Extraits

Chapter 1

Professor Frederic Laft wasn’t afraid of the dark. He’d walked across Goodrich Campus late at night a thousand times. Besides that, he was preoccupied by the news he had heard that afternoon. A former student, a bothersome young man, was apparently about to cause more trouble for him and others in the College of Engineering.

The student in question was a disagreeable fool. Unpleasant, unkempt and unworthy—especially unworthy of the fame and fortune he grubbed for.

Chapter 2

His name was Remo, but one day soon he would come to be famous in urban legend as the Sunglasses Man, gallant savior of co-eds in distress.

He didn’t know he was about to become legendary. He didn’t want to be legendary. He just wanted to pick up some of the trash on this stretch of shoreline so he could go back to his summer vacation.

“You’d think the cops would do a better job watching the beach,” he complained. “I guess I can’t blame them. This isn’t even inside the city limits, is it? And there are miles of beach and not enough cops. I’m sure they get all kinds of crap from people who are always saying stuff like, ‘You’d think the cops would do a better job watching the beach.’ You know?”

The clerk said nothing, but he rolled his eyes up, then down, then this way and that way. Remo Williams used his fingertips to adjust the clerk’s spine slightly. The clerk inhaled for the first time in more than a minute.

“You sound like a St. Bernard woofing,” Remo said.

“Couldn’t breathe,” the clerk said.

“I know. I’m the one who made you not breathe, remember? And I can do it again.”