Mako (The Mako Saga: Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

grumbled, snatching the phone from his snack bar and eyeing the name of the sender.
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    Hamish Lunley, born in Chicago, had been adopted as an infant by Isaac and Eleanor Lunley, a pair of Scottish immigrants who were unable to have children of their own. Shortly after age three, however—upon receiving word of his adopted grandfather’s cancer diagnosis—Hamish and his family were forced to leave their lives in Illinois and return home to North Berwick (a small bay-side town just outside of Edinburgh) so that Isaac, formerly a doctor in the Cook County Hospital ER, could take over the family medical practice.
    Growing up, Hamish quickly developed a reputation as a character. He was sarcastic, quick-witted, and most times exceptionally loud—all qualities that usually made him a hit with his peers. Even still, there was always the subtle hint of an almost outcast element to him, despite his immense popularity at school. Granted, many attributed that to his oftentimes brash behavior, though much of it most certainly had to do with his physical appearance, which was starkly different from everyone around him. Hamish’s biological parents had been African-American and as such, he was quite literally the only black Scot in a school of just under 1,500 students.
    Still, one thing was for certain: whether it was his loud Scottish mouth or his dark skin tone, Hamish Lunley always stood out in a crowd, a fact that was clearly evident at the Pourhouse by the masses of people who tended to flock around him, if for no other reason than to hear such a peculiar accent boom from the mouth of such an unlikely source.
    Link Baxter, meanwhile, was the perfect complement to Hamish. The two had met at a Dropkick Murphys show during their first semester at FSU and hit it off immediately with their myriad common interests, ranging from British punk music to rugby, politics, women, speculative fiction, and of course, Scotch whiskey.
    From a physical standpoint, the two couldn’t have been more different. Standing some six feet, two inches tall and weighing in at nearly 285 pounds with barreling broad shoulders and a shaved head, Hamish’s physique was more akin to that of a bowling ball, whereas Link (5 foot 6, 150 pounds) sported a significantly wirier frame with pale skin and thick black head and facial hair. Nevertheless, while physically they were polar opposites, their personalities would make anyone believe that they were brothers separated at birth. Like Hamish, Link displayed the same wisecracking, sarcastic temperament, though admittedly a bit more hotheaded, and when paired with his larger Scottish counterpart—particularly in a place that served alcohol—the duo was almost certainly guaranteed to be the center of attention before the night was out.
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    Typing up a quick response to Hamish, who was thankfully just checking in, Lee stuffed his phone into his pocket and cut back through the kitchen to the door that, once upon a time, would’ve let out into the townhouse’s single-car garage. In the years since its construction, however, the space had been remodeled by the original owner into a separate family room for the kids, and it was this feature that had initially caught his eye.
    Stepping down into the dark and flipping the switch on the inside wall, Lee watched as the room’s florescent lights flickered awake to reveal the crown jewel of the otherwise forgettable dwelling—a 25 x 30 foot game room.
    Meticulously decorated with an array of treasures from seemingly every flea market, garage sale, and Craigslist ad in three counties, the room featured a tall, L-shaped bar (which he had built himself), along with a billiards table, a steel-tipped dart board, a trio of old-school arcade games, and finally a wall-to-wall collection of aging bookshelves—each one spanning from floor to ceiling and all but brimming over with a boundless library of academic and recreational texts. An avid bookworm since childhood, Lee