to be the attorney that turned away a case because someone couldn’t afford her services. So she still worked for the DA’s office in service to her city and was hopefully looking forward to a promotion in her future.

Her assistant, Daniel, popped his head into her office. He looked at his watch. “C’mon, Maggie. It’s 9 o’clock. It’s a Friday night. You should be out there in the world having fun, not stuck in here in an office the size of a broom closet.”

Maggie shook her head, pointing at the stacks of files on her desk. “I have all of this that I need to review this weekend, and I need to practice my closing argument. I’m going first on Monday, and it has to be perfect.” Maggie was nothing if not a perfectionist in her life. But that also meant that she worked obscenely long hours and had no social life. Plus, even if she did want to go out on the town, she had no idea of where she would go.

“I heard there’s a new band playing over at the Urban Dwellers tonight. You want to come with me?” Daniel offered.

“I hardly think I would be welcome at Urban Dwellers,” Maggie said with a long sigh. That was true. Her most recent series of cases had all involved shifters as the defendants, and Maggie was on a winning streak. She knew that that hadn’t endeared her to the shifter community. In fact, the press was starting to call her the Shifter Killer after several of the defendants’ sentences were the death penalty. It was an unflattering label for an assistant DA if there ever was one.

In a recent article, a very brave or very stupid reporter had apparently called up Eric Carmichael, one of the three shifter clan leaders in Copper City, and asked him what he thought of Maggie’s recent string of success in taking down shifters. Apparently, Eric’s comment wasn’t printable. It was common knowledge that Eric, Tony Atwood, and the Urban Dwellers alpha, Kyle Frost, were all regulars at their club. The last thing Maggie wanted to do was run into one of those men.

“Nobody would even know who you were,” Daniel said, waving his hand dismissively.

She wasn’t quite sure if she was supposed to be offended or appreciate the remark. “I’m pretty sure everybody in Copper City saw the interview on Tuesday night.” That had been the media interview after her last round of cross-examination of a key defense witness. The local TV station had asked for a few minutes of her time as she was leaving the courthouse, and she had reluctantly agreed. Her manager Jack, the DA, had told her that she needed to start getting comfortable in front of the cameras if she ever wanted to get promoted. So she had agreed to the interview and had been less than thrilled with the results.

The cuts of the interview that the TV station had chosen to air made her look like a bumbling bigot against shifters. It was an unfortunate lesson that unless she had clear, succinct answers, she was better off not saying anything at all.

She had started to get threatening letters and emails from all over the city complaining about the fact that a public servant was so blatantly prejudiced. Nothing could be further from the truth. Maggie just didn’t happen to have cases landing in her lap that weren’t against shifters. Plus, she believed in justice and ensuring that someone who had committed a crime should be appropriately punished for it. She didn’t care what species they were. If someone had broken the law, she would take them down.

“Go on, Daniel. I have work to do,” she said. She waved again at all of the paperwork on her desk. She saw Daniel’s sympathetic nod and noted that his expression was one of pity.

She sat back in her chair and stretched and rolled her neck from side to side. She couldn’t remember the last time she had stood up. She did so then, and she felt her legs were sore. She was thirty-two years old. She was far too young to have those kinds of aches and pains, but she knew it came from sitting at a desk all day long. Her only respite was when she would go to the gym three times a week. She ran like a mofo on those days. She clocked ten miles, and then she would go to work. It was the only extravagance of self-indulgence that she allowed herself in her life.

She was trying to sort through the papers to get them back in order when she heard a knock on her door. She looked up, intending to say something smart to Daniel so he’d leave her alone already, when she realized there was a man standing there in a courier outfit. She looked at her watch. It was almost 9:30 at night. She had never gotten a delivery that late. The guy looked at her with a questioning look and then back down at the envelope in his hand. “I’m looking for Maggie O’Hara?”

Maggie walked over to him and stuck out her hand. She figured it must be the file that she had requested from City Hall on her latest case. “You found her.”

The courier looked relieved. “Oh, great. I was so afraid I wasn’t going to be able to deliver this till tomorrow, and I planned to go out of town this weekend.”

Maggie gave him an indulgent smile, and she signed her name on the dotted line of the delivery log. There was a part of her that wished she was going out of town and getting away too. She took the envelope over to her desk and threw it in the corner, on top of a stack of files that she was planning to take home with her. Then she looked out the window and up at the skyscrapers towering above her. She saw the cabs fly by on the street, and she thought about all the people in them who were off to different places living their busy lives. Maggie was single and lived alone with only her cat to keep her company. Daniel said that she was in danger of becoming a crazy old cat lady. She thought that he might not be far from the truth. But the fact of the matter was she didn’t have time to date. In fact, her last attempt at a relationship had been a complete and utter disaster. It was better that she was alone.

She arched her back and heard several cracks and pops as her spine protested the movement. Although there were still mountains of paperwork left to review in front of her, she decided it would be better to look it over at home over a glass of wine. She swept the paperwork into as neat of piles as she could and stuffed them into her overflowing briefcase. If she was lucky, she’d be able to make it home by the time The Tonight Show started. Then she figured she’d order some Chinese take-out from the restaurant down the street, and then she could dig in again for the rest of the weekend.

Forty-five minutes later, Maggie was in her version of heaven. She was in her comfortable pajamas sitting on the couch, relaxing with a Chinese box take-out box brimming with Mongolian beef in her lap. The TV was on, and she watched the popular late-night show host as he interviewed an up-and-coming movie star. She had given herself a break before she looked at the rest of her information, telling herself she needed to stay up to date on current events. She had just opened up the first file when she heard the host say a name that was familiar to her. She looked up in surprise.

“And now I’d like to welcome Mr. Anthony Atwood, Copper City Times and USA Today best-selling author of crime novels and the recent winner of the 2017 Neilsen Medical Research award.”

Maggie’s eyes narrowed at the TV. The host hadn’t mentioned anything about Tony’s affiliation to the Urban Dwellers, which was odd. It didn’t matter. There was only one case in recent memory that she had lost. It had been a pretty small case all things considered, but she had been convinced that the guy was guilty. Unfortunately for her, the defense had deep pockets, and they had secured Anthony Atwood to give expert testimony on the defendant’s state of mind at the time of the crime. She remembered how he had watched her with a slight look of boredom on his face during her cross-examination of him. The members of the jury, even the men, but especially the women, sat in the jury box and had hung on his every word while clearly ogling the handsome man.

Maggie wasn’t immune to Tony’s good looks. It was just who he was and what he represented that really rubbed her the wrong way. He had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. His father was a popular politician, and he grew up rich and privileged. Why he had ever settled on a career as a medical researcher who specialized in expert defense testimony and writing crime novels, she had no idea. He probably could’ve become a politician himself. He had the good looks and the charisma and the charm. It had been because of Anthony’s testimony that she had lost her case. She was convinced of it. So she had a slight chip on her shoulder when it came to him. There was a part of her that couldn’t wait until she ran into him again in the courtroom. Next time, she would be ready, and she would take him down.

“I’m going to take you down,” she threatened to the image on the screen, pointing at him with her chopsticks. Now that she had cleared the air on that, she allowed herself to look a little bit further at the man and study him. There was no doubt that he was handsome. He was wearing a designer suit that fit every part of his body. What she remembered when he walked into the courtroom that day was that he was tall. So tall. But then again, everybody was tall compared to Maggie. She barely dwarfed five-foot one. He had stridden into the room with a confidence that she would find hard to mimic. When he sat in the witness box, he acted as if he owned it. His confidence had unsettled her, and that had nothing to do with the feelings of a rush of warmth that she felt in her core when she looked at him. He was the most attractive man she’d ever seen.

She stuck the chopsticks back in the box and snarled at the screen. She didn’t like showing any weakness in front of her enemies, and she definitely considered Tony the enemy. He probably didn’t even remember that she existed. She would barely have registered as a blip in his world. That thought made her snarl too. She turned the TV off. She didn’t want to look at his handsome face anymore. Even though she knew that it was burned into her memory anyways, and she would probably do something a little bit later with a device in the drawer next to her bed that she would regret in the morning. But hell, it had been months since she’d had sex, and there was something about Tony Atwood that revved her motor. She’d make an exception.

Maggie picked up her briefcase and started to spread all of the papers on the coffee table in front of her. She sighed at the mountain of work that she saw quickly accumulate there. She had to be flawless in the execution of her closing argument on Monday morning. It was a tough case, and she was concerned that she was going to lose it if she wasn’t absolutely at the top of her game. She pushed all thoughts of Tony aside. Those were musings for another day, or perhaps later that evening, depending on how she felt.

She caught sight of the envelope that had been delivered to her right before she left the office sticking out from between two of the files. There was one fact that she needed to cross reference for her closing argument, and she was grateful that the file had arrived before she left the office for the weekend. It would be one less thing that she had to worry about. She picked up the envelope and opened it. It wasn’t a case file but a few sheets of paper stapled together. She frowned as she looked at it. She had asked for a case file. There was an index card that was attached to the front of the papers. Her frown deepened. There was a photo of a face cut out and glued to the index card. It was a face she had most recently seen on the screen of the TV. Tony Atwood.

There was a piece of lined notebook paper sitting at the front. The rest of the pieces of paper appeared to be a typed police report. There were only two typed lines on the front page.

Cold case, Virginia.  1999

Good luck.

She looked at the note in confusion. She wasn’t working on a case from Virginia in 1999. She slowly started to flip through the paperwork. It was a report of a suspected homicide in a quarry. The quarry’s location was listed as outside the town of Croftsborrow, Virginia. Maggie knew the name of the town by reputation. On the outskirts was a very expensive, very exclusive boarding school, St. Ignacious Preparatory, that catered to the rich and famous. That was when she realized why Tony’s picture had been included.

She grabbed her laptop and did a quick Google search on Tony’s name. The first link at the top of the search results was his Wikipedia page. She clicked on it and scanned his bio details. She was right. He had attended St. Ignacious from 1996 to 1999. He had been there when the event in the report was said to have happened.

She wasn’t quite sure what she was supposed to make of it. She sat it down in front of her. Then she grabbed the envelope and examined the outside to try to discern where it had come from.

There was no identifying information anywhere on the envelope. It simply said her name and her office address. She had no idea why someone would have sent the report to her or what she was supposed to do with it.

She picked up the picture on the index card and stared at it. It seemed that if she wanted to understand what was in the report, she had a big clue on where to go to find out.