All the lights were on in the kitchen when he entered the house, and he immediately grabbed a pencil on the counter to dim them. He walked up the back stairs to his dark bedroom, disrobing and hanging his clothes in the large closet before he walked down the main stairwell, wrapped only in a large, finely spun towel. As he passed the second floor landing, he was stopped by an accented voice coming from the library.
“Back so soon?”
He turned to look at the older gentleman who was reading in front of the lit fireplace.
“A fire, Caspar?”
The older man shrugged. “I turned the air-conditioning down so it at least felt like fall.”
He chuckled. “Whatever you prefer. And the library was a bit disappointing.”
“Trouble finding an assistant?”
“No, I found a rather good one, in fact. I might meet her again. No, the Lincoln documents were not what I’d hoped.”
“Unfortunate.”
The man shrugged his shoulders. “The client isn’t going anywhere.”
“Off for your swim then?”
He nodded and started to move down the stairs again.
“Will you be needing anything tonight?”
He walked up the stairs and back toward the library. “Nothing, thank you.”
“Enjoy the pool. It’s a beautiful night.”
“Enjoy your air-conditioning… and your fire,” he said with a minute smile ghosting his lips.
He heard Caspar laugh as he continued down the stairs. The man walked through the sitting room and past the breakfast area where Caspar ate in the morning to the French doors leading onto the brick patio.
He folded his towel on the back of a pool chaise and quickly dove into the water, cutting through the green-lit pool with effortless efficiency.
He swam up and down the mirrored rectangle for hours, enjoying the stretch of his lean muscles and the calming buoyancy of the salt water that filled the pool.
When the lights of the secluded yard switched off automatically at two in the morning, he floated on the surface. He hung there for a few minutes, enjoying the feeling of the warm, humid air on his face as his body was supported by the water at his back. Then he dove down, sitting on the bottom of the pool for another hour, looking up as he watched the moon track across the night sky.
THE SINGER
Copyright © 2014
Elizabeth Hunter
ISBN: 9781941674000
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover art: Damonza
Cover design: Damonza
Edited: Anne Victory
Custom font: Amptmann Script
by Peter Wiegel
Formatted: Elizabeth Hunter
Author Photograph: Third Element Studios
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Elizabeth Hunter, The Singer
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