Point and Shoot Read Online Free

that he had survived after all. Maybe. It was all kind of unclear. And the third leader?
    Well, that was the nice lady he
almost
shot in the face but didn’t.
    Which brought them to their current arrangement. In exchange for a year of indentured servitude, the Cabal promised Hardie that the slate would be wiped clean. The Cabal would not actively seek to kill Hardie, and they would not seek to send the Accident People after his estranged wife and son. That’s all Hardie wanted, of course. To have the threat of death finally removed from the heads of Kendra and Charlie Jr. So Hardie had lowered the gun and agreed to work for the Cabal.
    We just want you to guard something, they said. That’s what you do, right? You guard stuff?
    Yeah, Hardie said, I guard stuff.
    Only they didn’t tell Hardie he’d be guarding something in
freakin’ outer space.
    Okay: “low earth orbit.”
    Same damned thing, Hardie thought.
    The very idea of it sounded insane. But the Cabal insisted that it was not only possible but practical, too. Certain things were way too valuable to keep on the surface of the earth, where they could be hacked or dug up and breached in countless ways. For as long as people had scuttled across the planet, they had been devising countless ways to steal the possessions of others. For total security, you had to remove the planet from the equation.
    That required some expensive technology—but in the long run, it was not as expensive as maintaining an ultra-secure facility planet-side. Once you shot the thing up into low earth orbit, you could be assured that only organizations with the resources of the Cabal could get up there, too. And no one had the resources of the Cabal.
    But you also needed a human presence, because machines, no matter how well built, could malfunction. Hence the need for a guard.
    Hence the need for Charlie Hardie.
    Hardie shifted his body in the cramped space near the monitor, trying to stretch his sore body, get the blood flowing. He forgot his pains, though, when he saw his family.
    On screen, Kendra cracked eggs into a glass bowl to prepare the batter for French toast. Hardie was instantly hurled back in time, a decade ago, watching her do the same thing on a Sunday morning, back when she
was
his wife. Same glass bowl. Same stainless steel whisk. Same plug-in electric fryer on the countertop, passed down from her mother. The sight of the familiar kitchen gear made it feel like they were still married, still together.
    He knew they weren’t legally married anymore. Too much time had passed. If she were smart—and Kendra was the smartest woman he knew—she would have declared him legally dead and collected an insurance payout.
    Even if Hardie were somehow able to magically teleport himself down to the surface of the earth, inside that kitchen, what would she say? Their last days together, those years before all that madness in L.A., had been awkward and painful and tense. Back then, Hardie swore that if you could somehow liquefy and bottle Kendra’s angry glares, you’d have the most potent weed killer on the market. He’d ask what was wrong. Kendra’s mouth would say,
Nothing, I’m fine
. But her eyes would say,
I hate you with every fiber of my being
.
    Kendra left the kitchen. The camera should have cut away to the dining room, but it didn’t. Which was strange.
    Whoever was in charge of giving Hardie his daily dose of family time was usually pretty good about making sure those few minutes were worth it. Hardie couldn’t help but wonder how often the same person—male or female—watched over Kendra and the boy the rest of the day. Was it constant surveillance, or just the occasional check-in to make sure they were still alive and thus useful to the Cabal? Was this person a perv? Did he or she watch Hardie’s family in his/her spare time?
    Usually Hardie couldn’t think thoughts like these—not with him trapped in low earth orbit and unable to do a thing about it.
    But