Billionaire's Tragedy (Standalone Book) (Billionaire Bad Boy Romance) by Alexa Davis Read Free Book Online

I
said as I looked at his hack's license affixed to the backseat. "I'm going
to hazard a guess and say that things are not going well at your home, am I right?"
    "How did you
know?"
    "Just a hunch,"
I replied. As a young reporter, I used to be amazed by what perfect strangers
would tell me in the form of stories about "other people" in an
attempt to give me information about themselves. As I'd gotten older, I'd come
to expect that most of what anyone told me was really a personal story about
their own situation as they attempted to make sense of their lives. I'd gotten
good at listening and then sorting out the fact from the fiction.
    "Wow, you're
good!" he observed as he pulled up to the curb and prepared to let me out.
    "Not really," I
said as I fished a twenty out of my wallet and handed it over. "Keep the
change."
    "But it's a five
dollar fare," he protested as he dug in his pocket to get change.
    "Yeah, and it's the
holidays," I said waving him off. "Go buy your wife some flowers and
tell her you’re sorry for not getting whatever it was finished."
    "But it wasn't
me!"
    "Whatever,
dude," I laughed. "Buy your wife flowers, anyway; trust me, it'll go
a long way."
    I got out and slammed the
door shut, looking both ways before I crossed Independence and headed toward
the Capitol on foot. I could see that the police had cordoned off the entrance
to the Capitol throughway, so I walked past it and headed toward the reflecting
pool. I figured I could probably make the rounds and talk to at least a few
witnesses before someone asked for ID. As I approached the grassy area in front
of the pool, I saw a couple of teenagers huddled together talking and passing a
cigarette around the circle.
    "Hey, what
happened?" I asked as I scanned the area, trying to determine if the cops
were anywhere near.
    "Some wacko went
postal and shot up the Capitol," a boy with a thin beard and olive wool
cap said. "It was fucked up, man!"
    "Oh, really? Do
tell," I said trying to act disinterested enough to get them to spill
everything they knew – or thought they knew. "Got another cig?"
    "Yeah, sure,"
the boy said as he fished a crushed pack of American Spirits out of his jacket
pocket and flicked one at me. "Lighter?"
    I nodded and took both
from his hand, lighting the cigarette and inhaling deeply. I'd given up smoking
after a run in with rebels in the Congo in which I'd nearly lost my life because
my lungs were so weak I almost wasn't able to run. Since then, I'd only
occasionally bummed a smoke, and this seemed an opportune moment to do so. I
took another drag and as I exhaled, I said, "So, some wacko shot up the
Capitol?"
    "Yeah! He went nuts,
man!" the boy shouted as he passed the cigarette he was holding to the
girl standing next to him. She was small and thin with a haircut that only
teenagers could pull off: an inky black buzz cut on one side of her skull with
shoulder-length waves on the other. Her exposed ear was pierced no less than
ten times all the way up the curve and she had a small green stud in her nose.
She was wearing a bomber jacket over what looked like several layers of
t-shirts and a pair of jeans that looked about three sizes too big. On her feet
was a pair of tightly-laced, wine-colored Doc Martens. She looked like the kind
of girl I wished I'd been in high school: cool and totally unimpressed by
anything. She took the smoke from the boy and rolled her eyes as he began
recounting what had happened in an overly dramatic tone. I listened to him, but
watched her out of the corner of my eye.
    "He just started
shooting?" I asked.
    "Yeah, man, he
grabbed his gun and just started spraying bullets everywhere!" the boy shouted.
"It was fuckin' nuts! We dove to the ground and tried to belly crawl for
cover!"
    "Blake, shut the
fuck up," the girl said. "You are such a drama queen and a terrible
liar."
    I looked at the girl and
she flashed me a half grin followed by an eye roll that topped all eye rolls. I
waited for her to elaborate,