Page 1 of Secret Weapon

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EMMY

Iwas trapped in my worst nightmare.

No, not a poorly defended combat position with a battalion of heavily armed enemy soldiers circling—been there, done that, lived to tell the tale—but a small town in Oregon.

A small town with a big craft store.

And Bradley, my darling glitter-obsessed assistant, was currently in said craft store, and no doubt he was buyingeverything.

I should have pulled rank.I should have insisted we evacuate to Portland earlier this morning when we had the chance, but we were staying in a five-star hotel, and I’d been seduced by the idea of a massage and a breakfast buffet.Fuck knows, I’d deserved both.The last few weeks had been brutal.

First, I’d had to survive Bradley’s festive vision, then I’d flown to Egypt to rescue a friend of a friend of a friend from a bunch of rogue smugglers and take a swim—involuntarily—in the River Nile.After Egypt, I’d spent two days dealing with corporate bullshit, which had actually been less fun than taking on the bunch of trigger-happy lunatics, and then my husband had asked me to assist with a little side project.

It had all started with a parrot.

An African Grey, to be precise, and a talkative one.Pinchy had been rescued from Animal Control by one pal and adopted by two others, and now he spent his days in an upscale Richmond apartment, begging for snacks and spewing curses.I’d always thought I swore like a trooper, but that damn bird gave me a run for my money.

He also had one particular catchphrase that intrigued us.

Don’t shoot Mike.

Or, as it later turned out,don’t shoot, Mike.Punctuation was important, kids.

A normal person would have embraced the expletive-ridden tirades and stocked up on parrot treats, but not my dear husband.No, Black wanted to know who Mike was and, more importantly, who hadn’t wanted him to shoot.The bird must have copied the words from someplace, right?

And as the head of investigations for Blackwood Security, the global security firm we owned along with two other business partners, Black had been in the best position to find out where.

The “where” had led us from Charlottesville to Santa Clarita via Las Vegas.Initially, Black had been looking for a common or garden murder with a perpetrator named Mike, but of course, it wasn’t that straightforward.When was anythingeverstraightforward?

First, he’d begun researching the habits of parrots.Turned out that when pet birds escaped, they didn’t tend to go all that far because they had no clue how to care for themselves in the wild.Once they’d tasted freedom and found it was kinda rancid, they often tried to fly back home.

A call to Animal Control told us where Pinchy had been picked up, so Black had taped a large-scale map of Virginia to the wall of our shared office and marked the location with a big red X.Then he’d worked his way outwards, reviewing every suspicious death for the past year.We didn’t think Pinchy would have survived longer than that on his own—the bird got crabby if he had to walk six steps to fetch his own almond.Hallie, who was Pinchy’s joint owner and a junior member of Blackwood’s investigations department, had assisted with the legwork, and Ford, her new boyfriend who also happened to be a cop in the Richmond PD, provided the occasional insight.After six weeks, the three of them had got absolutely nowhere.

No murder victim within a hundred-mile radius of Pinchy’s final landing place had owned a parrot.

We began to wonder if Pinchy might have been stolen, if he’d once lived out of state and been dumped when his new family got sick of his potty mouth.Or if his owner had been shot but survived.Ford contacted colleagues in other police departments to ask about parrot thefts, and we widened our search to include gunshot injuries.Hallie approached local veterinarians to see if they knew Pinchy and drew a blank.Nobody recalled a foul-mouthed parrot, and trust me, once you met that bird, you didn’t forget him easily.

The file almost made it as far as the cold-case pile, but not quite.

Why not?

Because Ford’s former partner was an asshole, that was why.

Detective Duncan was as lazy as he was inept, and as Ford was about to leave the station on Christmas Eve, his new partner, a wet-behind-the-ears, freshly promoted newbie named Jayme Matassa—call me Tass—had found a pile of dusty files on her desk.Files that hadn’t been there when she went to use the bathroom five minutes before.Also missing?Detective Duncan.Ford, being the gentleman that he was, had offered to take the files to the archive room so Tass could go home to her family.And Ford, being the nosy fucker that he was, had flipped the cover on the top file to see what was in it.That Duncan was listed as the lead detective hadn’t been a surprise.The case was a suicide, now closed, a fifty-six-year-old antiques dealer named Sharona Cummings who’d downed a bottle of wine and then blown her brains out.Sadly, the situation wasn’t a surprise either—too many people hit rock bottom and saw no other option.No, the surprise had been the bird sitting on her shoulder.

Pinchy.

Guess how Black spent Christmas Day?

After Christmas, one of Sharona’s former neighbours had put us in touch with Sharona’s daughter.Aubree Dobbs lived in Las Vegas with her husband and two kids, a perfect family in a McMansion on the outskirts of Henderson.Aubree worked part-time as a cosmetologist while the children were at school, and her husband was a pit boss on the Strip.Of course, we’d dropped by for a chat.

“If I’d known Mom was feeling that way, I’d have helped her, of course I would.”Aubree accepted the tissue I offered.Yes, I’d been roped into visiting, but at least Black and I could spend a night or two in our Vegas apartment recovering from the festive season.Just the two of us.“But we’d grown apart, and…and I have the kids, you know?”

“When did you last see your mom?”Black asked.He had a pretty good bedside manner when the mood took him.

“L-l-last Christmas.”And she’d died in April.“We h-h-had a fight.”

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