A Thousand Steps by T. Jefferson Parker

Author:T. Jefferson Parker [Parker, T. Jefferson]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Mystery, Thriller, Adult, Suspense
ISBN: 9781250793539
Google: jZswEAAAQBAJ
Amazon: B09279ZMHM
Goodreads: 57693523
Publisher: Forge Books
Published: 2022-01-11T06:00:00+00:00

31

Early dawn on Emerald Bay, the water not emerald at all, but a gray mirror in the new light. The morning is cool and the beach homes wait in fog, their windows throwing faint reflections back at Matt Anthony, who waits high on a hillside inside the Eikenberg gate.

He pulls on his leather work gloves. He’s got coffee in a thermos, two donuts from Dave’s in his stomach, a simmering anger at Furlong and at himself, for taking this valuable time away from his search for Jasmine. No sign of Sara, who buzzed him in through the intercom, but the wheelbarrow she mentioned is right here by the driveway gate. He wonders if he can even use it on a slope this steep.

Matt takes another sip of coffee, crosses himself like in the movies, and gets to work.

First order of business from here is to get the smaller logs to the top of the drive, and the big ones to the bottom. He picks up two of the smaller ones, and damned heavy they are, but he clinches one under each armpit and trots uphill. It’s like carrying car batteries or cocker spaniels and his legs feel the weight before he’s halfway up.

He makes it to the top.

Drops the logs, then works them upright into the dirt. Two down!

Then he pushes one very big log off its flat sawn edge, aims it downhill and gives it a push with his foot. It wobbles, then straightens, gravity kicking in, then Matt’s chasing it down the slope, guiding it with short alternating kicks like a soccer player, dodging the Victorian streetlamps and log piles and barely keeping up with the solid, barreling thing. It’s like trying to control a hog with your feet.

Nearing the gate Matt turns the animal with a strong kick and watches it angle hard right, skid downslope, stall, and stop. He brakes but catches his heel and goes down, sledding through a bed of eucalyptus leaves on his butt. He stands, panting. Still twenty feet to get that log into position. Advancing in a mood of combat, he squats and flips the log flat-end to flat-end, laterally downslope, and finally into place.

He stands over log number three as something conquered. He’s breathing hard. His whole body feels used, just like it does high up on Bluebird every day, after slinging his last paper. But he knows he can’t move the big logs downhill in this way, and not get hurt.

He takes a moment to look out at the Pacific, already a deep indigo blue in the weakening fog. Smells coastal sage and, of course, eucalyptus. Hears doves hoo-hooing in a sycamore tree and thinks how cool it would be if his mother and father were still married, and he and Kyle and Jazz could help them build a house right exactly here, where they could wake up to this every morning. He could fish down there where only the residents can go. Get a dog.

He loads the wheelbarrow with four smaller logs and grinds his way uphill on the smooth concrete of the drive.

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