Merciless games, p.1
Merciless Games, page 1
Merciless Games
Asha Kade Private Detective Mystery Thriller
Tikiri Herath
The Red Heeled Rebels Universe
The Red Heeled Rebels universe of mystery thrillers, featuring your favorite kick-ass female characters.
Tanya Stone FBI K9 Mystery Thrillers
Thriller series starring Red Heeled Rebel and FBI Special Agent Tanya Stone, and her loyal German Shepherd K9, Max. These are serial killer thrillers set in Black Rock, a small upscale resort town on the coast of Washington state.
Her Deadly End
Her Cold Blood
Her Last Lie
Her Secret Crime
Her Perfect Murder
Her Grisly Grave
www.TikiriHerath.com/Thrillers
Asha Kade Private Detective Murder Mysteries
Murder mystery thrillers, featuring the Red Heeled Rebels, Asha Kade and Katy McCafferty. Asha and Katy receive one million dollars for their favorite children's charity from a secret benefactor's estate every time they solve a cold case.
Merciless Legacy
Merciless Games
Merciless Crimes
Merciless Lies
Merciless Past
Merciless Deaths
www.TikiriHerath.com/Mysteries
Red Heeled Rebels International Mystery & Crime - The Origin Story
The award-winning origin story of the Red Heeled Rebels characters. Learn how a rag-tag group of trafficked orphans from different places united to fight for their freedom and their lives and became a found family.
The Girl Who Crossed the Line
The Girl Who Ran Away
The Girl Who Made Them Pay
The Girl Who Fought to Kill
The Girl Who Broke Free
The Girl Who Knew Their Names
The Girl Who Never Forgot
www.TikiriHerath.com/RedHeeledRebels
Tikiri’s novels and nonfiction books are available in e-book, paperback, and hardback editions, on all good bookstores around the world. These books are also available in libraries everywhere. Just ask your friendly local librarian or your local bookstore to order a copy for you.
www.TikiriHerath.com
Happy reading.
A Surprise For You
Dear reader friend,
Thank you for picking up my book.
I write mystery thrillers that feature feisty female detectives who hunt villains and make them pay. In my books, justice always prevails.
My stories are for smart readers who love pulse-pounding thrills and nail-biting twists. There is no explicit sex, graphic violence, or heavy cursing in my books, and no dog is ever harmed.
I’m not a marketing company or a branding firm that employs ghost writers or artificial engines. I don’t hide behind a pen name or a fake avatar. I write my own books.
I’m also a reader, just like you, and I’m delighted to meet you.
Since you picked up this book, I have a gift for you!
HER DEADLY END is a twisty thriller about a devious serial killer stalking a small seaside town in Washington State, USA. It features the private detectives, Asha Kade & Katy McCafferty, you'll read about here. But the main characters in that book are their friend, Special Agent Tanya (Tetyana) & Max, her adorable German Shepherd K9.
The link to this exclusive gift is at the end of this book. I dare you to guess who the villain is.
Enjoy this read and the gift.
Best wishes,
Tikiri
Vancouver, Canada
PS/ My books use American spelling because most of my readers live in North America. But I'm a Canadian who went to international schools all over the world, so I write in mostly British English. (I know. I’m a mixed up gal.) As soon as I finish writing a book, I run a US English spell checker, and after that, my wonderful (American) editor double checks any remaining errors. But words are insidious. And sneaky.
If you see a funny-looking word, please report it. Rest assured, they will be given a sound talk to and banished from my books.
There is no explicit sex, heavy cursing, or graphic violence in my books. There is, however, a closed circle of suspects, twists and turns, and nail-biting suspense.
NO DOG IS EVER HARMED IN THESE BOOKS. But the villains always are.
Tropes you’ll find in this murder mystery thriller series: female protagonists, women sleuths, private investigators, small town, crime, murder, missing, kidnapping, dark secrets, creepy cabins, revenge, vengeance, vigilante justice, family life, lies, psychological suspense, twists and turns, intrigue, and thriller mysteries.
Merciless Games
A LUXURY ISLAND RETREAT. A SERIAL KILLER ON THE PROWL. A RACE AGAINST DEATH.
In an upscale island hotel off the wild Oregon Coast, seven strangers gather for a writers’ retreat.
Among them is Asha Kade, a private investigator with a haunted past. Hired by an anonymous employer, she's promised a hefty paycheck.
But the price might be her life.
The paradise getaway quickly morphs into a living nightmare when a ruthless killer strikes at night, picking off the guests. One by one.
Cut off from the mainland, fear escalates, trust evaporates, and a dark secret emerges.
What is the chilling truth?
They are all bound by a horrific past crime they’d rather forget. But the body count keeps rising.
Can Asha decipher the killer’s twisted game before she’s next on the list?
Trust no one. Fear everything.
The Photo
It was an image of a bloated, dead body.
He lay naked, sprawled over a cluster of rocks on a deserted and remote beach. The gruesome blood splatters on his back said he’d been shot multiple times. Whoever killed him had been vicious. Boiling with the desire for revenge.
They’d made sure he was dead.
Day One
Chapter One
“I don’t like this,” said Katy. “It’s spooky.”
“It’s just a short trip,” I said.
“Famous last words,” she replied, making a face.
Though I didn’t let on, my gut was churning, too.
Go home, it warned me. Turn around now.
But I was ignoring all the red flags, doing my best to pretend everything was just fine.
It was early afternoon, but the sky was already a dull gray and stiflingly low, so low, I felt I could get on my tiptoes and touch it.
I was glad we’d ditched our city dresses and heels for layered hiking gear and sensible flat boots.
A storm was on its way.
The swells rushed in, crashing furiously on the rocky shore. The howling wind whipped everything into frozen icicles, and the seagulls screeched as they got whisked up by the strong currents.
I brushed the long hair strands off my face, wondering about my crazy decision to come here and invite my BFF to join me.
“Maybe they made a mistake, Asha,” said Katy, as if reading my mind. She pulled out the crumpled photo from her pocket. “Maybe this wasn’t meant for us.”
“They paid up, and they were generous, weren’t they?” I said, pushing my fears to the back of my mind. “It had to be for us.”
But it hadn’t been an ordinary order for an ordinary cake.
I knew it as soon as I saw the gruesome image.
The unsigned message that had popped into my bakery’s inbox four days ago had come with something extra.
A photograph of a dead man.
A naked corpse on a desolate beach.
A shudder went through me as I stared at the picture in Katy’s hand.
The sand dunes and cactus in the background reminded me of a remote area I’d been to before. One at the Mexican border, where only outlaws dared to go.
It was this photo that had brought Katy and me to the small town of Trembling Cypress Bay, off the Oregon coast.
It was a place so remote it felt like the end of the world.
We were waiting now for the ferry on the town’s fishing jetty, trying not to get soaked by the ocean spray crashing around us.
Underneath the muddy water near the pier, long strands of dark green kelp waved madly, like those wacky inflatable air dancers you find at county fairs.
It was like even they were warning us to stay away.
I pulled the jacket zipper up to my neck and curled my toes in my boots. The humidity on the West Coast soaked right into your bones and, I swore, chilled your blood.
We were a long way from home and our upscale New York bakery.
“When someone promises a weekend at an exclusive resort, I expect Laguna Beach,” grumbled Katy, “not a dinky little fishing village in the middle of nowhere.”
She poked me with her elbow.
“If they lied about this, how do we know they’re not lying about everything else?”
She was right.
I had no idea what to expect.
Minutes after we got the cake order, they, whoever they were, sent a ten-thousand-dollar retainer. An electronic transfer from an anonymous payee, explained our bank.
Who pays that much money for a Dulce de Leche cheesecake?
Then came the message.
We were to hand-deliver the cake to a luxury retreat on a private island off the Oregon coast. Another twenty thousand dollars would be ours if we served the cake for dinner the first night and stayed the complete weekend at the resort.
The signature line simply said, The Host, a friend of Madame Bouchard.
I could use thirty thousand dollars to expand the Red Heeled Rebels bakery and buy my chef team a set of new industrial-strength mixers. All I had to do was serve my cheesecake and stay the weekend at a resort? That would be the fastest money I’d ever made.
Of course, I said yes.
The money was nice, but as I stood on this remote ocean front at the other end of the country, I felt a knot forming in my stomach like those kelp strands under the sea tangling into a gnarled mess.
My mind swirled with unanswered questions.
Who is the Host? Why did they invite us? What did this exclusive island retreat in Oregon have to do with the photo of a dead man?
I wondered if I was going to regret my decision to come.
Chapter Two
“Look!” said Katy, pulling on my arm.
I spun around.
“It’s the island,” she whispered.
The fog was lifting in the distance, and a small black speck appeared on the horizon.
We stood in awe, watching the ghostly landscape unfold in front of us.
“Coffin Island,” I whispered to myself as the eerie isle shimmered in the distance.
“Creepy,” whispered Katy.
There had been very little information about the island or the retreat online. From what we’d dug up, the only structure on that rocky islet was a hundred-year-old lighthouse that was no longer in operation.
My mind buzzed as I speculated on where we’d sleep that night. In a tent? On the ferry boat?
But I kept those thoughts to myself.
My best friend, Katy, was a big city girl who loved her heels, her designer bags, and her beautifully tailored plus-sized dresses. She had been expecting to stay at a five-star luxury resort with white-gloved service.
I had warned her.
Our destination was a remote part of untamed Oregon. Not the celebrity-studded, sunny southern beaches of California. While she was having second thoughts now, the lure of a mysterious luxury retreat had been too tempting for her to stay away.
But it was too late to turn back now.
Still, she was no stranger to adventure and had that photograph of the bloated dead man tucked in her jacket pocket. It was our only clue to whatever we were going to encounter on that island.
Katy and I had taken a nonstop red eye from JFK and landed in Portland the day before.
We’d driven over in a rental car to the lone village along the coast with the only working ferry to the island, our final destination.
Ferry was a big word for an unimpressive boat.
It was an antique fishing skiff that smelled of dead fish and looked like it would capsize any moment. It was docked at the end of the jetty now, lurching back and forth so alarmingly, I was surprised it hadn’t hit the piles and shattered into pieces already.
Mike, the ferry operator, was the strong and silent type.
Within seconds, he made it clear he didn’t like city folk. He didn’t have to say anything. The ugly scowl he shot our way when we approached him told us everything.
Mike wore a frayed captain’s hat, dirty brown dungarees, and black rubber boots that sloshed when he walked. He communicated through impatient hand gestures and intermittent grunts, which meant we had to do most of the talking while he nodded or shook his head.
All we knew was we were waiting for two more people before the ferry would take off.
I stood at the edge of the pier and stared at the Pacific Ocean frothing in front of me, wondering what Madame Bouchard had planned for us now.
Most people knew me as the celebrity New York baker. Very few knew I moonlighted as a private investigator.
Because my former client, the now deceased Madame Bouchard’s reach had been far and wide, I never knew from where I’d receive these calls for help. Some days, I wondered if she was scheming from beyond the grave.
The information I got was always sparse. Part of my sleuthing included uncovering as much about the person who summoned me as the problem that needed tackling.
These calls usually came from one of her upper crust friends at the most unexpected of times. It was either a request to solve a cold case, an appeal to uncover a concealed truth, or a plea to find a missing family member.
Above all, they required discretion.
Madame Bouchard had been a shrewd woman.
She had known my bakery team was made of street-smart, skilled trafficked survivors who knew a lot more than how to bake an award-winning cake.
We’d banded together in our youths to battle the criminals who’d come to hunt us and enslave us. Together, we knew how to fight a good fight, pick the right weapon, fire a clean shot, blow up a building and hack into their accounts, and expose their dirty deeds to the world.
We’d been on the radar of Interpol and the CIA and had escaped across four continents.
Madame Bouchard had known our pasts. She’d used us and our skills when she was alive, just like she was using us after her death.
She’d sealed the deal by promising our anti-trafficking non-profit a sizable donation from her estate every time I took a call from one of her friends. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse. Even when the risks were great.
What I didn’t tell my fiancé, David, my best friend, Katy, or anyone else in my found family was that I looked forward to these cases. Eagerly.
The lure of solving an impossible problem, of unraveling a mystery no one else could, wasn’t just intellectually stimulating. It was an irresistible challenge.
There was also only so much I could take, catering to demanding, self-entitled socialites at my upscale bakery.
If I had to be honest with myself, I missed the lure of adventure of my youth. Even the worries whirling in my head now paled in comparison to the anticipation of what we’d find on that island.
Tetyana and David had wanted to join us, but they were held by contract to offer kickboxing classes for a Manhattan corporation’s wellness program till Saturday.
I had promised David a quiet camping trip next week. Just me and him for once. But he and I both knew these cases never ended when I thought they would.
“There goes my romantic getaway with David,” I said with a resigned sigh. “He’s not going to be a happy puppy.”
“Didn’t he want to shut classes down and come?” asked Katy.
“We need the money to pay rent. It’s not like Harlem’s cheap anymore. Besides, we can’t keep closing business every time Madame Bouchard’s friends call us like this.”
“Don’t you think it’s a little freaky?” said Katy, pulling her woolen hat over her ears. “We keep talking like she’s alive when she died three months ago.”
“Whatever her game, we can’t say no to a million-dollar donation for the orphanage. There’s so much we can do. A new school, more nurses, and teachers for the kids in NOLA. None of that comes cheap.”
“It feels like she’s still around,” said Katy with a shudder, “the way she pulls on our strings. She always liked to play games.”
“It was her plan, but it’s her lawyer who’s pulling our strings now. She made it clear in her will.” I thought of the generous retainer that had arrived in our bank account this week. “Besides, this time, the client’s paying us a tidy sum, too.”
“Do you think this has anything to do with that letter we got?”
I turned to Katy, my brow furrowed. She was trying to look casual, but I could see she was bothered, too.
The letter had come to my bakery a week ago. It was a poison pen note with crudely cut-out letters from a magazine glued on cheap paper. The message had been short but nasty.
You’re all nothing but dirt. You think you’re big shots, but I won’t let you forget your past.
We had scrutinized the letter from all angles. Tetyana had checked it for fingerprints and Win, our resident computer wizard, had examined it for hidden watermarks, but none of us had found a clue that would trace it back.
