Eye of the Falcon (Psychic Visions #12)
Dale Mayer
As a young girl, Issa bonded with her pet falcon and was the lookout for her father’s smuggling operation in Ireland. After everything went south one night, and her father and brothers were killed, her mother brought her to America to start over.
Immigrating was hard, but eventually Issa grew up and pursued a career in environmental sciences and continued to follow her passion for falconry. But she doesn’t find the same special bond with other falcons. Until one fateful day when her world tilts again …
Eagle, a former military pilot, has retired to his small ranch outside Denver, Colorado, where he runs a rescue center for raptors in need. One falcon is acting irrationally. Eagle’s only recourse is to euthanize him, but the falcon rips free. Although injured so badly he shouldn’t be able to fly, the falcon disappears into the skies.
The next morning the falcon returns with a beautiful but seriously injured young woman in tow—carrying a message of death and destruction for all of them …
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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
Issa McGuire’s heart was sick as she took a last look around her mother’s apartment, saying goodbye to the space she had once called home and that would soon be empty after Goodwill came to pick up the boxes. Walking out into the night, she could hardly believe her mother’s life had been reduced to those few possessions she’d seen in her mother’s final residence.
Among other belongings Issa had chosen to keep had been a leather keepsake box—about the same size as a large wooden cigar box—and a cardboard box full of papers. She’d taken a peek inside both but had found some of the information shocking. Surely the extensive criminal activities listed inside the topmost manila envelope in the banker’s box had to be wrong. She knew her father had been a smuggler, but that had been a way of life. The other charges, … well, those made no sense. Something, somewhere, must clarify all that had gone so wrong. She couldn’t trust her own childhood memories and wasn’t at all sure she could believe the papers found in her mother’s belongings either. Some things just didn’t add up.
Back in her vehicle, jammed full of her mother’s possessions and memories, she hurriedly got into the driver’s seat and slowly drove toward her small cabin.
And away from the remnants of that era of her life.
After years of the concrete city, she couldn’t do it anymore. She had died a little every day she was forced to exist without the space and sky that was secondary to her soul. Such an elemental thing, but, to her, it was the main priority. She’d made it through school; she’d made it through her degrees. And now she was beholden to no one.
Except for the birds. They were part of her soul.
At the nondescript turnoff to her road, she slowed for the corner and bounced hard, wishing there had been more money so she could’ve filled the pothole and done a better cleanup of the driveway. Not too much though. She certainly didn’t choose to pour down concrete or asphalt. Maybe a layer of gravel for the tires to grab in winter. All she wanted was a little more ease of living. But without it being too modern.
Her cabin illuminated in the headlights of her car, she could hear the birds already crying to her. Humbug, the huge snowy owl, who’d crawled inside her heart and made a place for himself, sat on a corner of the cabin’s roof, staring at her.
Roash, the beautiful falcon she’d found in the field, sat on a fence post—he too was waiting for her. She knew the golden eagle would be around somewhere. And then there was Gillian, the tiny saw-whet owl who wouldn’t be far away. Smaller than the others of his kind, a little more damaged than the other birds of any kind, the one who needed her just as much as she needed her birds.
Leaving the vehicle on for the headlights to shine on her front door, she quickly moved to the cabin and back to the car.
It might be summertime, but, once the sun went down, it didn’t matter where you were in this area of Colorado, a chill settled in. Inside she lit the woodstove and put on the teakettle. She had electricity but used it sparingly, choosing instead to use kerosene lamps. She wasn’t against some modern conveniences, but she didn’t appreciate the related monthly bills that came her way. Until she had a regular paycheck, she had to find and save the pennies wherever she could.
So far she had yet to discover anything of her mother’s worth selling, and she hadn’t figured out where her mother’s bank accounts were. She’d unloaded the big box of paperwork, hoping the information would be in there. Along with the answers she needed on her father’s criminal activities. But she didn’t want to look inside; she couldn’t bear it. Not right now.