Excerpt of The Rain Sparrow by Linda Goodnight

I’m tired, boss…tired of bein’ on the road, lonely as a
sparrow in the rain. The Green Mile

It was a dark and stormy night, a cliché Hayden Winters
dearly loved. These broody, moody nights of lightning and
thunder and violent wind fueled his imagination like no
other. A man intent on committing murder….

The storm had moved in around midnight, interrupting his
original plans to sleep. He could never sleep on a night
like this. Didn’t want to, especially here in a house
filled with memories and secrets.

Everyone, he believed, has a secret, and the south was
filled with them. That’s why he’d come.

Hayden had a secret, too, a psychological canker worm.
One that was eating a raw, black hole in his soul. Not
that he’d ever let anyone see inside to know that much
about him. To the world, Hayden Winters was a winner, a
success, a man who brushed problems away with a charming
smile. He was a man invited to the best parties he seldom
attended and who gave rare, but coveted interviews. A man
with a charmed life.

But on these dark, moody, broody nights the demons danced
around the edges of his fertile mind. He wondered at his
sanity, and knew it was only by a merciful God that he
was strong of constitution and could keep the demons in
their rightful place. Most of the time.

So he killed people. Dozens of them. Books littered with
bodies fed some perverse need in the populace and kept
his bank account fat and happy.

In the elegant rented bedroom-the Mulberry Room-lit only
by the glow of his laptop, Hayden rose, went to the
windows to watch and listen as rain lashed the sides of
Peach Orchard Inn with its silver-on-black fingers
clawing to get in.

The view outside was far different than it had been upon
his arrival earlier today. An Australian shepherd,
graying around the edges, had drowsed on the long and
glorious antebellum veranda. Hayden had immediately
envisioned himself at the wicker furniture, feet up on
the railing with a glass of Julia Presley’s almost-famous
peach tea and his imagination in flight.

The two-story columned mansion had shone in the sun,
glowing in its whiteness with dark trimmed shutters,
flowers spilling everywhere and thick vines twining like
great green arms around the oak trees. He’d driven down
the winding lane of massive magnolias right into an
antebellum past, far from the distractions and manic pace
of the modern world.

Peach Orchard Inn, a simple name for a magnificent house,
restored he would bet, to better than its former glory.
His assistant, who knew him better than most, though not
well, had discovered the inn while on vacation and
suggested he write the next bestseller here. Exhausted by
the city bustle and another romance gone sour, he’d
jumped at the idea. His ex should have taken him at his
word. He’d told her from the beginning that he was
neither husband nor father material. The reasons for this
aversion he’d kept to himself, more for her protection
than his. She didn’t know that, though, and had been
hurt.

He hated hurting people. Other than in his books. And the
latest episode drove him deeper into himself. A man like
him ought not to need other people.

He could work here, rest here, research small town
secrets for the next thriller. There were plenty of
interesting places to commit murder.

Across the road, a single light glowed like a beacon in
the storm. The source was the abandoned, dilapidated
grist mill that had once been part of this farm. He knew
this because he was ferociously curious and knowing was
his business. Abandoned buildings provided perfect places
to get away with murder. He’d be suitably inspired here
among the hills and hollows of southern Tennessee.

A blue-fire javelin of lightning, fierce as a bolt
straight from the hand of Zeus slit the night like a
fiery blade. Gorgeous stuff.

Hayden stretched, rolled his neck, considered a walk in
the violence.

He’d be up most of the night during a wild thunderstorm
of this magnitude. He could feel the yet unformed story
brewing in his blood, a bubbling cauldron of energy and
creativity.

Coffee, and plenty of it, was a must. He wasn’t a Red
Bull kind of guy. Something about it seemed addictive to
him and if there was anything he feared greater than
losing his only useful resource-his fertile mind-it was
addiction. Addictions came, he knew, in many forms.

Leaving the laptop curser to blink a blind eye, he let
himself out of the luxurious Mulberry Room and made his
way down shadowy stairs carpeted in blood red, his hand
on the smooth wooden banister, taking care on the creaky
third step he’d noticed earlier. No self-respecting
author of murder and mayhem missed a creaky step.

Lightning illuminated the curved staircase and thunder
rumbled like a thousand kettle drums. The house stood
steady, quiet even, as if it had weathered too much to be
bothered by a thunderstorm. There were stories here. He
could feel them.