Page 5 of Simon Says… Fight (Kate Morgan Thrillers #11)

And yet, with Kate, he knew that reciprocal give-and-take was always available if her team needed help.

It’s just that Simon didn’t always have something to help them with their cases.

Getting that most recent vision, involving both Kate and him in that boxing scenario, was enough to terrify him, and he didn’t like anything about it.

The fact that it was somehow so strong made him wonder whether he was connecting with a person, a group, or something else.

He didn’t know what that something else could be.

And yet the idea crossed his mind that maybe, because of the work he did, he was connecting to a building.

He snorted at that.

“If I wasn’t loony enough to scare off people before, this would finally do it,” he muttered. Still, he couldn’t help but wonder if it was even possible. Was it even a thing? Did people connect to buildings?

As he looked around, he realized that he didn’t even need to ask that question because that’s how he determined which buildings he would be willing to take on.

No matter the physical state of any property, whether the building’s inherent heart and soul were left, made a project interesting for him.

Did the will to stand and to still be something viable still exist, or was it a lost cause and just a crumbling construct?

If the latter, he had much less interest in it.

He much preferred to have something out there just for him, that only he could fix, if he had that option.

It wasn’t always there with each property he reviewed, but, every once in a while, things did go his way, and he could see his potential rehab in a much better light.

And the buildings that he did look after were ones that spoke to him in some way or another.

Speaking of which, that local persistent Realtor who continually stalked him was calling him—again. He shook his head. She wasn’t his personal chosen Realtor, but that never stopped her. He let the call go to voice mail and focused on getting his business done at City Hall.

Once he was outside again and free to talk, he returned her call. He walked toward a little food stand, where he could pick up a coffee and a snack to keep him going for the day. “What’s up?” he asked, when Ariel answered.

“I’ll thank you again, for the umpteenth time,” Ariel said.

“And I am telling you, for the umpteenth time, it’s fine.”

“I know that’s what you say each time, but I’m not sure what you did or how you did it, but the fact of the matter is, Peter was found, and, for that, I owe you.”

He winced. “You don’t owe me anything.”

“I get that too,” she noted, with a playful tone. “You don’t owe anybody or like being owed, and neither do I. So, I will do my best to discharge that as fast as I can.”

He snorted. “I don’t know how you plan on doing that.”

“I can think of one thing. You know that one building we’ve been talking about? The one down on Georgia Street?”

“Yeah, what about it?” he asked, as he picked up his order and walked toward his next stop.

“They contacted me to say that they want to get rid of it, and soon, so I’m telling you first. If you want it, give me a price, and I’ll take it back to them.”

His eyebrows shot up at that. “That’s a pretty unusual way to do business.”

“That’s true, and the call certainly caught me by surprise because that has not been their usual position,” she shared. “Apparently some family issues are involved, and I think they just want to call it quits and to get it done.”

“Maybe,” Simon replied, “but I’d need a little bit of time to consider that.”

“I know that, and I did tell them that I had a buyer, a potential buyer,” she corrected. “And that I would let you know.”

“So, now you’re telling me to just put in an offer for what I think it’s worth?”

“Yes,” Ariel admitted. “I can’t guarantee that they’ll take it because, knowing you, it won’t be very high. However, I can tell you that they would at least look at it and potentially counter.”

“They would have done that without your suggestion,” Simon pointed out shrewdly. “So what’s changed?”

“The wife has just had a cancer diagnosis,” she shared. “So, I think they’re gearing up for a whole different fight, and this really isn’t the hill they want to die on.”

“Right,” Simon noted. “That makes sense.”

“If it does, good luck to you,” she added, “because some of this stuff never makes any sense.”

He snorted. “I understand that too,” he muttered. “I’ll get back to you.”

“Don’t wait too long,” she added, a warning in her tone. “I can’t stall them for long.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said. With that, he ended the call, knowing she was hoping for a whole lot more.

She wouldn’t get it, so that’s just the way the cookie crumbled today.

Some things were good, and some things would just be a pain in the butt.

So his mind was focused on everything else but his work today.

Still, he was a man with more discipline than that, so pulling his attention back to the task at hand, he headed to one of his rehab projects to check on the progress.

After a fruitful meeting with his foreman at that site, and his customary rounds connecting with the workers there, Simon planned on heading home and just crashing, but something nudged him in a particular direction.

So, feeling amiable, he kept going. As he got to one of the seedier warehouse areas, he stopped and looked around.

A whisper in the back of his head spoke to him about one specific warehouse.

He turned to it, frowned, and shook his head.

“I don’t know who or what you are, but ain’t no way I’m walking down there alone,” he muttered.

Sure enough, if you wanted to choose the epitome of a place to be mugged, this was the area.

Dark alleys were all around, and this one particular warehouse had broken windows and showed numerous signs of abandonment—like some others nearby too.

The poor warehouse in question gave off a feeling of abdication, a sense of giving up the ghost. That made sense here as Simon potentially had a ghost contacting him already.

In his gut he knew something really ugly seemed to come with this warehouse.

He didn’t know what was going on here, or had gone on here before, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that his latest psychic nudge was definitely tied to this warehouse.

He shook his head and resolutely tried to walk on by, but his feet couldn’t walk past this one warehouse at all.

He was stuck here, standing in one place.

He tried to shake off the feeling, but, for a minute, nothing gave. To say he was pissed would be an understatement. “That is not funny,” he muttered, as he looked around to confirm nobody was nearby. But this ghost, or whatever, wouldn’t let him move on.

He shook his head. “I don’t have time for games right now,” he called out. “Either speak up or let me be.”

And then came the whisper in his head, Make time .

Simon looked around again and pointed out, “People have definitely died in this building.”

The whisper came back, stronger this time. Yes, and I am one of them .