Hidden Agendas [antikvár]

PROLOGUEWednesday^ December 15th, 2010, 2:44 a.m. Baton Rouge, LouisianaA cold and damp winter wind played around the windows of the building, a breeze not strong enough to rattle the still-pristine thermopane glass, but potent enough to tweak an occasional whisde from an art-deco protrusion, whistles that now and then came low enough to sound almost Uke moans.Alone inside, the night watchmanwatchwoman in this casepored over the laptop on the guard station's desk, adding a few personal notes to the text of Professor Jenkins's long and incredibly boring lecture on the strata of rock formations in southem New Zealand. The lecmre was from his auditorium-sized class Introduction to Geology, her final science requirement, and she'd put it off as long as she could, but graduation was fast approaching and there was no way around it. She would have taken Astronomy, supposedly a walk, but the classes had been filled before she'd ever logged on to registration. Too bad. Stars were much more interesting than rocks.Kathryn Brant sighed, leaned back in the creaky chair, and mbbed at her eyes. Geology. Bleh.