DARK SEA, SHADOWWATER II - EXCERPT

Cape Cod. June. One year later.

Auto-pilot OFF. Until this moment, he’d replayed in his head the running battle with his father about working this summer. Only nineteen. He wasn't an adult in most states yet. Sure, working with the professor was an honor. And his father had paid good money to secure his son’s job as a lab assistant, but … the warming sun and cooling blue water of Cape Cod Bay, the girls in their micro-bikinis...A familiar voice bellowed inside the pilot’s head, FOCUS!

Remembering his cargo, the teenager sat up, determined to land his Cessna in Hyannis before his 5:00 pm pick-up. He banked west to head back to the airport when he spotted a gaggle of geese above an inlet. They had been flying their usual V-formation until they dove, like Spitfires heading toward their target. Beneath them was a small cottage. A woman with blazing strawberry-blonde hair and wearing a long, white cover-up which revealed her figure and ivory skin, stood outside her screened-in porch. The pilot followed the geese, spreading them everywhere, when the woman’s arms rose as if she were praying, and a light so powerful … BUMP. The pilot’s cockpit window was doused with streams of blood intermixed with sticky black, brown, and white feathers—he had no idea how many geese he’d hit, startled. 

Now his hands on the yoke began to shake and perspiration ran down his forehead. He wiped his brow and tried to breathe as he noticed the windshield had patches left uncovered, he wasn't flying completely blind, when a red light flashed and a dissonant noise warned that the plane was in trouble. The young man pulled his wheel with all his upper-body strength, and then spotted a field. Not my destination, but it’ll do. As the kid got closer and closer to the ground, Here goes nothing, he grabbed the wheel tighter and pulled. And then there was—nothing.

E-book available on Kindle.

COPYRIGHT 2014 Wendy Shreve ALL RIGHTS RESERVED