Point and Shoot Read Online Free Page B

Point and Shoot
Book: Point and Shoot Read Online Free
Author: Duane Swierczynski
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allowed to watch them for a few minutes a day, via secret cameras inside Kendra’s rented home just outside Philadelphia.
    Each transmission from Earth was torture and relief at the same time. Hardie supposed that’s what ghosts must feel like. Watching your loved ones live out their lives while you were completely powerless to affect them. Hardie began to suspect that watching these little snippets of his family every day had driven him insane. But what was he supposed to do? Stop watching?
    After his contract was up, he would (supposedly) be allowed to return to them.
    Hardie didn’t believe this for a minute. The lizard cop voice inside his head told him that this would never happen.
They will kill you after this job is over. They will kill your family, too
… So Hardie knew he had only three months left to figure out a plan to escape, rejoin his family, then disappear with them. That, of course, was presuming his wife and son would want anything to do with him.
    Still the faithful husband
, his nemesis had once told him.
Which is really impressive, considering how long since you’ve seen them
.
    For now Charlie Hardie’s life was simply mind-numbing routine in a super-confined space. And the occasional pleasure of watching his ex-wife make breakfast.
    But now Hardie was staring at the surveillance image of an empty kitchen. He tried to project his thoughts across the atmosphere and straight down into his ex-wife’s head in Philadelphia. Come on, Kendra. Just walk back into the kitchen for something. You forgot something, didn’t you? Maybe you didn’t turn off the fryer? Give me something. Anything.
    But there was nothing.
    Seej, where are you? Don’t you want to raid the fridge for a post-breakfast snack? The boy, who was pretty much now a man (as much as Hardie didn’t want to admit it), was lean and strong and ate like a trucker. Whereas Kendra seemed to consume small, birdlike portions, Seej could put away the provisions for the working staff of an entire farm. And then be hungry again for lunch by midmorning. He looked nothing like his father, but he ate like him.
    So, c’mon. You must be hungry again, Seej. Let me see you. Or have you gone out somewhere? Maybe to meet a friend? Or a girlfriend?
    But there was nothing.
    After another few minutes of nothing, the transmission came to an end. Hardie was beginning the process of unstrapping himself when—
    Whoah.
    He felt the satellite jolt.

3
    The last man on earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock at the door
.
    —Fredric Brown
    H ARDIE TICKED DOWN the extremely small list of things that could possibly jolt a $3.7-billion-dollar satellite.
    The best-case scenario: an off-schedule food delivery drone. But that couldn’t be. The last had arrived two weeks ago, and there wasn’t another scheduled for at least six more weeks. There’s no way his employers would send extra, because (a) they were super budget-conscious, and (b) everything up here was planned down to the ounce. Which left … asteroid? A collision with a piece of space junk?
    Sure
sounded
like the food delivery drone docking, though. The noise and clatter was like someone slamming an SUV into the side of your house, followed by magnetic deadbolts, locking it in place.
CLUNK-CLUNK-CLUNK-CLUNK
    Hardie pulled himself over to the gateway hatch, using the handholds to make his way. He checked the sensors that usually told him when a delivery drone was ready to deliver a payload. He waited. Nothing appeared on the screen. This wasn’t a delivery drone. This was something else. The very thing they assured him could never,
ever
happen … because they’d taken every possible precaution so that it would not happen … well, it seemed tobe happening.
    Fuck.
    Hardie decided he wanted a beer. Like, yeah, right now. It was the morning in Philadelphia, but it was afternoon here in space. He should have insisted that they install a cooler in this damned thing, maybe arrange for monthly shipments of

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