The Solomon Key

THE SOLOMON KEY EARTH UNCOVERED BOOK 1 NICK THACKER CONTENTS Want free books? Introduction 1. Brody 2. Brody 3. Brody 4. Brody 5. Brody 6. Brody 7. Landon 8. Brody 9. Brody 10. Brody 11. Brody 12. Dietrich 13. Brody 14. Brody 15. Landon 16. Anna 17. Brody 18. Brody 19. Brody 20. Anna 21. Dietrich 22. Anna 23. Brody 24. Brody 25. Brody 26. Brody 27. Colin 28. Brody 29. Landon 30. Anna 31. Anna 32. Landon 33. Brody 34. Anna 35. Colin 36. Landon 37. Brody 38. Brody 39. Brody 40. Anna 41. Colin 42. Anna 43. Brody 44. Brody 45. Brody 46. Anna 47. Brody 48. Brody 49. Brody 50. Anna 51. Brody 52. Brody 53. Colin 54. Brody 55. Brody 56. Brody 57. Brody 58. Anna 59. Colin 60. Dietrich 61. Brody 62. Colin 63. Colin 64. Anna 65. Colin 66. Brody 67. Anna 68. Brody 69. Anna 70. Brody 71. Colin 72. Brody 73. Brody 74. Brody 75. Anna 76. Anna 77. Anna 78. Anna 79. Landon Epilogue Afterword About the Author Harvey Bennett Thrillers WANT FREE BOOKS? Head over to nickthacker.com/free-books to download three full-length thriller novels! INTRODUCTION Earth Uncovered is a brand-new series, and the second book is already on the way! If you would like to get notified of its release, just head over here and pre-order a copy. In addition, don’t forget to sign up for Nick Thacker’s mailing list to receive updates, discounts, new release announcements, and free books! See Book Two on Amazon ONE BRODY Tuesday | 8:19 am Parrish Studios, Los Angeles, California “…The one call you can’t ignore. The one call you can’t refuse.” The man behind the microphone paused for effect, then inhaled a silent breath. “Diarrhea.” Brody stepped back from the mic, held the headphones tighter over his ears, and cleared his throat. He waited a few seconds, then returned to the microphone to repeat the same phrase. “It’s the one call you can’t —“ “Cut.” The voice spilled into the earphones and pierced directly into his brain as if emanating from inside himself. He had asked the engineer behind the glass to bring down the level of the monitoring output three times already. Still, it seemed either he had ignored him, or the director — a real class act himself Brody had butted heads with in the past— had just turned it back up, once again attempting to prove that he knew best. It was the director’s voice that was speaking now. “Let’s try that again, from the top.” Brody set his jaw. “I hope we can eventually move on to the second line of dialogue in this ad spot, Martin.” He saw Martin waving a dismissive hand in his direction through the glass separating the vocal booth from the main tracking room in the studio. He stood over the engineer’s shoulder in order to speak into the talkback monitor’s microphone from only inches away — which, Brody knew, could easily pick up sound from anywhere in the room. Even from here, Brody could see that the engineer’s personal bubble had been breached. “Yeah, whatever. Let’s take it from the top, just like I said. And stow your attitude. Ready?” Brody gave a slight shake of his head and silently cursed the director. Regardless of his internal desire to crack a fist through the glass and strangle Martin with a microphone cable, Brody stepped back up and gave the next take his best. “It’s the only call you can’t refuse…” he said, emphasizing the word only and refuse, giving a half-breath’s worth of space between the two separate beats of the sentence. It was hard to believe, but he had actually trained for this sort of thing. If only my third-grade drama teacher could see me now, he thought. “Diarrhea.” Had he given the second half of that word enough emphasis? Now that he was thinking of it, was it di-arrhea with the emphasis on the die? Or was it dia-rrhea, emphasis on the second syllable? Brody stifled a chuckle when a memory bubbled up into his brain, listening to the man mispronounce the word diabetes on midday television. Should he go for something like that? Should he say diarrhea in a way that would eventually make him a name — or at least a meme — for later generations? Di-a-rrhea? Diary — pronouncing the first part like it was a schoolgirl’s journal and then putting an exaggerated grunt at the end? Maybe he could — “Brody, are you in a trance? You still with us? I pay for studio time by the hour, you know.” Brody flicked his eyebrows up and nodded at the glass. The ad company is paying for this, actually, he thought. However, he didn’t say anything. “I want to run it again, top to bottom; this time, I want you to really pretend to be there.” Brody almost laughed out loud. “You mean, you want me to pretend like I have diarrhea? Or that I am awkwardly narrating a voiceover while two women are enjoying a cup of tea in the park?” Whatever brilliant marketing company had decided to hire this difficult director had also been brilliant enough to create the absolutely genius commercial for which Brody was now voicing. Two middle-aged women, both wearing clothes — the kind that were not quite casual, not quite formal — both smiling ridiculously exaggerated smiles that made them both seem like new members of a cult, sipping tea out of actual ceramic mugs while sitting together… sharing a blanket in a park. The mostly blurred background even had children giggling and chasing each other in it. One even had a streamer on a wand and was making S-shapes in the air like a colorguard in a marching band. “Yeah, sure,” he said. He stepped back to the microphone for the fifteenth time that hour and was about to give the engineer a thumbs-up when he felt his phone vibrate. He tried