Blood Money Read Online Free PDF Page B

Jack’s plan, wondering if he had missed the “Greenlight” message. He checked his iPhone, but the display showed NO SERVICE . The Sydney sighting had overloaded the system, but word of mouth was spreading all around him.
    “I see her!”
    “Yeah, that’s her!”
    Theo tried to get closer, but it was human gridlock ahead of him. Demonstrators blocked the sidewalk and the exit to the parking lot, but he was tall enough to see over most of the people in front of him. The most vocal and aggressive in the crowd, the tip of the human spear, had surrounded a young woman whose white blouse made her an easy mark in the darkness. People shook their fists and brandished their posters, shouting at her. She shouted back, but that only seemed to unify the mob.
    “No blood money, no blood money!”
    She darted in one direction, then in the other, desperately seeking a way out. The human circle around her drew tighter, and the angry crowd moved closer.
    “No blood money!”
    The BNN reporter and crew tried to push forward, but there was nowhere for them to go. Theo was trapped beside them and could hear the on-the-scene reporter shouting into her microphone with an update for the studio.
    “Faith, you are absolutely correct. It does appear that this is the moment, the dreaded moment of Sydney Bennett’s release from prison.”
    A big guy from BNN’s lighting crew gave one more shove. Suddenly, the logjam broke, there was a collective surge forward, and Theo nearly fell over the woman in front of him. He helped her up, and then peered across the sea of heads that stretched all the way to the chain-link fence. The buffer zone—a few feet of separation—between the mob and its prey had disappeared. The woman in the white blouse had been swallowed up in the crowd, her body somewhere beneath the hysteria.
    “No blood money!”
    Theo checked his cell again, but he was still without service. He wasn’t sure what to do, but things were turning ugly. He gripped the phone, useless as it was, frustrated enough to shout at the top of his lungs, but he kept it inside.
    What the hell is going on, Jack?

Chapter Five
    J ack stared at the television in disbelief. He was seated at a table in the detention center lounge with a corrections officer whose walkie-talkie was crackling with updates from the dispatcher: “Backup needed, zone five. Backup, zone five.”
    The Faith Corso Show was coming in loud and clear on an old fifteen-inch television that rested on the counter next to the coffeemaker. BNN’s coverage had switched to an aerial shot from the helicopter, the studio having temporarily lost contact with the camera crew in the field. Jack increased the volume as Corso described the carnage to her national audience from her studio desk.
    “Once again, friends, you are watching BNN’s exclusive coverage of the live action outside the Miami-Dade County Women’s Detention Center. We are trying to reestablish contact with our reporter on the scene, Heather Brown, but this much we know. At approximately twelve nineteen A.M. , Shot Mom was spotted on the north side of the building. As incomprehensible as this sounds, her defense team apparently thought she could slip through the crowd unnoticed. Things have gone terribly wrong, riot police are trying to establish order, and we can only hope that no innocent people have been caught up in this maelstrom.”
    A camera from a media helicopter tracked an ambulance as it sped down Seventh Avenue, orange and yellow lights flashing as it pulled into the parking lot.
    “Emergency vehicles are now on the scene,” said Corso, “and I’m told we have reconnected with Heather Brown. Heather, what is the situation on the ground now?”
    “Utter and complete chaos,” said Brown. There was audio contact, but no video.
    “Do we have official confirmation that Shot Mom was, in fact, in the parking lot?”
    Brown said something to her cameraman, and the on-screen image switched from the helicopter