Bird of the Gods

Chapter Five

An autumn morning dawned, drab and dismal, where there should have been a sunny spring afternoon. Conrad sat, yawned, and rubbed his sanded eyes, the movement triggering his stomach into pushing up an acid burp of protest. It had been doing this all throughout a restless night.

Fair enough, jetlag seemed to be the price to pay for jumping global time zones. The upset stomach he owed to his blasted client. The lovely Ms. Lewis's stinginess forced him into cattle class, hurtling through the turbulent skies for a lot longer than he'd bargained for, with vegan food tasting of dead men's feet to round off the experience.

Or perhaps that honor was owed to the little terror behind him. Was it his fault the airline kitted the thing out with unstable seats? Nope. Was it his fault she was filling her face when he needed a shuteye? Nope. The young woman seemed pretty enough, sure, but jeez, all that fuss over nothing.

Okay, the flight attendant had been real eye candy, with the curves in all the right places and a come-hither smile. Actually, her attentions had been a bit OTT, but when she slipped him her number, he took it. One never knew.

The train journey from Zurich to Paris and from there to Brittany had been no better. Delays, more delays, trains bursting with stressed tourists, the bistro on board closed—in France, of all places—added to the nightmare journey. As a result, he'd arrived at the Coeur du Carnac after eleven p.m., which meant banging on the hotel's closed doors, until the sour-faced landlady deigned to let him in.

"You're late, monsieur."

"Sorry, but I called you. Twice."

"Pas mon problème."

Europe was one messed-up continent. And this job off to a poor start.

He checked his watch. Another hour until he was to meet the lovely Ms. Lewis. The reasons for meeting at the crack of dawn remained a mystery. Unless she expected him to be jetlagged and wanted to make his life easier?

Conrad snorted. What he'd learned about the woman so far didn't exactly give him the warm fuzzies. He reached for the folder lying atop the rickety nightstand and skimmed through his notes. Others might laugh at his extensive research, but he liked to understand who he was dealing with—

A black, hairy spider scuttled from the folder onto his hand and raised its front legs in a way that could only be described as menacing.

"Shi-it."

Conrad shook off the monster and the folder, scattering pages all over the place. In search of his shoe, he jumped off the bed. Then he jumped back up again. The spider, far from being dead or at least terminally concussed, scuttled at him, full speed.

Accompanied by a pinging of springs and the headboard banging the wall, he grabbed the pillow and hurled it at the many-legged pest. His missile landed with a muffled thump, knocking over the rickety nightstand. The can of coke he'd left there spilled its content in a frothing rush, soaking the fluffy mauve carpet.

Were he in a bowling alley instead of a seedy bedroom, he would just have scored a strike. At least the spider had vanished, hopefully flattened by the pillow.

Conrad waited, but his antagonist didn't show. No way would he lift that pillow to find out what happened to the doggone crawly. Only a spider, his sister would say. Yeah, right? She hadn't been the one to get bitten by a black widow as a child and nearly die. And no matter what Wikipedia had to say about the European specimens being mostly harmless, he didn't like the qualifier.

When still nothing happened for anxious moments, he jumped from the bed, and picked up his scattered research.

Someone hammered against the wall and shouted something. It didn't sound French. Bloody tourists.