Suckers Read Online Free Page A

I’ll live. Ready to get out of here, though.”
    “You don’t have to tell me.” He clapped Dan on the back and headed for the bus.
    No matter how well they tried to air it out, the bus always smelled like farts and old socks. Dan had a theory that socks crawled behind the panels to die, which was why they never managed to end a tour with more than six socks between the eight of them.
    When Dan came up the steps, coffee was already going in the galley, covering the staleness with a richer smell that made Dan’s stomach growl and tighten at the same time.
    Stick yawned with his hands braced on the edge of the counter, watching the pot fill, his mouth still open when he turned his head and caught sight of Dan’s face. “Shit. Who’d you get in a fight with?”
    “A creature of the night,” Dan said. “Feeling any better?”
    “A hooker hit you?”
    Dan laughed. “Yeah, that’s it.”
    “Man, that’s rough. Were you trying to gyp her?”
    Dan patted his shoulder as he passed by. “Something like that.”
    “You can’t gyp the ladies, man.”
    He headed for the back lounge, where he found Jamie and Greg sprawled on the wrap-around couch, the TV blaring cartoons.
    “Get any sleep?” Dan asked.
    “Shit,” Greg said, while Jamie said, “I passed out for a while. Does that count?”
    Dan gave a shrug. His fingers found their way into the front pockets of his jeans. He slouched down to make more room for them.
    “I think I threw up on Josh’s coat,” Jamie said.
    “He didn’t mention it,” Dan said.
    “Maybe it wasn’t his, then. In which case…” He sat back and rubbed an eye with two knuckles. “I’m glad I was up and out before the girls I was with woke up.”
    “They’re still in your room?”
    “Yeah.”
    Dan closed his eyes and let his head fall back. All he could do was hope they didn’t charge a huge breakfast to the room and steal the lamps.
    No, he could do more than hope. He got to his feet and strode back off the bus, looking for their tour manager. He found him at the front desk, getting receipts.
    “Ouch,” Carey said, seeing his cheek.
    Dan dismissed it. Talking about the ‘bat’ was getting tiring. “Jamie left some girls up in his room.”
    Carey sighed. “I’ll take care of it.”
    “Thanks.” The money would come out of Jamie’s end if they trashed the place, but it never seemed to work out that Jamie was the only one his shit flew back on. It tended to splatter everyone in the vicinity.
    “Hey,” Carey said as Dan started away.
    He turned.
    “It was really a bat that hit you?”
    “Your guess is as good as mine. Oh, but don’t come stumbling in here in the middle of the night after getting smacked by something around the corner, ’cause the desk clerks disappear like roaches when a light comes on.”
    “Great.” Another road-worn sigh.
    Dan spun back and headed for the exit.
    On the bus again, he slumped on a couch in the front lounge, his chin tipped up toward the TV mounted on the ceiling. Ray had it on a news channel again, but if anyone was getting attacked by bat-like creatures, it wasn’t getting national coverage. Trust them to run into the one fucked up bat in the country.
    “Where’s next?” Dan asked, watching without taking in the B-roll footage of the astronauts returning from their international cooperative space mission. He wondered if it had been the vastness of space that had gotten to the astronaut who’d killed her kids—what had she seen up there? Maybe it’d been being cooped up in a tin can for months on end. That he could relate to.
    “Somewhere north of here,” Ray said without looking away from the TV.
    “Someplace without bats, I hope.” With Jamie safe on board and the pull of gravity as the bus started away from the hotel, his thoughts turned back to the night before. What he wouldn’t give to shut off that instant replay. The quick flap of wings rushed his ears. He could taste the acid of his stomach all over