Kept Read Online Free PDF Page B

girl, if he broke the story the way he wanted, it would bring the plight of thousands like Marie Laure and her brother to the world’s attention. If she had to be sacrificed to save thousands, so be it.
     
    Martin sipped at a mug of malafu as he reclined on his canvas cot. He took another slug, wincing at the taste of the bitter local brew, but he’d learned the best way to consume palm wine was to power through the first couple glasses. Then you barely tasted the rest of the bottle.
    He fumbled under his cot for a refill, nearly upsetting the notebook computer on his lap as his fingers twisted in the netting surrounding his bed. As accommodations went, a canvas tent in the PRC encampment wasn’t much, but at least he had a net to keep the bugs out, a modicum of privacy to do his work, and access to a generator to keep his batteries charged. Add his satellite modem into the mix for easy Internet access, and, really, what more did he need?
    Sweat trickled down his neck, but he barely felt the itch as the malafu flowed thick and warm through his blood. He posted his latest article onto his news site, FishBait.org, and checked the traffic stats. Fuck. Only a thousand goddamn people had bothered to read his news in the last month. Might as well have been zero.
    Why do you waste your time? The voice in his head started out as his own and then morphed as it echoed around his head, becoming his ex-wife’s, his daughter’s, his parents—All the people he’d disappointed in the past two decades, angry at him for not being there because he was too busychasing a story. Pissed that he wouldn’t give it up and settle for some desk job writing business news for some bullshit paper in podunk USA.
    Then another, smug voice. Why do you waste your time? Charlie’s. Arrogant fucker. Martin surfed over to Charlie’s site, creatively titled Celebzone. The glow from his screen cast an eerie light against the dark canvas walls of his tent. Outside he heard scuffing footsteps in the dirt, snippets of muffled conversation as aid workers made their way to their tents after a long day of trying to save a part of the world beyond saving.
    Little of it registered as Martin stared, transfixed at the images on the screen. Headlining Charlie’s site was a non-story about Alyssa Miles attending a charity event up near San Francisco. The story itself was nothing—a single paragraph on what Alyssa wore and something about tension between her and her stepmother.
    What mesmerized him were the pictures that ran alongside. Alyssa, long hair spilling down a back left bare by her flame-colored silk dress, the hard glitter of diamonds at her wrists and fingers.
    Below that was a picture from the latest “Diamonds for All” campaign, featuring a nearly naked Alyssa with cold, hard stones trailing down the curve of her spine. Martin swallowed hard. Resentful as he was at Alyssa and the dumbed-down culture she represented, even he had to admit there was something about her. An appeal, an allure, a natural charisma that went beyond beauty to draw people’s attention, even though she’d never done a single useful thing to deserve it.
    He stared at the photo, her pale gold skin giving off a glow, her eyelashes a thick fringe as she kept her eyes downcast, fixed on a point to the right of her shoulder. Most people thought the glow of her skin was a trick of airbrushing, but Martin had seen her in person and knew for a fact it wasn’t. She really was that pretty, that flawless.
    A perfect, empty shell.
    He traced his finger over the screen as if he could feel her skin. Feel the cold bite of the diamonds trailing down her back. Marie Laure’s face popped into his brain, her dark eyes bottomless pits of despair as she hunched her body around the bump of her baby. He gulped down another cup of palm wine to wash the image away.
    It did nothing to dampen his resentment for Alyssa, so busy posing in ad campaigns and pimping jewelry at fund-raisers, with no clue