String of tears, p.1
String of Tears, page 1
String of Tears
A Psychic Visions Novel
Dale Mayer
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
About This Book
Complimentary Download
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
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Sneak Peek from Inked Forever
About Simon Says…
Author’s Note
Complimentary Download
About the Author
Copyright Page
About This Book
Jewel wakes up in the hospital, with no memory of what happened to her or no reason why she was found on the highway—dead. As reawakening goes, this one is brutal, but even more confusing is her instinctive grasping for a missing necklace around her neck. Had she been robbed, beaten, and dumped? If so, why? She has few friends and even fewer family members left to care, but, unlike his name, Hurricane walks into her hospital room and becomes a safe harbor for a world gone nuts.
Hurricane had been asked by Stefan to help Jewel and to take possession of a necklace, if it was deemed dangerous. Hurricane has seen a lot of dangerous and crazy things in his life, but Jewel’s current state is something new to him.
As the dangerous storm heightens around them, Hurricane’s task—keeping Jewel safe, as she tries to regain her memories and her sanity—slips even further away …
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KILL OR BE KILLED
Part of an elite SEAL team, Mason takes on the dangerous jobs no one else wants to do—or can do. When he’s on a mission, he’s focused and dedicated. When he’s not, he plays as hard as he fights.
Until he meets a woman he can’t have but can’t forget. Software developer Tesla lost her brother in combat and has no intention of getting close to someone else in the military. Determined to save other US soldiers from a similar fate, she’s created a program that could save lives. But other countries know about the program, and they won’t stop until they get it—and get her.
Time is running out. … For her. … For him. … For them …
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Chapter 1
Hurricane stepped out onto the deck of his Maine coastal home and watched as the Atlantic Ocean crashed over the beach. He loved it here; something about the storms electrified him. But then that was his specialty; it’s what he did. That he was a climatologist was something else again. He hadn’t fully utilized his education very much in the last ten years. He needed to help put out too many other electrical storms or energetic storms instead. And this last one had been a prime example—tarot cards that could kill. “What the hell?” he muttered. He shook his head.
He lifted his face into the wind and let it pour over him. When he heard Stefan’s voice in the back of his head, he smiled. “That was a hell of a journey you sent me on.”
But I knew you could handle it, he stated. Besides, you were already in New Orleans.
“Yep, and I was hoping to spend a couple days there,” he muttered. “Not turn around and bolt.”
You still can. I’m sure they would like to see you again.
“That Skylar is pretty amazing,” he noted.
You have no idea, Stefan muttered. The things she can do with the dead are something I’ve never seen before.
“Okay, now you’ve got me fascinated.”
I might have, he agreed, but we have another problem.
“What the hell is that?” he asked, with an eye roll. “You know that I thought all this stuff would help, but instead it seems like the energy just keeps getting crazier and crazier.”
You’re right. It does, and I’m not sure what’s going on with this one though.
“In what way?”
I think it concerns all your trips, collecting all these items and putting them in the museum.
“Yeah. What are you getting at?”
I have a jeweler, who has been putting a lot of emotions into the designs she makes, and, of course, that’s making her products very attractive.
“That’s smart of her. So what about it?”
She contacted me.
“About what?”
A string of pearls she’s trying to repair.
“Uh-oh. Don’t tell me. Teardrops?”
A whole string of them. Pearls are known to be the tears of the ocean.
“Sure, and?”
Every time she goes to repair this necklace, she gets visions of murders. One for every pearl.
He sucked in his breath. “Good God, are you serious?”
Yes, very serious, and I’ve done just enough surface digging to understand that an awful lot of energy is infused into these gems. The problem is, she seems to think that maybe whoever created this necklace had a matching bracelet, and he wasn’t quite done with the job.
“Who is this person, the jeweler you’re talking to?”
She lives in Maine, which is another reason for contacting you, since you’re right there. … Her name is Jewel.
“Jewel. Jewel. Jewel. I don’t think I know anybody by that name.”
No, but you’re likely to.
“Why is that?”
Because she just resurrected from the dead.
*
Jewel opened her eyes, the same panic choking her, as she bolted upright, swinging her arm against a bed rail. Machines beeped at her side, and a nurse came running.
“You’re fine. You’re fine,” she reassured her, “and we’re more than happy to have you awake.”
Jewel stared at the nurse in shock. “What happened?” she murmured.
“We don’t know everything,” she began, “but basically you died and came back.”
“I died?” Jewel asked in shock.
The nurse smiled. “Yes, but it’s fine. You’ll be just fine.” The nurse stared at her with a big grin and added, “You’ve been very, very lucky.”
Jewel nodded slowly, waited while the nurse checked everything, and then withdrew. Jewel wanted to ask a million questions, but, at the same time, she didn’t want to ask any. She had no idea what had happened. Whatever had put her in the hospital was a complete blank. Did she have an accident? Was she having surgery? She didn’t know.
She heard a man’s voice in the background, somewhere in the dark recesses of her brain, telling her, You better not say anything. You better not say anything. Or else.
She didn’t know what the “or else” meant, but she knew it was something important. Her fingers went to her throat, reaching for something that belonged there, something that was always there, a necklace. But not now. She looked around for it, but, of course, no personal belongings were allowed in the hospital. She kept clawing at her throat, prodding her memory to return. When the nurse returned, Jewel asked her, “My necklace, do you know where it is?”
The woman frowned. “Sorry, you didn’t have on a necklace.” She stopped and then calmly explained, “Honestly you didn’t have a stitch on. We don’t have ID for you. You didn’t have any clothing, nothing. Nobody knows what happened or how you came to be found at the front of the hospital, completely nude but not a mark on you.”
She stared at the nurse in shock. “My name is Jewel,” she stated. “And I really need to get back that necklace.”
The woman shrugged. “The doctor is on his way,” she said gently. “You can talk to him about it.” She held out a glass of water. “Here. Take a sip.”
Jewel immediately took one swallow of water, and then, as if her body suddenly realized what water was, she sucked back the entire glass.
The woman raised her eyebrows. “Well, that’s a good sign.”
Jewel nodded. “Did you say I didn’t have any clothes on?”
“You didn’t have anything on, but, at the same time,” she repeated, “you also didn’t have a mark on you, so we don’t know what happened.”
“Good God,” she murmured. She stared down at the hospital gown that covered her, and then she looked at her arms and the bruises all over her wrists and higher up. “If I didn’t have a mark on me,” she asked, “where did these come from?”
“Well, that’s just it,” the nurse added. “Bruises show up after any trauma but later on. We’re still trying to figure out what happened though. So, if you remember anything at all, it would be a really good thing,” she noted.
But Jewel just stared at her, shook her head, and said, “I can’t remember anything.”
Chapter 2
Jewel stared around the pristine white hospital room, wondering how she could push past the clouds in her brain and get answers for the doctor, who stood here staring at her. Once again, she shook her head very gently and repeated, “I have no idea what happened.” Her voice was no more than a murmur. Even that was hard to do.
His lips twitched, an
He let his voice trail off, and she knew he would say something about it being time to release her.
She pointed to her arms and asked, “What about the bruising?”
His frown deepened yet again. He almost gave a quick headshake, as if to say he had no clue. She’d already gotten that message loud and clear but figured it was worth a shot to ask him.
He sighed. “They all showed up after you were brought back to life. Bruises can take anywhere from an hour, mind you, to quite a few hours to show up,” he admitted. “But not usually forty-eight hours.”
She stared down at the bruises, wondering what possibly could have happened to cause this damage.
The doctor asked once again, “And you don’t remember, do you?”
No criticism tinged his tone, just exasperation, as if he wanted the answers and he wanted them now. This man was used to getting what he wanted and was stymied by the current situation.
Once again, she looked up at him and gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head. Just enough for him to acknowledge her lack of recall.
He sighed. “I’ll arrange for the paperwork to let you go then.” He smiled. “You may want to check in with your doctor in a little while.”
“Now, if only you could tell me who that doctor is,” she replied, with a humorous note.
Again he looked at his tablet. “Without a full name for you, we don’t have one in your file, don’t have much in your file.”
“No, of course not, but an address, right?”
Startled, he frowned at her. “You don’t know where you live?”
“I have some memories of it, and I think whatever happened to me happened there,” she replied. “I gather no next of kin is noted in my file either, right?” She looked like a deer caught in headlights, just waiting to be run over.
Once again, he slowly shook his head, clearly feeling sympathetic to her plight. “No, nothing,” he admitted. “I can release you into extra care, where we can have somebody look after you until you regain your memories, but that’s expensive. It’s a specialized program and not covered by insurance.”
She raised her hand to cut him off. “I’ll be fine,” she replied briskly. “I’ll head home, as soon as the nurse has the paperwork ready.”
“It’ll be ready as soon as I say you’re dismissed. Just go to the front desk,” he shared. “We’re a relatively small hospital, and people do multiple jobs here when needed.” Then he gave her an encouraging smile.
She hesitated, and his sharp gaze searched her face again. “What? Are you remembering something?”
Her lips twisted. “No, I’m not, except I was told I came in with no clothes on, and now that you’re releasing me, I still have no clue what happened, and I can’t leave here naked.”
He stared at her. “And again we’re back to the fact that you have nobody to help you, right?”
“I don’t think so.” She pondered the issue and then asked him, “I don’t suppose a Lost and Found is here, is there?”
A smile flashed on his face. “Absolutely there is. I’ll have the nurse take you there and help you with everything.” And, with that, he was gone.
If he took a certain amount of joy in being able to run as far and as fast as he could, she could hardly blame him. This wasn’t exactly your standard accident case, involving a victim with very obvious injuries. Instead Jewel was a complete anomaly to him, and she had no idea what had happened to her. She reached up once again, her hand at her neck, trying to figure out what had happened to the necklace, a necklace she couldn’t remember enough to describe.
Everything seemed plucked out of her brain in regard to it, except the one haunting memory. Vague and haunting. Important, she knew that much. She just didn’t know why.
When a nurse bustled in a little while later, she wore a bright smile. “So, the good news is you’re leaving.”
At that, Jewel just nodded and waited.
“More good news,” she added, as she held up a couple pieces of clothing. “Now these are definitely not high fashion, but I think they might work. Leggings are amazing, and somehow anybody can fit in them, especially when the material is stretchable,” She looked at her critically. “You’re pretty slim, but you are tall,” she noted, giving Jewel a once-over. “So these will probably work, but they might not come to your ankles, being short a little bit.”
Jewel smiled at that. “I appreciate anything. Going out nude didn’t seem like a great idea, but, hey, whatever it takes, right?”
The nurse gave a startled laugh. “No. We wouldn’t let that happen. Absolutely not.”
“If no other way, that’s just the way it would be,” she murmured.
The nurse looked at her, puzzled. “Are you sure that I can’t call someone to help you?”
At that, Jewel stared and shook her head. “Nobody I can remember.”
The other woman sighed. “I really hate to see you go out into the world like that, with only part of your memories and nobody to help you.”
“I don’t think I’ve had anybody to help for quite a while,” she shared, frowning, looking off in the distance. “But it’s all a distant memory, so I don’t know what memories I can trust and what I can’t.”
“That’s another problem,” the nurse agreed. “For a while your memories will seem suspect. You won’t know whether things are true or not. Something will trigger what seems like a perfect memory, and then something else will happen that seems to contradict it, and you won’t know what to think. I just want you to know that is normal.”
At that, she chuckled. “Great. That’ll be a fun experience.”
“You do need to see a doctor fairly soon and make sure those bruises heal.”
At that, Jewel slowly sat up and asked, “Did you happen to find any other clothing?”
The nurse winced. “No underclothes, but I do have a sweatshirt. It’s a men’s medium but not too big.”
“It’s fine.” Jewel gave a wave of her hand. “It covers the basics, so I sure won’t complain. I had no purse or anything, right?”
“No, nothing at all,” she confirmed. “No personal identifying marks either. If you didn’t know your name, we would have been hard-pressed to find your records.”
“But I do remember my name,” she stated. She smiled her thanks at the nurse, who quickly disappeared. Something about Jewel made everybody uncomfortable here, whether the lack of answers or her oddly calm demeanor throughout the whole ordeal, she didn’t know. But it seemed foolish to panic about something she couldn’t even understand. Besides, what good would it do?
Maybe the panic would hit when she got to a house she didn’t know or items in the house she didn’t recognize. Not knowing where to find anything would be frustrating. She knew something important happened here, and she figured the memories were just sitting in the back of her head, almost welling up, just waiting for something to make it overflow into her consciousness.
She grabbed the clothing and headed into the bathroom, where she quickly changed from the hospital gown into the leggings and sweatshirt the nurse had found for her. Such an odd thing to not wear underwear. She’d gone without a bra many times, or so she thought, but to not have underwear made for a very strange sensation of something being very off in her world. She wasn’t against the feeling; it just felt odd, the skin more sensitive, the bruising more painful, the fabric exacerbating everything. Yet her feet seemed happy to be shoeless.
But the sooner she could get to her home, the sooner she could start getting answers … and maybe her own clothing. Of course getting home would be her next issue, and it wasn’t the hospital’s problem. Jewel understood that, but how was she supposed to pay for a cab to get there? She had no phone, nothing. When she stepped out of the bathroom, she froze.
A man almost filled the doorway, both from side to side and from bottom to top.
She stared at him, wondering at the weird sensations circulating around her, almost analyzing and assessing. Something weird was definitely happening. She stared at him and bluntly asked, “Who are you?”
