Total pages in book: 144
Estimated words: 133531 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 668(@200wpm)___ 534(@250wpm)___ 445(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 133531 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 668(@200wpm)___ 534(@250wpm)___ 445(@300wpm)
Another fifteen minutes. A whisper. Far off. A barely there thread of sound. He knew it was that same laughter. The same pitch. His hearing was acute and he was not mistaken. Those little chimes, not quite as loud this time, but he had homed in on them. Feminine for certain. Taking his time, Gideon carefully attached his thread, an anchor, much like a spider might, casting it into the air, right off the roof, sending it back along that same path to find the owner of that laughter.
Now it was another waiting game. This one wouldn’t be quite as long. Gideon changed position carefully. Moving hurt. Still, with this new intrigue, he didn’t feel it quite so much.
He felt the bump as the anchor attached itself to something solid. He found himself smiling. He was in San Francisco, and it was night. He didn’t need the Harpy Eagle or any of the large raptors for this purpose. He wanted a small bird no one would notice. The field sparrow was prevalent across Northern California. A beautiful little bird with a gray head and rust-colored crown. Small, very slender, with a pink bill and white eye-ring; the long tail was forked.
The little sparrow was reputed to be largely monogamous, and yet they sometimes had a secret, sneaking out and singing to attract another lady. Often that lady had her own male, who seemed to turn a blind ear to the new upstart singing to entice the female out of the nest to go meet with him.
Gideon sang softly, a very short whispered song to entice a female to him. The answer came immediately, as he knew it would. He’d made friends with the female, and she was nesting in the bushes he’d planted, which now grew thick on the wall farthest from him.
She came to him in little stops and starts. It wasn’t difficult to tie her to him and send her out to investigate for him. He needed eyes and information. The little sparrow wouldn’t be noticed, and if she was, no one would ever equate her with spying. That had always been his advantage. Because even as a child, he was so stoic that no one ever thought his imagination would enable him to envision calling birds to him and making them his allies.
His little sparrow flew down three long blocks on the same side of the street to land on a windowsill and peer in. The bar was noisy, packed and popular. It wasn’t one of the bars the local fishermen gathered in after coming back to the harbor. This was new, with a frenetic dance floor, mood lights and a young, hip crowd. When the bar had opened, no one thought it would do very well, but the locals hadn’t counted on the draw of the harbor and old-world San Francisco culture.
The bar was just far enough away that his team didn’t have a lock on the building yet. They could tap into the cameras easily enough, and Jaimie—Mack’s wife—or Javier could lock into the security system inside the bar. Javier might just be doing him a payback much sooner than either of them thought, because somewhere inside that building, with all those civilians drinking and laughing and hooking up, there was one woman whose laughter had the ability to erase—even if for a few minutes—the utter darkness of his past.
* * *
Laurel “Rory” Chappel lifted a hand to her fellow coworkers as she wound her way through the narrow maze that should have been a wide hallway leading to the back employee entrance. She was tired. More than tired. Exhausted. She was a night owl—awake all night and asleep during the day, except she hadn’t been sleeping much.
She was a rolling stone, a nomad, a woman who liked to travel and see what was around the next corner. She’d been drawn to the harbor, a strong compulsion that had brought her there to check it out. She loved the water, the feel of the fog and spray on her skin. The newer buildings, farther down from the actual working harbor, were clean and inviting. She needed clean. The bar, fortunately, didn’t allow smoking, so she was free to work there.
She had skills when it came to bartending, so the moment she hit San Francisco, she had researched the best-paying and most popular bars. Then she went to each district and walked around, immersing herself in the neighborhood to see if anything appealed to her. She always waited for something to click so she knew she was supposed to be there. She had instantly clicked with the harbor.
It was nice to be outside in the night air. She wasn’t someone who enjoyed being indoors, or at least in cramped spaces. The bar she worked behind was ideal for her. Long and slightly curved, it went nearly the length of the room, giving plenty of space for each bartender to have his or her own workstation. Behind the bar there was room to maneuver, so when it was extremely busy, the bartenders didn’t run into each other if they did have to step out of their own work area.