Hard Return Read Online Free PDF Page B

feeling amorous right now. Since I got you up here and took you out of commission, it’s only fair I pay you.”
    She stared at the money still grasped in one hand. “Two hundred and fifty dollars,” she said. “Don’t you at least want a blowjob?”
    He shrugged. Smiled. “Not in the mood, sorry.”
    “Look, why don’t you just lay down on the bed and we’ll see what happens.”
    “ Lie down on the bed.”
    “Okay, now we’re cookin’.”
    “No, I mean it’s lie down on the bed, not lay down on the bed.”
    “Huh?”
    He didn’t feel like explaining it to her. He wanted to be alone. “Is there a back way out of here?”
    “Sure. There are stairs that way.” She motioned to the wall opposite the way they had come.
    “Tell you what. You take the money and go out the back way, okay?”
    She just stared at him. Finally, she said, “You don’t want to? Really?”
    “My wife just died. I’m not in the mood.”
    “But—”
    “I thought I was, but I can’t do it yet. You understand?”
    “Oh, you poor thing.” She shuttled the money to her purse, but her expression, at least, was sad. She hesitated. “You sure?”
    “I’m here with some friends. Friends of my dead wife. I wouldn’t want them to see you. So if you could go down the other way and not mention this . . .”
    “I gotcha.”
    “Thanks.”
    She practically ran to the door and slipped out.
    If anyone bothered to look, the cameras would show a tourist soliciting a hooker. The cameras would show the hooker going up to his room.
    He’d kept her here long enough for a quickie.
    He sat down on the bed for a moment, feeling every bit of his forty-eight years.
    Then he turned on the television.

    Landry switched among the “news” channels. All of them had a different slant, but they all vamped like vaudeville performers, because even now, eight hours after the shooting, they had nothing real to go on.
    He decided to switch between MSNBC and Fox News, because CNN was beginning to sound like Henny Penny covering the falling sky.
    The remaining two cable channels’ nonstop coverage featured repetitive footage of the high school grounds and people milling in the auditorium where the lucky parents met with their kids, and an interview with a school security guard who had “engaged” the shooter.
    Landry thought he saw Cindi and Kristal in the background, but he couldn’t be sure. Every time that segment came on he strained his eyes, and every time it was too fast and too dark and too hard to tell if it really was them.
    A reporter interviewed the new hero, a security guard named Brendan Hillhouse. He told the reporters he heard shots and ran outside. His eyes were bright with excitement, and he spoke in little bursts. The reporter shoved a mic in his face and asked him if he had “taken down” the shooter.
    “I think so,” he said between huffing breaths. “You don’t really know what you’re capable of until something like this happens.”
    Maybe he believed it. Even though he had come from the auditorium exit, the shooter facing him, and he was out of range. He must be the best shot on the planet if he could get a bullet to ring around the shooter and hit the back of his head. But the cable channels were getting no new information, so for a while Brendan Hillhouse was a hero.
    No name on the shooter.
    No mention of the single subsonic round that killed him.
    Of course not. The FBI would hold that piece of information back. Knowledge was power, and knowledge that other people didn’t have was more power.
    A lot was made about his body armor and helmet. He fit right in with the last few (cowardly) mass shooters, and this seemed to please the cable-channel talking heads to no end. It allowed them to be their own experts.
    They had official experts, too. Plenty of them. Some were good (although the information they had was sketchy and they couldn’t reveal much due to the ongoing nature of the investigation), and others were just