Hard Case Crime: Money Shot Read Online Free PDF Page A

video badass. My heart felt like a trapped bird inside my chest. My bloody eyelids were swollen down to sticky slits but I wasn’t going to make it easier for him by looking away or closing my eyes. If he was going to have his big gangsta moment and pop a cap in my bitch ass, it would be face to face, looking me in the eye.
    In the end, it was Jesse who looked away. He turned his face to the side and squeezed his eyes shut, gun arm sticking straight out like a child about to get an injection. Then he squeezed the trigger.
    The noise alone nearly gave me a heart attack. I’d always worn ear protection at the range, and although everyone knows guns are loud, you have no idea how loud they really are until someone less than six feet away is shooting at you in the trunk of a car. Ears ringing, I felt the third or fourth shot connect somewhere along the right side of my chest and under my right arm. The pain and shock of it was bright and brutal and scary as fuck. Microscopic newsboys ran through my system shouting Extra! Extra! We’ve been shot!
    They always tell you not to panic, not to move if you’ve been shot. That you should lie still and wait for help. That getting all nuts just kills you faster. I knew that was the best thing to do, even thought it as a clear, rational sentence in my head:
    Better lie still and not panic.
    Of course, that only works if the person who shot you has stopped shooting.
    Jesse was still randomly filling the trunk with lead, firing blindly in my general direction. I felt another bullet clip my thigh like a lash from a single-tail whip. My body duly noted my brain’s helpful suggestion about staying calm and then proceeded to flip completely out. I must have bumped my head flinching and flailing around or maybe I just passed out from pain or shock because the next thing I remembered was coming to in the dark trunk and fighting to piece it all back together and remember where the hell I was. That’s where you came in.

6.
    So once I figured out I was in the trunk of a car, I remembered the blue Civic and from there it was a swift re-connect the dots back to Jesse and Sam and the girl with the briefcase.
    I also remembered that I had been shot, or thought I had. It obviously hadn’t been by a very good shot, since I was still around to worry about it, but it did seem fairly pressing that I get some sort of medical attention. I felt like someone was digging a fork around in my right side just below the armpit and it hurt like hell if I took a deep breath. I thought maybe my right arm was also hit, as there was a hot nasty pain on the soft underside of my triceps. Moving my right hand made the pain in my arm crank up from ugly to excruciating so I yanked and twisted my left again and again until I was able to work the knots loose around my wrists. It was fairly easy. Jesse was a lousy rigger.
    Once I had my hands loose, I was able to rip the tape off my mouth. I spat out the crumpled rag and the meager contents of my stomach immediately followed. It was mostly sour old blood. I managed not to get too much on myself, which was pretty impressive in such a small space.
    When I was able, I used my awkward left hand to free my ankles. My feet were icy numb and howled with sharp needling pain as the blood started to flow back in. You’d think there’d be a point where so much of your body hurt so badly that it would hang a sign on the door saying NO VACANCY and refuse to accept any new pain. Apparently not.
    Free now but still stuck in the puke-stinking trunk, I needed to figure a way out. The Civic had been built before anyone thought to put safety latches on the insides of trunks. The only way out would be by kicking down the folding back seats. I had a long discussion with my legs about the idea of kicking anything. At first they were having none of it, but once I explained how difficult it would be for them if my heart stopped beating or severe blood loss eventually caused the cessation of all