Smoke and Ashes Read Online Free PDF Page A

fall, take one. Mark!”
    â€œAction.”
    Far enough away now, Daniel’s voice sounded in Tony’s ear jack. “On three, Leah. One…”
    Up on the roof, Sam would be echoing the count, fingers flicking up to give visual cues.
    A gust of wind blew a bit of dirt in Tony’s eye. He ducked his head just in time to see that same gust about to fling a ten-centimeter piece of aluminum with a wickedly pointed end into the bag.
    â€œTwo.”
    Impact wouldn’t make anything as simple as a hole. At that angle, at that speed, it was going to be a gash. And a big one.
    â€œThree.”
    The wham whoosh of impact and applause from the crew covered the sound of aluminum slapping into Tony’s palm. The jagged piece of debris had probably blown down from the construction site. Revenge of the backhoe.
    â€œCut!”
    He looked up as Leah climbed down off the bag, Daniel, grinning broadly, reaching out a hand to steady her. The fall had clearly not been a problem; the high heels, on the other hand, were giving her a little trouble. She was smiling, definitely happy, but less overtly euphoric than a lot of stuntees were after nailing a four-story fall.
    She didn’t look like Padma. She looked like a stuntwoman wearing the same costume over some strategic padding.
    So much for the magic of television.
    It took a moment for Tony to realize she was staring at him.
    No, not at him. At the piece of aluminum still in his hand.
    As though she’d suddenly become aware of his attention, she lifted her head. Lifted one dark, inquiring brow.
    Even the see-through guy with horns sharing her space seemed interested.

Two
    N IGHT SHOOTS ALWAYS THREW Tony’s sleeping patterns out of whack. When a guy his age got off work, he was supposed to go out and do things. He wasn’t supposed to drive straight home and fall over. It wasn’t just wrong, it was old. It was what old guys did.
    Except there wasn’t a whole lot to do at 2:30 on a Thursday morning in beautiful downtown Burnaby.
    Cradling a bag of overpriced groceries from the 7-Eleven, Tony kicked the door to his apartment closed and shuffled into the tiny kitchen. The shuffling was necessary because he’d started sorting laundry back on Monday, hadn’t quite finished yet, and didn’t want to start again from scratch because he’d mixed the piles. The bread and milk went into the fridge. He tucked the bottle of apple juice under his arm and carried the bag of beef jerky and the spray cheese into the living room—where living room was defined as the part of the long rectangle that contained an unmade sofa bed instead of a stove, a fridge, and a sink.
    The television remote was not in the pizza box under the couch. It finally turned up on top of the bookcase by the window, half buried in the pot with the dead geranium. Raising it in triumph, he settled back against the pillows, sprayed some cheese on a piece of jerky, and started channel surfing with the mute on.
    Replay of a hockey game on TSN, end of hurricane season on Outdoor Life , remake of Smokey and the Bandit …
    â€œWhich after The Longest Yard and The Dukes of Hazzard pretty much proves there is no God,” he muttered, jabbing his thumb at the remote.
    â€¦some guy eating a bug on either the Learning Channel or FOOD—he didn’t stay long enough to see if it came with a lecture on habitat or a raspberry vinaigrette—three movies he’d already seen, two he didn’t want to see, a bug eating some guy on either Discovery or Space, someone knocking at the door…
    His thumb stilled.
    Someone knocking at his door. Carefully. Specifically. Trying not to wake the neighbors.
    It didn’t sound like Henry’s knock. He checked his watch: 2:57. Besides the vampire, who did he know who’d be up at this hour? Even tabloid journalists eventually crawled back under their rocks for a nap. It wasn’t Jack Elson or his partner; the