These Ancient Bones (The Crows #2)

Prologue

“May the flame of your words ignite the human soul as you have wished, and may the flames you have thus created consume you, body and soul!”

The slab of rock was sitting on George Maynard’s front step as he returned from work that day. The words had been etched into it. He read them aloud with a sigh.

“Ah, come on, please!”

He had just left a press conference, and he was due to have a second in the morning. People were applauding him.

And then again, people were furious with him.

Well, he’d been warned since he’d been in his early twenties that his determination to follow a path into investigative reporting might prove to be dangerous.

Something had happened in the world. Maybe it had been the years of the pandemic, when people had sat home with nothing to do while acquiring cabin fever. Maybe they had needed something to be passionate about, a way to lash out because of their own misery.

No matter.

The pandemic was now in the past. But the determination of some people to lash out had remained, along with the determination of others to seize what they could in life—no matter the expense to others.

And hell. When people were screwing other people, he couldn’t help but feel that it was his calling to make sure he investigated—cleared the innocent and let the truth be known about the guilty.

He was always working in what he considered to be a search for common decency.

Yes, he did want to ignite people’s souls!

He wanted honesty, with no politics—if someone was doing something wrong, it was wrong, no matter what their political leaning.

All sides could have good ideas; all sides could have special interests.

Right and wrong were simple—and wrong should never be accepted, just as right needed to be.

The powerful—which usually meant those with a great deal of money—could too often get away with too much.

Ah, well …

He pushed the stone off the little tile porch step that led to the house.

It fell over, face down, into the flower bed at the side of the house.

His house was strange in a way, he thought.

On the outskirts of a city that prided itself on being the oldest inhabited by European settlers in the United States, his home just couldn’t really be considered that old, even though it had been built in the years just preceding the Civil War.

After all, some architecture in the city dated back over three hundred years.

But he loved his home. Through the years, the little tile porch and the step that led to it had been added. The kitchen, of course, had been modernized. The old carriage house out back was not used quite so much now that he had cast his hat into the political ring.

The front door opened to an entry, or a little mudroom, a place with hooks for jackets, umbrellas, or whatever.

Where one could shake off the rain or the cold before entering the main house through another door that opened into the generous parlor.

From there, the place branched off through fine archways into handsomely crafted rooms, a generous dining room to the left followed by the kitchen and pantry, an “entertainment” room to the right, with his home office right behind it.

A magnificent carved mahogany stairway led from the parlor to the five bedrooms on the second floor.

Yep, the place was still historic, all right!

One day, he’d bring Ainsley here. Right now, due to the ugliness of a few of his press conferences and current stories, he’d had her staying at her own place in the heart of the city.

But his father had bought what was now his house for almost nothing when it had just been an old home out in the wilderness, or just a bit of a distance from the heart of the city.

His dad had created the stunning drive, hedged by great greenery, that led to the entrance.

One day, George thought with pride, Ainsley Drake would be Ainsley Maynard, and their children and their children’s children would come and play in the great yard, enjoy the pool.

In the future! That night …

Well, he was going to be glad to be home, and to be alone.

He was going to pour himself a big whiskey and curl up in bed, get some sleep, and be ready to hit the trail again.

Since he had tackled Gen-Zec, press conference had followed press conference.

And it was cool because it had brought others on board.

He turned his key in the first lock, but spun around, startled, as an owl let out a loud cry in the night.

He smiled at himself. Just an owl. And a beautiful full moon was riding overhead.

Beautiful.

Screw the stupid stone! People were mad at him because he was sane, moderate, and wanted decency.

He smiled. Yep, he was ready for the fight for right!

He stepped into the entry and slipped his key in the second lock and pushed open the door.

That’s when he saw the large dark form, like a massive shadow in the dim light, facing him from the entry of his house.

And it was a second later that the burlap bag fell over his head, when something heavy and sharp struck him violently and hard on the temple, and when his muffled cry went out into the darkness …

Only to be heard by the night birds as his world went from gray to black.