Crone's Moon: A Rowan Gant Investigation Read Online Free PDF

forget.
Not in this lifetime and probably not even the next.
    Fortunately for me, the rope he had been
trying to hang me with had held fast. The other bonus was that it
had been wrapped around my arm instead of my neck. It was only due
to this stroke of blind luck that I had the luxury of being able to
recall that night in all of its Technicolor detail.
    But that’s another story, sort of.
    Now, to clarify, I have to point out that I’m
not one to panic or go into an immobile stupor due to a fear of
heights— not at all. Whenever confronted by the vertical demon, I
simply feel an involuntary catch in my throat and then experience
that sinking flutter in the pit of my stomach that always precedes
the ‘fight or flight’ adrenalin dump of fear. Of course, it is just
about then that said adrenalin does exactly that— dump.
    With a sudden flood into my circulatory
system, the hormone embarks on an emotionally driven attempt to
rescue me from the perceived danger. A few seconds later I, mutter
some form of exclamation, the cleanliness of which is directly
proportional to the height multiplied by the amount of adrenalin
then divided by my heart rate. That accomplished, I remove myself
from the situation.
    For the most part, all it ever really does is
make me tense muscles I don’t even remember having and then battle
a lingering headache for an hour or two.
    “Sudden stop.” My friend’s deep voice uttered
the two simple words from behind and above my left shoulder.
    I glanced back without fully turning and
questioned him. “Do what?”
    “The sudden stop at the bottom,” Detective
Benjamin Storm returned with an almost jovial undertone. “Ya’know…
It ain’t the fall that kills ya’, it’s the sudden stop at the
bottom.”
    It was comments like this one that had long
ago convinced me that my best friend, a homicide detective with the
Saint Louis City Police, would make the perfect wisecracking cop
for a weekly television crime drama. He was loyal, honest, and good
at his job. And, as evidenced by his most recent verbal
observation, he was inextricably tied to clichés. There were even
times when they would season his speech the same way some people
salt their French fries— too much. Still, while not always an
especially endearing quality, it was a part of his makeup, and I
accepted it for the personality trait it was. Of course, accepting
it didn’t keep me from retaliating against it at times.
    Like right now for instance.
    “Not actually,” I said as I turned, unsure as
to whether or not he would take the bait I was about to toss before
him.
    I put my hand up to shield my eyes against
the late morning sun. The sky was clear and the yellow-white globe
had already driven the air temperature past ninety, with the
relative humidity making it feel as if we were in a Jacuzzi. Worse
yet, the hottest part of the day was still to come. Of course, that
was just ‘Mother Nature’s Tourism Bureau’s’ way of saying welcome
to June in Saint Louis, Missouri.
    The only thing that made it bearable standing
up here on the open concrete deck of the parking structure was the
slight breeze rising and falling around us, and more importantly,
the fact that a table in an air-conditioned restaurant was waiting
for us down at street level.
    I tilted my head up to look at my friend’s
face. While I wasn’t the tallest person around, I was still of
average height. Ben, on the other hand, took average and built upon
it with reckless abandon. He stood a full six-foot-six and carried
himself on an enviable broad-shouldered, muscular frame.
    The sun silhouetted him so I had to squint in
order to make out his angular face. Framing his countenance was
coal black hair, worn as long as departmental regulations allowed.
His dark eyes gazed out over high cheekbones, revealing little and
missing nothing. It was impossible to look at him and not
immediately know that he was full-blooded Native American.
    “Whaddaya mean, ‘not