All Seeing Eye

The New York Times bestselling author of the Cal Leandros series delivers a bold new supernatural thriller where one manвЂTMs extraordinary abilities come with an equally phenomenal cost. Picking up a small, pink shoe from the grass forever changed young Jackson LeeвЂTMs life. Not only did its presence mean that his sister Tessa was dead—murdered and stuffed in the deep, black water of a narrow well—but the shoe itself told him so. TessaвЂTMs death triggers an even more horrific family massacre that, combined with this new talent he neither wants nor can handle, throws JackвЂTMs life into a tailspin. The years quickly take him from state homes to the streets to grifting in a seedy carnival, until he finally becomes the cynical All Seeing Eye, psychic-for-hire. At last, Jackson has left his troubled past behind and found a semblance of peace. That is, until the government blackmails him. After Jackson is forced to help the military contain the aftermath of a bizarre experiment gone violently wrong, everything he knows about himself will change just as suddenly as it did with his little sisterвЂTMs shoe. And while change is constant . . . itвЂTMs never for the better. About the Author Rob Thurman is the author of the Cal Leandros series, the Trickster series, and the Korsak Brothers novels. She has been a Goodreads Choice, Romantic Times ReviewersвЂTM Choice and an Eliot Rosewater Award nominee. RobвЂTMs work is dark, non-stop action from beginning to end, rife with purely evil sarcasm as sharp as a switchblade—and probably nearly as illegal. Contact the author at RobThurman.net and @Rob_Thurman.В В Excerpt. В© Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. 1 A lost shoe. ThatвЂTMs how it began. It was nothing more or less than that. A shoe, just one small shoe. At first, I didnвЂTMt recognize it, although I should have. IвЂTMd seen it hundreds of times on the front porch or lying in the yard, its shine dulled by red dust. Tess was a typical five-year-old, careless with her things. Not that she had many things to be careful with. The pink shoes had been her only birthday present. IвЂTMd been with Mom when sheвЂTMd picked them out at the secondhand store in town. SheвЂTMd paid two dollars for them, but that didnвЂTMt stop me from thinking sheвЂTMd gotten ripped off. Pink patent leather with bedraggled ribbon ties and rhinestone starbursts on the sides, they were ugly as hell and louder than Aunt GraceвЂTMs good church dress. Tessie loved them, of course. She wore them everywhere and with everything, even when we went blackberry picking. With hands stained berry purple and hair in lopsided pigtails sheвЂTMd done up herself, she would skip along in denim overalls, shirtless, ignoring the thorn scratches on her arms, and beam at the sight of those damn awful shoes. ThatвЂTMs where I was walking home from, selling the blackberries. I had a stand up at the main road. It wasnвЂTMt much to look at, a few boards IвЂTMd clapped together. A strong wind could take it down and had once or twice in a good old Georgia thunderstorm. I sold paper bags full of plump, gnat-ridden berries for a dollar to people driving by. Sometimes Glory and Tess hung around and helped, but usually not. Five-year-old twin girls donвЂTMt have much patience for sweltering in the sun in the hopes of making a couple of bucks. Besides, today was a school day. Glory was at kindergarten. Tess, with a bad case of chicken pox and spotty as a Dalmatian, was stuck at home, and I was skipping. IвЂTMd get my ass busted for it, no way around that, but it was for a good cause. A skinny teenager, I was two years away from my license and probably four years away from filling out. If I ever wanted to date, money was all I was going to have going for me. Cast-off clothes and home haircuts werenвЂTMt the way to any cheerleaderвЂTMs heart, not in my school, anyway. Not that cheerleaders were the be-all and end-all of what I wanted out of life. They werenвЂTMt, but theyвЂTMd do until graduation. Mom worked bagging groceries; it was the same place sheвЂTMd worked since she dropped out of high school pregnant with me. Boyd, my step-dad, worked on holding the couch down. He was on disability, a “bad back.” Yeah, right. I remembered when heвЂTMd gotten the news. It was beer and pizza with his buddies for a week. You wouldвЂTMve thought the fat bastard had won the lottery. That bad back, along with a near-terminal case of laziness, might have kept him from working, but it didnвЂTMt keep him from other things. I rubbed the swollen lump on my jaw as I walked and then fingered the four dollars in my pocket. I liked the feel of that a lot better. “Dirt poor” wasnвЂTMt a new phrase, not in these parts, but it was a true one. That wasnвЂTMt going to be me, though. I sold blackberries, delivered papers in a place where most houses were at least half a mile apart, and had an after-school job at the same grocery as my mom. It was hard work, and there wasnвЂTMt much I hated more than hard work. But I did like money. One day I was going to figure out how to get one without doing too much of the other. I had plans for my life, and they didnвЂTMt involve rusted-out cars or jeans permanently stained red by Georgia mud. I had plans, all right, and plans required money. But it wasnвЂTMt going to be made by sponging off the government like Boyd. No, not like that sad sack of shit. He was lazy. I could swallow that. No one knows lazy like a fourteen-year-old kid. But if I could make myself work, so could he. Instead, he squatted on the couch, scratching his balding head and blankly watching whatever channel happened to be coming in that day through our crappy antenna. He yelled a lot at the girls and me, during the commercials. And on occasion, if he was drunk or bored enough, he would lever himself off the worn cushions to back up his bark with some bite. He was careful not to break any bones. Boyd might not be smart, but he wasnвЂTMt stupid, either. Coyote-sharp cunning lay behind the cold blue eyes. That same cunning held his large fists from doing the type of permanent damage that would draw the eye of the police. He hadnвЂTMt touched the twins yet, and he wouldnвЂTMt. I wouldnвЂTMt let the son of a bitch get the chance. Girls were different. Girls were good … well, I amended as I scratched the bite on my calf, mostly good. As for me, black eyes, bruises, some welts. No big deal. Teenage boys were troublemakers, right? We needed keeping in line. I might not have believed Boyd about that, but my mom didnвЂTMt say a word when he pounded the message home. SheвЂTMd only smooth my hair, bite her lip, and send me off with ice wrapped in a worn dish towel. She was my mom. If she went along with it, it must be true. Boys needed discipline, and a good smack upside the head was the usual way to go about it. I told a kid at school that once, not thinking anything of it. Why would I? It was the way things were, the way theyвЂTMd been as long as I could remember. But the look that kid gave me … it made me realize, for the first time, that wasnвЂTMt the way things were, not always. And when he called me trash, I realized something else. We were trash, and trash hit each other. It was the way of the world. The law of the trailer park. Being trash, I promptly punched that smug punk in the nose so heвЂTMd know what it was like to be me. I didnвЂTMt hate Boyd. He wasnвЂTMt worth hating. I did despise him, though. He was worth that. A mean-spirited, beery-breathed sponge that did nothing but suck up money. He hadnвЂTMt even wanted to make Tess lunch and take her temperature for a couple of days, but he gave in rather than have Mom miss work and bring home a day less paycheck. He hadnвЂTMt wanted to be bothered, that was Boyd all over. Just couldnвЂTMt be bothered about anything. Tess and Glory were hell on wheels, no getting around that, but taking care of your kids is supposed to come with the territory. Sure, Tess chattered nonstop from sunup to sundown about anything and nothing, while Glory was sneaky and wild as a feral cat, but thatвЂTMs who they were. You had to accept it. ThatвЂTMs family. I knew IвЂTMd done a lot of accepting in my time. The bite that itched on my calf was courtesy of Glory, and the cartoon Band-Aid over it was from her twin. Two halves of a hellacious whole. I was heading home in the lazy afternoon, still idly scratching the Glory bite, when I first saw the gleam of pink. IвЂTMd cut through our neighborвЂTMs property, twenty-five acres of scrubby grass, black snakes, and the foundation of a hundred-years-gone icehouse. Rumor was a plantation had been somewhere around there in the day. Now there was only scattered rock and an abandoned well. The neon flash came from a foot-long scraggle of yellowing weeds. Hideously bright and a shade found nowhere in nature, it caught my eye. Curiously, I moved toward it, stomping my feet to scare off any snakes. As I bent over to study it, the smear of color finally shifted into a recognizable shape. A typically girlie thing, it was cradled in the grass as bright and cheerful as an Easter egg. TessieвЂTMs shoe. SheвЂTMd lost it. When had that happened? It was far from the house. Yet Tess had lost her shoe way out here. I reached out and picked it up. The plastic of it was shiny and sleek against my skin. The only scuff was on the toe, and I traced a finger over it. It weighed nothing in my palm, less than a feather, it was so small. TessвЂTMs favorite shoe, and sheвЂTMd lost it. But … That was wrong. My grip spasmed around the shoe until I heard the crack of a splitting sole. It was all wrong. Tess hadnвЂTMt lost her shoe. The shoe had lost her. I had lost her. Tessie was gone. Smothered in water and darkness, her wide blue eyes forever open, her hands floating upward like white lilies as if she were hoping someone would pull her up. No one had. My sister was gone. God, she was gone. How did I know? Easy. It was as simple as the river being wet, as obvious as the sky being blue. Unstoppable as a falling star. The shoe told me.