Someone says he is secretly filming them.
Another fucking filmmaker, they say.
But he has no camera that they can see.
They break fucking ships here on the beach. If you can do the work, you can stay. It would kill most of the world, this work. But he works like a devil. He never gives anyone shit. And he pays his rent and for his food. So fuck it, he’s okay.
But he is a strange fucker for sure.
White Western ship breaker. White skin. It’s brown now. But still that’s what they call him.
Skin.
Strange fucker.
Some nights he goes down to the beach and stands in the viscous tide, harsh reds and rainbow swirls rushing around his bare ankles.
And he looks up at the sky.
Months now.
There are TVs in town. All he has to do is walk a few miles. It’s still the news. He doesn’t know if the ICSD has lasted this long because they have the reactor online or because Cross has kept anyone from going in. He just knows that it’s there. For now.
Safe. For now.
He thinks about her. Breaking the ships. Hidden here. He thinks about her.
As long as he’s here, he can’t be found. As long as he’s here, Cross is afraid. The Skinner Meme in effect. He doesn’t think about the thread dangling their lives. It is always there. Easy to cut.
Nothing new, this dangerous life.
He stands on the shore at night, the cameras whirling by overhead, shooting everything, looking at everything. And he pictures her, safe in a box he has constructed with the threat of himself, looking at her screens, camera lens views of the world at a distance. He knows he is watched then, and he imagines that it is her eyes that are watching him, making him real on this transient earth, and he looks up into the sky and he tells her his secret.
You are my asset, Jae. I protect you.
Everything else is just the world.
Also by Charlie Huston
Sleepless
The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death
The Shotgun Rule
The Henry Thompson Trilogy
Caught Stealing
Six Bad Things
A Dangerous Man
The Joe Pitt Casebooks
Already Dead
No Dominion
Half the Blood of Brooklyn
Every Last Drop
My Dead Body
About the Author
Charlie Huston is the author of Sleepless, the bestsellers The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death and The Shotgun Rule, the Henry Thompson trilogy, the Joe Pitt casebooks, and several titles for Marvel Comics. He lives with his family in Los Angeles.
charliehuston.com
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Epigraph
PROLOGUE: gravity of the sun
PART ONE
bringer of the ball
patriots
agents of taps
repeat and reinforce
arcade
the bruising world
rubble
oddities
PART TWO
energy
memory
maker
burn him
tide of a beating heart
PART THREE
hammer
remnant of the blade
a robot to make her normal
in the world
austerity measures
gamla stan
pogrom
PART FOUR
diagram
lonely house
when the ash leaves the sky
implications of the gun
cathedral
PART FIVE
politics
inevitable
chemotherapy agents
constantly upon her person
encounter killings
a child in his home
afraid to find out
very special education
wonderful scam
horror
EPILOGUES
Also by Charlie Huston
About the Author
Newsletters
Copyright
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2013 by Charlie Huston
Cover design by Allison J. Warner
Cover copyright © 2013 by Hachette Book Group, Inc
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
Mulholland Books / Little, Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group
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First ebook edition: July 2013
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ISBN 978-0-316-20241-1
Skinner Page 39
