Excerpt: Phantom Creek

An ambulance at two thirty in the afternoon should have brought everyone to the window, but the people in the cafe sat stock still. Perhaps it was because the barrista had yet to call out a single coffee order in the past ten minutes. Perhaps it was because the air conditioner was broken and it was too damn hot for anyone to be surprised that someone had collapsed from heat exhaustion. Don Henley played softly, barely audible beneath the sirens.