Title: Shadows of the Past

Series: The Cassie Tam Files, Book Four

Author: Matt Doyle

Publisher: NineStar Press

Release Date: November 4, 2019

Heat Level: 1 - No Sex

Pairing: Female/Female

Length: 59100

Genre: Science Fiction, crime, criminal underground, lesbian, mechanical shifters, police, private detective, Sci-fi, stalking, workplace bullying

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Synopsis

Shadows of the Past is the new novella collection set in The Cassie Tam Files universe! Enjoy two new stories that follow PI Cassie Tam and her girlfriend Lori Redwood as they deal with the fallout from LV48. This book is part of a series and needs to be read in sequence.

A Week in New Hopeland

When Lori Redwood agrees to help out her girlfriend, PI Cassie Tam, by going undercover at a local shipping firm, she gets more than she bargained for. Her ‘boss’ Mr. Graves is a misogynist and a bully, and has been targeting one girl in particular. Cassie is known to him, and he tends to be cautious around Tech Shifters. Which means that Lori may be the best person for the job.

Will Lori be able to help Cassie gather enough evidence for the police to act, or will she become the next target?

Shadows of the Past

PI Cassie Tam is not the only person who lives with regrets, and like most people, she just wants to get on with her life. But in New Hopeland, the past never remains buried. When she’s hired to track a stalker that’s been using some interesting tech to mask their identity on the city’s security cameras, Cassie ends up face-to-face with her darkest memory.

Can Cassie find out who’s responsible before her past mistakes tear her – and her friends – apart?

Excerpt

Shadows of the Past

I roll over in bed and let my arm flop into the empty space next to me. Even with my eyes closed, I can tell the early morning light is beginning to creep in through the window. My slightly bent leg finds a long warm spot, giving away that Cassie hasn’t been up long. I instinctively grip the bedsheet where her body would normally end and let out a content sigh.

“Mine,” I say to myself and roll onto my back again. I raise my hands to my face and rub the sleep out of my eyes, taking in the familiar sight of my bedroom as I clear the cobwebs a little. There are other things to wake me up too; new things that are becoming more familiar as time passes. Smells and sounds I don’t experience as often as I’d like. But I have to be careful, gentle even. Cassie is outwardly quite rough, but she’s softer on the inside. She’s like an emotional armadillo.

A partial conversation from last night flashes across my mind, and a smile reaches my lips. I sit up and stretch, forcing out a yawn as I glance at the back of the door. “Someone’s borrowing my robe again.”

I grab my spare from the wardrobe and tie it up, then walk down the hall, through the living room, and up to the kitchen. I rest against the doorframe, watching Cassie as she carries on oblivious to my presence. After a moment, I say, “Morning.”

Cassie jumps a little and smiles my way. She pulls gently at the sleeve of the robe and says, “Sorry, I didn’t bring mine. I wasn’t planning to stay over, but…”

“Ink can be quite persuasive, can’t she?” I nod to the frying pan on the hob and ask, “What’cha cooking?”

Cassie’s lips tighten and her nose wrinkles, making her look like a cute, frustrated, pouting bunny. She taps the bowl she’s been piling the food in. “It was supposed to be pancakes. I don’t know what went wrong, I’m normally really good with pancakes. These keep sticking, though. And burning. Maybe I didn’t use enough oil.”

“Nah, it’ll be the pan,” I reply, walking into the room and grabbing some plates from the cupboard. “And they look fine, just a little broken.”

“The pan, eh?”

“Yup. That one never was much good. Everything sticks to it, no matter what you do.”

“Huh. If it’s that bad, why keep it?”

“Sentimental reasons,” I reply and start splitting the pancakes out. “So, come on, detective, see if you can figure it out.”

“The first thing you bought for here?” she tries.

I hand her a plate and shake my head. “Nope. Try again.”

“A gift from a relative?”

“Swing and a miss,” I say and start pouring us a drink from the percolator she’s been keeping warm in preparation. “One more guess.”

She shrugs and grabs two forks from the drawer. She hands me one as she answers, “You got me.”

We walk to the living room and sit on the couch. “Well, a few years back, I was woken up by this noise in the kitchen. It must have been about three in the morning, I think. Anyway, I started panicking, right? There’s someone in the house. Who is it? What do they want? That sort of thing.

“Well, we’d been covering some home break-in stories at work, and I decided there and then I wasn’t going to be just another victim, sitting scared in my room while someone takes all my stuff. So, I got up, and creeped up to the kitchen as quietly as I could, and what did I find? Someone going through the fridge.”

“Who was it?”

“I couldn’t tell. Between tiredness, the darkness, and the fridge door being slightly closed, I couldn’t see anything at all really, other than a silhouette. So, I grabbed the first sturdy thing I could.”

“The frying pan.”

“Exactly. I grabbed it, waited for them to step back, and swung. Bam.”

“Then what happened?”

“The woman dropped her milk and starts yelling, ‘What the fuck, Lori?’ So, I turn the light on, and everything starts slotting into place. I’d been out at a club and taken this lady home. Karen, I think her name was. The problem was, I’d gotten a bit drunk and, between that and the stories we’d been covering, I’d completely forgotten she’d stayed over and had gotten a little paranoid.”

“Was she all right?” Cassie asks, staring at me in disbelief.

“She was angry more than anything. That was our one and only night together, though. But yeah, so the frying pan is sentimental for me because it reminds me that one, I shouldn’t bring people home if I met them while drunk, and two, I’m not as much of as a wuss as I thought.”

Cassie laughs. “I guess I should be happy you didn’t think I was an intruder, eh?”

I smile and kiss her forehead. “You never need to worry. If I wake up and you’re gone, I’ll just assume you’re off dealing with any intruder. And even if I did somehow forget you were staying over, I can always tell when you’re in the kitchen in the morning. You sing while you cook.”

Cassie stops mid-sip, and her eyes go wide, peering over the top of the mug. “Diu. You can hear that?”

“‘Iris’ by the Goo Goo Dolls, wasn’t it? I mean, it’s clearly a product of its era, but it’s a good track.”

“Oh, no, no, no. You weren’t meant to hear that. It’s why I stop when I hear your bedroom door open.”

I tilt my head and frown. “Really? I like it. You sound happy.”

“I am happy, but…I don’t really sing…well. Or in front of people.”

“Oh,” I reply, a little worried now. “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t really notice you stopped. I always get excited to see what you’re making, so it never really occurred to me.”

“It’s fine,” she says, but I can tell she’s still embarrassed. “Anyway, it can’t be that exciting. I only use what you have in.”

“I know, but I don’t always bother myself. Usually, it’s cereal or toast if it’s just me. Work, right?”

Cassie’s shoulders relax a little and she takes another mouthful of coffee. “Oh, I get that. I’m the same at the apartment, really. I don’t usually stay here when I have a case on, so there’s rarely any rush for me in the morning when I do. I do try to get up early, though, just in case you need to head out earlier. I can make sure I still get something made for you then.”

I take a leaf from Cassie’s playbook and fail to stop the blush rising to my cheeks. If she enjoys doing it, I may as well tell her. “Okay, confession time. Sometimes, I buy a few things I know I might not have the time to cook. You know, to see if you use them when you stop over. I kinda might have noticed you enjoy cooking more than you let on. And, you know, I quite like what you put in front of me.”

I take another big mouthful of pancake to prove the point, and Cassie giggles. “Well, aren’t you full of surprises today?”

“Oh, speaking of surprises, it’s the Saturday after next, right? Your birthday?”

She rolls her eyes. “Yes, it is. Look, Lori, I really don’t want you to make a big deal out of it. Just something small, eh?”

I wave my hands frantically, spilling a little coffee on my knee. Good job it’s cooled down. “Absolutely. I promised I wouldn’t go overboard, so I won’t. We’ll do a stop at a café. And maybe a present or two.”

“No more than two,” she says, fixing me with a stern look.

“No more than two,” I reiterate.

“And a limit of one hundred dollars.”

“I know, I know. You never did explain why you don’t like doing too much.”

Cassie sighs and puts her empty mug down. “Okay, I guess I owe you that much at least. If you really have to know, my birthday falls exactly one week before…one week before the anniversary.”

Cassie’s dad was a cop back in Canada. He took a bullet for her during her last major case back there, and his death tore her and her mom apart. That was why she moved to New Hopeland. “I’m sorry. I knew it was coming up, but the connection didn’t click.”

She waves it away, and her walls come up a little. “It’s fine; I never told you the date. Honestly, if I didn’t want to do anything at all, I wouldn’t have told you my birthday either.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Just don’t be a Nancy, okay?”

“A Nancy?”

“My nan. She hated having a fuss made on her birthday, like at all. But she never told us because she didn’t want to disappoint anyone. It wasn’t until she was at death’s door that she finally came clean. Don’t be like her. If it’s too much, tell me so I can back off.”

Cassie’s face softens a little and she pulls me into a gentle kiss. “Thank you. It means a lot knowing you’d do that. It’s fine; just keep it low key. Anyway, I better get a wash and head back home. You never know when the next case will drop in your lap.”

She gets to her feet and starts walking to the door, but I can’t help myself. “An armadillo.”

She stops. “What?”

“Last night. You asked what sort of animal I thought you’d be if you were a Tech Shifter? Well, I’ve decided. An armadillo.”

“An armadillo,” she repeats. “Why?”

I gather the plates and mugs and give her a wink. “I’ll let you figure that one out.”

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If you could travel forward or backward in time, where would you go and why?

Forward. I want to see if I was close with regards to where technology is heading. Plus, I’m hopeful that the future will see less bigotry. If we get alien contact too, that’d be interesting.

We’ve all got a little voyeurism in us right? If you could be a fly on the wall during an intimate encounter between two characters, not your own, who would they be?

Oh crikey, that’s a hard one! How about Jax Teller from Sons of Anarchy and Eliot Spencer from Leverage? Okay, so that’s two different universes, but come on! It’s Charlie Hunnam and Christian Kane! Yum!

If I were snooping around your kitchen and looked in your refrigerator right now, what would I find?

Milk, cheese, and fruit corner yoghurts!

If you could be a superhero, what would you want your superpowers to be?

That’s easy: shapeshifting. I could not only achieve my childhood ambition of being a werewolf, but also be able to fully physically shift gender based on how I feel on any given day. I’m so jealous of Mystique with that power.

If you could trade places with one of your characters, who would it be and why?

I’d try not to. I’m so cruel to them at times, I dread to think what would happen! At a push, John Forrester in The Spark Form Chronicles. For one, he has a fairly happy ending all things considered For two, his constant companion Carnival is a lot of fun. She’s a holographic anthropomorphic wolf with rabbit ears, that loves of street dancing and ice hockey, and has a playfully sarcastic streak.

If you could sequester yourself for a week somewhere and just focus on your writing, where would you go and what would the environment be like?

I’d probably have to stay where I am. If I went somewhere, it’d be either out in nature in a nice cabin, or I’d go to somewhere like Japan. Either way, I’d get distracted by all the new things around me. I don’t do well with routine changes, I’m afraid.

What's the one thing, you can't live without?

Tea. Almost every type of tea is acceptable. No licorice or mint, they can leave me well alone, but the rest is great! If I had to go a day without tea, I think I’d pass out.

What internet site do you surf to the most?

Twitter. Sad, I know, but I keep up with most people on there. The news too. It’s also where I do most of my marketing, both for books and the website.

If you had your own talk show, who would your first three author guests be and why?

Ooh, good question. Let’s see…Neil Gaiman would be one. I’ve loved his novels and comics for a long time, and he’s a good reminder to me that it’s okay to write things that are a little weird sometimes. Patricia Briggs would be another because I really enjoy Urban Fantasy, and her Mercy series is one of my favourites. For a third guest, I love to throw it out there to those of us on the small press and indie scene. Let people send in a single paragraph to sell themselves and pick one to appear. That would be cool, I think.

When you got your very first manuscript acceptance letter, what was your initial reaction and who was the first person you told?

I was over the moon! I almost forgot to breathe, and got way too overexcited. The first person I told was my partner, who was happy to share in the celebration. The sad thing is that it didn’t have a happy ending as the publisher turned out to be a terrible fit for me. The second acceptance letter was for the first Cassie Tam Files book, Addict. That one worked out much better.

Meet the Author

Matt Doyle is a speculative fiction author from the UK and identifies as pansexual and genderfluid. Matt has spent a great deal of time chasing dreams, a habit which has led to success in a great number of fields. To date, this has included spending ten years as a professional wrestler, completing a range of cosplay projects, and publishing multiple works of fiction.

These days, Matt can be found working on multiple novels and stories, blogging about pop culture, and plotting and planning far too many projects.