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Chapters (86)
  1. Cover
  2. Praise
  3. Booklist
  4. Dedication
  5. 1
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  10. 6
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  84. 80
  85. 81
  86. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Adam was weary to his bones and sick of imagining things. Up all night creating a wickedly sharp sculpture that recalled its time in the ocean’s depths and lamented its dark past and the pain only death could erase. “A lost soul. Sometimes, Rune, I think you’re as barking as everyone else in this town. I swear I’m going to bed.”

Not to the sea. To bed.

If only Adam had kept his promise...

4

ADAM STEPPED OUT OF the Live Oak Restaurant into the sunshine, scanned the distant olive grove at the top of the hill and saw no flash of binoculars or camera lens. Must have been a birder earlier, and whoever it was had found new aviary life to study.

As it turned out, he was being watched, but by Mrs. Hardling, and when a man lived in a hamlet this small, what else could he expect? The neighbors were nosy and eager for entertainment, and apparently he wasn’t as boring as he had hoped.

On the run downhill, he spoke to every person he saw. This part of Big Sur was sparsely populated—he’d lived here five years, and he knew the names. But he made it a point never to discuss their kids or their dogs, whether the economy was recovering or failing, when the next storm would arrive...or where he was from, what he’d done in the past, why he had come to Gothic, why he stayed. Human nature being what it was, he knew his reticence made him all the more interesting. He just didn’t care.

Bed. He really ought to go to bed.

Yet his brain yammered with hateful memories, the Pacific Ocean called his name, taunting him with the promise of treasure brought up from the deep by the wind and tide, and Rune’s comments about his aura and finding what he needed from the ocean resonated with the songs of seabirds and the rhythm of the waves.

Damn it, Rune, why did you put the thought into my head?

Except Rune hadn’t put the thought into his head. The Pacific called to Adam, endlessly, persistently, and sooner or later Adam would return forever to the depths. He was, after all, the lost soul Rune predicted. Why not return now?

Go to the beach. Look for another scrap of metal brought forth by Mother Ocean. Maybe, just maybe, fling himself in to drown.

At home, he donned his leather duster and his broad brimmed hat, got in his ATV and drove down the road to the Pacific Coast Highway.