The Water Knife Read Online Free PDF Page A

We’re okay.”
    She tried to force herself to relax, but a nervous shiver of her own refused to stop rippling under her skin. A discomfited ticking awareness.
    No wonder Sunny was under the bed.
    No matter how much Lucy tried to tell herself the dog was crazy, her own lizard brain believed the dog’s warning.
    Something was outside, something dark and hungry, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that the horrific thing was turning its attention to her—to her and Sunny and this safe little island of hunkered adobe shelter that she called home.
    Lucy got up and checked the dead bolts on the doors to the dust room.
    You’re being paranoid
.
    Sunny whined again.
    “Shut up, boy.”
    The sound of her own voice bothered her.
    She made another circuit of the house, checking to make sure all the windows were sealed. Startled at her own reflection in the kitchen window.
    Didn’t I close that?
    She pulled the Guatemalan weave across the glass, half-expecting a face to appear in the darkness beyond. It was superstitious and absurd to think that anyone could actually be out in the storm looking in at her, but now she went and pulled on jeans anyway, feeling better clothed. Feeling at least psychologically protected as she gave up onsleep for good. No way she was sleeping now. Not with this storm-induced anxiety running its fingers between her shoulder blades.
    Might as well work
.
    Lucy opened her computer and scanned her fingerprints on the trackpad. Keyed her passwords as the winds continued to lash her home. The house batteries were lower than she would have liked. They had a twenty-year warranty, but Charlene was always telling her that was bullshit. Lucy just hoped the storm would pass by morning so she could sweep off the solar panels and get the charge back up.
    Sunny whined again.
    Lucy ignored him and logged into her revenue trackers.
    She’d posted a new story with original art that Timo had shot. If she was honest, the pics really sold the story: a truck filled with belongings, mired to the hubs in dust, trying to get away from Phoenix and failing miserably. The latest in collapse pornography. The story was kicking around the net, syndicating and collecting eyeballs and revenue, but Lucy was surprised it hadn’t gotten the attention she’d hoped.
    She scanned the feeds, looking for reasons her eyeball share might have slipped. Something was happening over by the Colorado River: a firefight or a bombing.
    #CarverCity, #CoRiver, #BlackHelicopters…
    Bigger news organizations were already on it. Lucy pulled up video and got a water manager spitting invective about Las Vegas. She’d have pegged him as a lunatic, except for the wreckage and flames blazing behind him, lending credence to the idea that Las Vegas really had rolled in with its water knives and done some precipitous cutting.
    The balding man was ranting that he’d been abducted by Nevada guardies and then dumped in the desert to hike his way back to the wreckage of his own treatment plant.
    “This was Catherine Case! She completely ignored that we’re appealing! We have rights!”
    “Are you going to sue?”
    “You’re damn right we’re going to sue! She’s gone too far this time.”
    More sites were lighting up with the story. Arizona local stationsand personalities, beating the drums of regional anger, generating hits and ad revenue off the battlefield images as they inflamed local hatreds. More revenue would be flowing in as the comments blew up and people threw the story onto their social networks.
    Lucy flagged the story for her trackers, but with the storm and the distance, she’d already missed the window to take much credit or do anything except draft off the hits of other journos.
    She kicked the story into her own feeds, just to assure her readers that she was aware of Carver City’s evisceration, and turned to her own primary sources, hunting for leads in the sloshing sea of social media, stories that she could get to first and claim as