The Emissary

Further Praise for
The Emissary

So many people help an author find the creative space to work in, like an understanding partner who misses a lot of nights out and special dinners, or a friend who provides encouragement and love—even a faithful dog who sits patiently on her pillow, knowing food follows the inspired moments! I am blessed to have some wonderful people and animal companions holding that space for me, and I thank you all for your patience and understanding when I’m typing away into the wee hours of the morning, in the magic of the creative process.

Many editions later, I still celebrate the bond I enjoy with all the people at North Atlantic Books, who have continued to support me with almost blind faith over the years. The team changes a bit as time moves us all forward, but the commitment remains steadfast. Special thanks to Richard Grossinger, who knows how the stars shine; to Doug Reil, for his commitment to the Earth and for the support he has shown me over the years; to Janet Levin, who believed in
The Emissary
from its beginnings and has stood behind me all the way.

Much gratitude to my crackerjack editor, Emily Boyd, who really knows how to put things together and does so with great eloquence; and to my dedicated copy editor, Adrienne Armstrong, for perfecting the words, never losing the voice. There are many others behind the scenes at North Atlantic Books, so please feel my gratitude for all you do to guide my books out to the world.

I’m excited to be working with my new publicist, Dea Shandera, a true visionary, and with acclaimed film producer Dan Sherkow, who is determined to bring
The Emissary
to the big screen. Thank you, Vitaly Safarov, for opening those doors with your undying enthusiasm, inspiration, and loyalty through this process. Thanks, too, to Captain Graeme Stoner, for telling me how ships work.

Oh! To the mighty whales and gracious dolphins, you are my inspiration, my hope, and the dream of the Earth.

And last but never least—to my beautiful mother, Sara, who speaks to me from beyond the veil; to Franco, my beloved soul mate; to Bobbo, for his ongoing feedback; to my family of four-legged beings who love and have loved unconditionally; and to the light beings who guide my path, through this lifetime … and no doubt, many others.

Nathan Beals punched out from work at precisely 6:00 p.m., smack in the middle of Los Angeles rush hour. After the most ballistic holiday shopping mania he had ever seen in his twenty-odd years working security at the mall, he finally had an entire weekend off.

Exhausted, he dragged himself out to the employee parking lot, only to find that his faithful old Chevy sedan, “Miss Jezebel,” had been vandalized. The side mirror was smashed up against the window, and glass covered the asphalt—shattered reflections of what Nathan always referred to as “the broken society.” Examining the few remaining splinters wedged inside the frame, he could see it was no accident, and that someone had whacked the mirror deliberately—another anonymous punk with a baseball bat in his fists and a big, huge chip on his shoulder. He checked the passenger’s side and, sure enough, the attacker had also keyed three feet of the front fender and both doors: through the paint—right down to the steel.

“Aw-w-w man!” he shouted, though no one was there to hear. “Look at this, now!” Nathan ran his fingers over the unforgiving scar on Jezebel’s smooth, clean body, feeling the pain of it just as sharply as if it had been carved into his own flesh. “It never ends,” he said, shaking his head. “Good god almighty, it just never, ever ends.”

A senior guard for so many years at the mall, he thought he’d seen just about everything—shoplifters, gangbangers, lost kids,
vandals, stalkers—but never had he experienced anything like what he’d lived through the last year. This was the year of years in bizarre world and he could feel the tension rising, as if the whole planet were in a giant pressure cooker that was just about to blow its lid off, along with the whole human race, right out of Earth’s orbit.

He clutched his phone from his shirt pocket and dialed the first three numbers of the local police station—he certainly knew everybody there—but then, he thought it over for a moment, and hung up. With everything that was going on out there, on the streets of Los Angeles, they weren’t about to investigate petty vandalism—not even as a favor to him. And of course he wasn’t insured for anything like this anyway—so, what was the point?

Nathan grabbed a plastic bag out of the trunk and carefully picked up the shards of glass, piece by piece, so that he could discard them somewhere safer, far away from the mall, before anyone else got the idea to do any more damage with them … and just maybe sparing someone a flat tire. Shaking his head in frustration, he wondered if this malicious little gift might be payback for having intervened in a brawl earlier that day, knowing it was unlikely and that it was probably just him being overly paranoid—but thinking it, just the same. Violence, these days, didn’t need a reason or a cause. As a security guard with authority, though, he was good enough “reason” for any number of vengeful punks and petty criminals that he had to deal with—every single day.

Nathan always started his mornings with coffee at his favorite café in the mall. But that day, he never even got to taste it. Just as the clerk was handing him his latte, he got called to the south end, where trouble was brewing at Electronics Warehouse. The store clerk who called it in reported that there were two men fighting—he thought they were gangbangers—so Nathan was warned to use extreme caution approaching. When he got there, they were one minute away from killing each other, over what each
had claimed as his own territory—the one remaining “super sale” stereo in the store. One pulled a switchblade on the other, and he was about to use it, fired up and ready to kill.

Nathan managed to calm the kid and take the knife away, without him or anyone else getting hurt, preventing what very nearly could have resulted in another in a long list of urban L.A. killings. If security hadn’t gotten there in time—if he had stopped to stir a packet of sugar into his coffee—they would for sure have found the boy lying dead in a pool of his own blood … over a fifty-dollar discount on a damned car stereo that probably wasn’t even worth twenty bucks in the first place.

Because the situation involved a concealed weapon, Nathan was duty bound to call the incident in to the police immediately, which resulted in the knife-wielding youth being arrested on the spot and taken down to the station in handcuffs, while the other, not-so-innocent delinquent, just as responsible, was let go.