"The Atlantis Prophecy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Greanias Thomas)

4

CONRAD LAY on his back in bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking of Serena. Sex with Brooke had certainly released his pent-up energy, but he felt guilty as hell.

He looked over at Brooke. They had gone out together in high school, and she was the first girl he'd ever made love to. Now that his father was gone, she was the only connection to his past. After school, he had left her behind to go off on his digs and to other women, catching clips of her colorful commentaries now and then on NBC and later Fox.

Then Serena had made him forget his previous life entirely, made him forget everything the moment he first met her in South America.

It was only after Serena had deserted him after the disaster in Antarctica and he had come back to D.C. that he and Brooke reconnected. He had been jogging through Montrose Park just a few blocks away, as he did almost every morning. She was walking her dog. They practically collided in front of the park's sphere-like sun dial. It was fate. Almost instantly, it seemed, she had brought him home with her. The dog must have known it had lost its place in Brooke's heart to Conrad, because it ran away the day before he moved in. Ever since it was like they had never been apart.

Until now. Until Serena had shown up at Arlington.

Conrad's thoughts turned to Tom Sawyer downstairs and the incomplete message he had deciphered. Just one more word to finish it.

He looked at Brooke, watched her full breasts rise and fall rhythmically and was convinced she was asleep. He slipped out of bed and glanced out the bedroom window. The black SUV was gone, but that didn't mean someone or something out there wasn't watching or listening.

He quietly walked downstairs, where he headed for the living room and retrieved the book from under the sofa. He didn't like hiding things from Brooke, mostly because he knew how much she hated it when he did. But he doubted he could bring up the book code without bringing up Serena-or looking like a liar if he failed to mention their encounter and she found out. And Brooke would. She always did.

He walked into the hallway bathroom, put the toilet lid down and sat with the book in the soft glow of the nightlight over the sink.

He looked up the last word from the book on Page 54: It was the word "land." When he finished writing it down, Conrad stared down at the note in his hand and the complete message his father left him: