GENREALITY

An Excerpt from Shadowlight
a novel of the Kyndred
by Lynn Viehl
to be released by NAL/Onyx on October 6, 2009

“Adele, standing there and breathing on it ain’t gonna get that window clean,” Maribeth Boden said as she finished rubbing the last streak from the glass in front of her.

Adele Watkins didn’t reply, but swatted the air with her hand.

“Come on now.” Maribeth walked over to help her friend, and studied the dusty inside of the pane. “We got three more offices to do before. . . we. . . ” she stopped and gulped. “Sweet baby Jesus.”

“Uh-huh,” Adele murmured.

The man on the other side of the window stood in the shade the recessed arch over it provided. While Maribeth saw a lot of men during her rounds of the office buildings she cleaned every day, she couldn’t recall ever noticing one put together like this one.

He was too dark to be white, and too light to be black. She would have pegged him as Hispanic or Indian, if not for his dark blond hair and light eyes, but that wasn’t right either. If someone had asked her, she would have said his skin reminded her of her mama’s homemade pralines, all hot and smooth as they cooled on wax paper in the kitchen.

His pretty skin covered broad, heavy muscles, the kind she’d never seen on a white man, not even the ones at the gym round the corner. When he shifted position, they didn’t ripple, they flowed.

“You think he’s gonna put that jacket back on?” Adele murmured.

The white sleeveless shirt he wore clung to his chest and torso like body paint, and made it clear to Maribeth that everything it covered was just as fine as what it exposed. “God wouldn’t be that mean to me.”

Adele sucked in a sharp breath as the man turned his head to look at the window. “He knows we’re watching him.”

“No he don’t,” Maribeth chided. “It’s privacy glass; the outside’s like a mirror, ‘member? He’s just looking at himself.” But he didn’t do much of that before he went back to watching the street. “You think he works here?”

“If he does we’re blind.” Adele pressed her dark hand to dirty window. “Damn, Mari, but if he ain’t the finest man I’ve seen in my whole life, I’ll eat my mop.”

Maribeth thought of her man, Darnell, who was still home in bed after a long night on the road. “Think I’m gonna go home for lunch today.”

Adele sputtered a laugh. “I was thinking I’d take my coffee break in the back of my husband’s cab.”

“Morning, ladies.” Carter Burleigh, one of the young attorneys who worked on the floor, walked up behind them. “Have either of you . . . found . . . . ” he stopped speaking, but his jaw remained in its dropped position.

Adele glanced back at him. “That your boyfriend, Mr. Burleigh?”

“God wouldn’t be that kind to me, Adele.” Carter wedged himself between the two women to have a better look. “Damn.”

“Amen,” Maribeth said on her own sigh.

On the other side of the window, the man who had taken the name Gaven Matthias decided he’d concealed himself long enough to dispel casual suspicion, and moved out of the shade to cross the street. As he did, he heard the groans of the two women and the one man who had been watching him, and smiled a little as he kept his jacket slung over his arm.

On the other side of the street, he walked down the block, went to a meter, took out a handful of coins and counted them. Everyone who walked past him paid little attention to what he did; he was simply a man avoiding a parking ticket.

They were not aware that he claimed the spot many hours before dawn, or that he had spent the time either watching the phone booth next to the parking space or feeding coin to it so he might eavesdrop on every woman who came to use the booth. Fortunately in this era of mobile phones few seemed to have need of it, and there had only been two since dawn.

The third came as he selected a quarter to add to the meter. He heard the click of her heels on the concrete sidewalk and smelled her scent as she passed. He didn’t look directly at her, but from the corner of his eye saw the gleaming twist of black hair at the back of her head and the smooth fit of her gray jacket over slim black trousers.

She dressed like a man but smelled like good clear water, crisp and cool. He closed his eyes briefly, taking her scent deep into his chest and letting it warm him. Few of his boyhood beliefs had withstood the passage of time and life, but he still kept faith in his senses. They whispered that she had come to him at last, the one he was meant to find. She smelled of tears and melting snow.

She smelled of rain.

Coins chimed as she put fed them into the phone, and then her voice brushed against his ears, low and sweet, a taste of dark honey. She asked for an agent by name, waited, and said, “I have important information for you. Please listen carefully.”

Matthias pressed a button on his watch to switch it to its timing function before he fed another quarter into the meter and listened. The woman spoke rapidly, offering names, dates, monetary amounts and the electronic method used to commit the crime. She gave the address of a hotel and the room number where the criminals responsible could be found. She finished the call with a polite refusal—probably for a sizeable reward—and hung up the receiver.

She walked away without looking back once.

He checked his watch. She had related everything in one minute and thirty-eight seconds. As he watched her turn the corner, he saw her remove first one black leather glove and then the other.

He took out his own phone and pressed the number two before bringing it to his ear. “Who did she call?”

“FBI headquarters in New York City,” Drew told him. “Did you get a clear shot?”

“There was no opportunity.” Matthias went around and climbed into his rental car. As he pulled out and drove around the block, he repeated everything he had heard the woman had say. “You can check what she reported to see if it is true?”

“Already on it.” The sound of tapping keys came over the line. “Got a hit. The details she gave the FBI match an unsolved case that happened two years ago. Electronic embezzlement. The company lost close to a million dollars. No suspects.”

“Soon there will be.”

“No doubt,” Drew agreed. “Why doesn’t she report them to the local office? They’re there in Atlanta.”

He considered that. “Too close to where she lives.”

“Then you were right. She lives in the city.”

“Lives, or perhaps works.” Matthias searched the faces of the pedestrians walking on either side of the street before he spotted the woman standing at a corner and holding her hand in the air. “She came by taxi.”

“Smart lady. No car, no license plate we can use to trace her identity. Do you think she suspects that someone is looking for her?”

“She would not stay here if she did.” Matthias kept one hand on the wheel and used the other to lift his camera to his face. He was able to snap three profile shots as the woman entered the taxi that had stopped for her. “Find out what you can. I will call you later.”

“Good hunting, boss.”

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