A Saturday of Sunshine and Starbucks

I've been trying to stick to a Monday, Wednesday, Friday blog post schedule, but alas, my internet quit working Thursday night.  I had to spend 45 minutes on the phone last night with the internet provider trying to get them to fix it.  It would appear for the moment they have.

It's been a lovely day so far.  I woke up early and went to a 5k run with my sister, and the morning was chilly and sunshiney gorgeous.  Then we went to Starbucks and I got a grande pumpkin latte, which led to an amazing caffeine high, which led to being productive with some yard work.  Now I'm ready to take a luscious afternoon nap.  So, here is your teaser for the week, from Chapter Two.  Have a great weekend!

She was abruptly aware of her senses as they came into sharp, diamond focus: images flashing into her peripheral vision, her ears picking up hundreds of distinct sounds, her skin tingling all over. Her heart quickened almost painfully and her throat went dry. All of this happened in a fraction of a second, her body reacting to some unknown threat.

Adding to her panic was the fact that she’d never experienced anything like it before. She had no idea why her body was reacting as it was, but she abruptly felt an uncontrollable urge to look behind her and see if anyone was following her. It was a completely irrational instinct since of course many people were behind her on the crowded street.

She turned her head, very slowly, to look behind her. Not knowing what she was looking for, her eyes scanned the crowd, skipping over each figure in less than a second. Her logical mind was absent as some sort of foreign intuition took over. Then her eyes rested on what she knew without a doubt was the source of her instinctual fear: about twenty feet back, a tall figure in a dark cloak strode swiftly in her direction.