Gutshot Straight with Bonus Excerpt by Lou Berney Read Free Book Online

belly chain clanking, sweat gathering in the small of his back. A tower guard with an M16 slung over his shoulder was eating a candy bar. The sky was pale blue and cloudless. Shake remembered thinking, This is wild; this is unreal, man .
    “Nineteen,” he said.
    “Maybe they thought you were cool like a milk shake.”
    “I doubt that.”
    The door to the bathroom opened and Gina stepped out, wearing only a towel. Her hair was damp, and her bare shoulders were lined with glittering beads of moisture. When she smiled at him, it was a smile he hadn’t seen from her before, lazy and sly, a smile that seemed to belong to a different person entirely—a beautiful girl who looked a lot like Gina but didn’t have much else in common with her.
    “ I think you’re cool,” she said.
    Shake stood. As Gina crossed the room and put her arms around his neck, he felt the same strange detachment he’d experienced that first time off the county bus. This is wild; this is unreal .
    Her face was so close to his that he could taste the wintergreen toothpaste on her breath. Her face was too close; he couldn’t keep it in focus.
    “You’re making me dizzy,” he said.
    “I’ve been known to have that effect.”
    He blinked and looked away. The whole room was going blurry now, not just Gina’s face. The walls bent at impossible angles, and Shake felt himself bending with them. Gina’s arms around his neck were cool and smooth.
    “How did you know it’s called that?” he asked. “When you go to prison? A fall?”
    “Shhhhh,” Gina whispered. She withdrew her cool, smooth arms, and the floor began to roll, very slowly, out from under his feet. Shake staggered, then managed to take a few steps toward the bathroom, where there was cold water he could splash on his face. He’d almost made it to the sink when the floor finished sliding away and he toppled heavily backward, onto his ass.
    From the bathroom Shake watched Gina toss her towel aside and start putting her clothes on. He tried to climb up off the tile, but his arms and legs were pudding. The light dimmed, as if a cloud had passed across the sun. His tongue felt thick.
    He knew it wasn’t love that was happening to him. It wasn’t bourbon.
    “Okay,” he said, trying hard to concentrate. “Hey. What . . . ?”
    Gina sat on the edge of the bed as she pulled on her jeans.
    “Gamma hydroxybutyrate, sweetie,” she said.
    Shake’s brain translated sluggishly. “You roofed me.”
    “I always keep one in my pocket, in my Burt’s Bees lip balm tin, in case of emergencies.” She zipped up her jeans. “I know what you’re thinking.”
    Shake doubted that. He wasn’t even sure himself what he was thinking.
    “I didn’t have a chance to use it earlier,” she explained, apologetic. “They grabbed me too fast, put me in that stupid trunk.”
    She entered the bathroom with the handcuffs he’d found her in. She snapped one cuff on Shake’s wrist, the other to the pipe beneath the sink. Then she bent down and brushed a quick kiss across his lips.
    “I really do think you’re cool,” she said.
    “Oh, man,” Shake said.
    She grabbed the briefcase, then paused at the door to give Shake a wink.
    “I owe you one, okay?” she said.
    Shake managed a wry smile even as total darkness descended on him.
    “You’re not a Mormon housewife, are you?”
    “Not exactly,” she said.

Chapter 8

    F our days, thirteen hours, and nine minutes earlier, approximately 150 feet across Las Vegas Boulevard from the Apache Motor Inn, Gina had lit the last Marlboro in her pack, tipped her head back, and blown a lazy plume of smoke toward the ceiling, where the spangles of light off the disco ball danced and shimmied. She’d downed the shot of tequila the bartender had poured her and beamed.
    “Zowee!” she’d said.
    “No,” the bartender had said, before she could say anything else.
    “The other girls get mad at you when you give me free drinks, don’t they?”
    “Yes, they