The Wrecker
Clive Cussler

DECEMBER 12, 1934
GARMISCH- PARTENK IRCHEN

Above the snow line, the German Alps tore at the sky like the jaws of an ancient flesh eater. Storm clouds grazed the windswept peaks, and the jagged rock appeared to move, as if the beast were awakening. Two men, neither young, both strong, watched from the balcony of a ski hotel with quickening anticipation. Hans Grandzau was a guide whose weathered face was as craggy as the mountaintops. He carried in his head sixty years of traversing the wintery slopes. Last night, he had promised that the wind would shift east. Bitter Siberian cold would whirl wet air from the Mediterranean into blinding snow....

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The Burning
Jonathan Kellerman

Funeral Days

There are so many kinds of funerals.
Raw funerals. Calm funerals. Empty funerals.
I don’t like funerals.
My first one was my grandmother’s.
I’ve always remembered the coffin being lowered,
And the bright brass nameplate on the lid.
It shone so brightly in the winter sunshine, almost
blinding me.
I was very young but old enough to remember.
To remember how I felt.
I imagined my name being on that brass plate.
I still do, at every funeral I attend.
And I’ve attended one or two.
Not surprising really.
Since I cause the funerals.