The Crowsbrook Demons

Chapter 5

Adam was running again. He'd been running for half an hour now, on the treadmill in his home gym. The gym was one of the things he'd invested in doing properly. He hated running in the rain, and the treadmill meant that he could run any time of the day or night, in all weathers. He could track his progress, day by day; see if he was running faster, or further, or both. The only sound in the big house on the edge of the small country village was the whirr of the treadmill motor and the thud of Adam's feet. He didn't listen to music while he was running. It took him out of the moment.

He let his thoughts wander.

He had made the deal. He always had a vague feeling of uncertainty when making deals, but somehow, that was better: that feeling made him pay attention to detail, take nothing for

granted. Like an actor with stage fright, he went through the project in his mind, accounting for every detail, justifying every decision, until he was sure everything was note-perfect.

This deal was different, though. This deal—

This deal would be the making of him. If everything went well. The risk was bigger, the stakes were higher, but the payoff...the payoff would be everything.

And oddly enough, he wasn't worried at all.

His running shoes thudded against the belt of the treadmill.

He believed in himself. One thing he and his father had in common. Well, not exactly. His father believed in hard work. "Hard work makes a man." The mantra from his childhood.

Drummed into him from the time he started school. If you put your back into it, you can do anything, his father told him. If you put your brain into it, though, you could get so much more done. Delegating. Instructing. Commanding. So much more.

Commanding? Where had that come from? That wasn't usually his style. But maybe it was time to kick up his game a little, under the circumstances.

Well. Directing, if not commanding. Someone had to be in charge. To take charge. And he had. You had to be more aggressive these days if you wanted to succeed. Carrington had taught him that.

His father was part of an outdated generation. And he was an electrician. A good one, but still at the behest of people telling him what to do. Even if you owned your own business, you would never have that much power. Never make that much of a difference.

(His father would argue that the difference between good wiring and bad wiring was the difference between taking your power supply for granted because you never had a problem with it and dying in a house fire, but, then, his father had no ambition.)

Adam had ambition, though. And whatever his father said about reputation, Adam knew something else as well: no one cared if the people you worked with looked up to you; no one had ever cared if they liked you. It was the people in your circle that mattered. Where you were invited. That was what made you a success. And Adam realized that that was harsh: a man could work hard and build something wonderful and never be admitted to those circles, never have that kind of power and

access. He'd watched it happen to his father. All that hard work for nothing. Nobody knew who he was. He was a nobody.

Couldn't see dear old Dad down in the Smoke, having lunch with a couple of boys from the Commons, someone connected to a junior minister, if he had the time; couldn't see him with

the lads from the big banks (Adam could see his father shaking his head: "Don't trust anyone who can't explain what they do in five words or less"; well, five words wasn't enough to explain the world in the twenty-first century, was it? Did he even realize that, the old fool?)