Hello, Little Sparrow by Jordan Jones (the reading list .TXT) 📕

smiled and nodded at them both and they walked out, flagging down a cab that just so happened to be driving by. I placed the paper back down on table and sat back…sighing in relief.

The pressure was off, though I still felt a pounding in my chest.

There was good in the world and I could be a part of it. The Sparrow wasn’t in charge of selecting what was good and what was bad. His mind was crippled with perversions of unhinged perceptions of that dichotomy; draining his own energy into fulfilling what he thought was truly ‘great.’

I knew it wasn’t…killing never was.

It wasn’t even a goal of mine to kill The Sparrow, but only to stop him.

Killing him would only serve to help me sleep at night.

Chapter Forty

Highland Park was an upscale neighborhood on the outskirts of Lincolnshire where only the most affluent in central Maine lived. Several gated communities circled a large park, acting as a hub for town gossip and discussion of tiresome scandal.

Brooks would go wherever his work would take him, and in this case, Highland Park was it.

He wore his backpack filled with all the supplies he needed for an intrusion. The weather was damp and cool enough so no one would question him about his hoodie and beanie. He looked like a jogger out on an early morning stroll.

He texted Dr. Leggons to let him know he’d be gone for the day…some sort of bug was going around and Brooks was playing it off like he had it. Though its mutation would leave him useless at work for a while longer should things go south at the Montgomery residence.

The bus dropped Brooks off several blocks away from the elites and he went on foot the rest of the way. Large estates towered over him as he climbed over the wrought iron fence.

Dogs barked in a distance, snarling as they saw him. They sensed he was up to no good, and he was prepared with hamburger laced with rat poison should one get loose.

He ducked and looked around to where the cameras were facing; the adjacent house across the street belonged to Dr. James Montgomery.

There was a narrow strip of green that stretched between the two mansions leading to the road and Brooks only assumed it was public land. He walked along the grass towards the road in broad daylight, hoping the social elites were either gone or not paying attention enough to see the trespassing man. When he reached the sidewalk, Brooks took out his phone and acted like he was calling someone.

I’m just lost, he thought. I just need to phone a friend and get some directions really quick.

Brooks spotted the house and thought maybe he’d come back at night when no one could see him. He was already suspicious as a group of five women jogged on the other side of the street.

They didn’t seem to notice him, or bother to look at the mysterious person.

This person who didn’t belong in their neighborhood.

That was still who he was.

A mysterious person.

This was good.

The Montgomery residence had a large camera above the front door, but it was facing straight down. He didn’t see much else as far as surveillance.

As the group ran past, Brooks casually walked across the street and down the block a little bit before hopping over the fence into the Montgomery yard. Political signs were in the front yard advertising yet another candidate that didn’t care about what you needed as a constituent.

Brooks thought about taking the signs down, but turned his focus to the massive three-car garage. The garage doors were closed, but the side door looked like it had a simple knob-lock.

Brooks slid in a metal credit card-like object through the slit of the door and it came open. He entered with his .38 caliber King Cobra Special he bought second hand a few years back.

He thought at the time it was for protection.

He now knew what his calling was.

The garage was empty, and the thousand square foot concrete floor appeared lifeless…as if no one was hardly around. The door to the house was attached, and it likely had an alarm, so Brooks walked steadily across the floor to see.

He peered through the window into the house and near the front door. The keypad on the wall was blinking red, and Brooks didn’t know what that meant.

He squinted, but couldn’t make out what the tiny words said on the screen so he grabbed his binoculars out from his bag and held them up to his face.

The red light was blinking and the words on the tiny green screen read:

Power failure. Please reset manually to restore power.

Alarm deactivated.

The storm that swept through Lincolnshire the night before reportedly did some damage, but Brooks didn’t know parts of the city lost power. He placed the card through the slit between the door and the wall, held his breath, and pushed through.

The door opened with ease, and no alarm sounded.

He turned to check the alarm at the front door and the door he came through. They both read power failure. Brooks had to believe it wasn’t a dummy system designed to trick him.

He’d broke into houses before to kill others, and none of them had alarms. Brooks cocked his gun and went into the pantry, crouching down and listening outside the door. He gave it nearly thirty minutes before he opened the door again. The police response time for such an upscale neighborhood would be less than five minutes, so there was no way the alarms were working.

There was an apology letter on the refrigerator signed, J.M. It was probably in response to him being caught a few nights before on the sting operation, but Brooks couldn’t be sure.

A