Ryan Lock 04.5: Lock & Load Read Online Free PDF Page A

color skin was tantamount to asking for a death sentence. "I've been in difficult situations before, but no I don't know what it's like to live the life you have."
       "My whole life," she said, "I've been judged by people who don't even know me but think they do. As soon as I walked into a casting I was either too short, too tall, too young looking, too old. Then when you do manage to build a career for yourself, it just gets worse. You wake up one day and you're surrounded by people kissing your ass but you know that the only reason they're doing it is because they want something from you. It's tiring, you know. Everything I wear, everything I say. I gain five pounds, and I'm front page of the Enquirer."
       Lock didn't say anything. It was good that she was confiding in him. He had to have trust for this to work.
       "That was why I liked Jason," she went on. "He'd been through it all. He knew the game. He knew that it was a game. I didn't have to pretend to be someone I wasn't with him." Her eyes began to fill again with tears. "But he wanted something from me too. In the end, he was the same as everyone else."
       "So why do it at all? Why not walk away?" he asked, his curiosity genuine.
       "Why do you keep doing what you do, Mr. Lock?"
       Lock smiled. Like most people he didn't give too much day to day thought to his choice of profession. You got up. You went to work. You came home.
       "I guess that I do this because I enjoy it and it's what I'm good at."
       "Same for me with acting. When I'm in rehearsals or on set, I'm all good. It's the other stuff that's hard."
       Something occurred to Lock. "I protect people and you act. So go in there tomorrow and act like you're cool with everything. Pretending. That's what your job boils down to, right?"
       "I guess."
       "So tomorrow let's both do that."
       She swallowed. He could see some small measure of composure return to her. She sat up a little straighter. "You'll be with me?"
       Lock fixed her with his eyes. "Every step. If he even so much as looks at you the wrong way, I'll really give the reporters something to write about."

Nine
    LOCK WALKED OUT  of the bungalow to where Ty was standing. "I'm going to take another look at the room they're using tomorrow then I'll be back and you can go rest."
       "She okay?"
       "For now."
       He left Ty and walked down the path to the swimming pool. A scattering of people sat at tables, most of them smokers, refugees from the hotel bar. A couple of movie executive types, suit jackets slung over the back of chairs, shirts unbuttoned, puffed on cigars the size of small torpedoes. At the next table Lock recognized a very famous male actor with old-school matinee idol good looks who was always being pictured with a dazzling array of beautiful women. He was holding hands under the table with another man.
       A little further back, safe from the reflection of the pool lights, sat a lone male. He was nursing a whisky and smoking a cigarette, his face shadowed by a hat. He looked up at Lock and smiled.
       Lock walked over to the table, and Jason gestured for him to sit down. "What are you doing here?" Lock asked.
       Maybe it was the booze, or just what Summer had already seen, but there was a malevolence in Jason's eyes, a bitterness to his expression that had been absent at the beach house.
       "You kicked me out of the place I was staying, remember? I have press here in the morning, and besides," he slurred, lifting his crystal tumbler of Scotch, "the bar here's pretty good. But don't worry, bodyguard, I'm not going to cause any trouble."
       Lock kept himself calm and his voice even. Jason was a man spoiling for a fight and Lock rolling around poolside with him would do no one any favors, least of all Summer who had only just gotten herself together and whose bungalow was within earshot of any potential disturbance.
       "I didn't think you would," said Lock, getting up.
       "You