Sockpuppet: Book One in the Martingale Cycle by Matthew Blakstad Read Free Book Online Page B

nerdwear. He hid from the island sun inside a long black jacket and a wide-brimmed hat. His T-shirt – once black, now washed a hundred times to mossy green – bore the motto: GOT MY MODEM WORKING, UH-HUH, UH-HUH. Sweat dotted the strands of his weak beard. He could not have looked more out of place, or more bedraggled: a lost Hassid, hustling in the shade of adobe bungalows. In the midday heat he would linger on shady terraces, poring over his dog-eared copy of The Electronic Radical and ogling Dani as she moved with her surroundings.
    It was the peak heat of afternoon. Dani read from a sand-caked paperback. Ratty gulls looped in the air above her, the only aggravation in the still of the beach. Rough scrub began at the edge of the shingle, rising quickly to a woody cliff that circled the little bay, its cracked jetty, the sun bearing directly down. It was Dani and a handful of others. In the little wind there was, loose cables slapped on flag posts, and a distant bell sounded an intermittent note of warning. Nobody moved, nothing was there. She lifted herself slightly from her lounger, leaving a Turin Shroud of sweat: and there stood Sam, impossibly lank, hip bones pushing over loose red shorts, feet planted on the edge of a crumbling harbour wall as he saluted a sky of utter blue. Out in front of him, flashbulbs of reflected light exploded randomly over the black surface of the water, as though for a lap of honour in a stadium at night. Sam stretched his chest and arms, bathing in the silent roar of an astonished crowd. He was beautiful, and he didn’t care who was or wasn’t looking at him.
    She knew him right away. He had a showy leanness about him that was unmistakable. When she hailed him, and he turned, a look of transparent pleasure filled his face, and at once she was his. He could have taken her there, pulled up her little singlet, grabbed at the flesh around and under her bikini bottoms, torn into her. She would have opened herself to him. For a moment, she even thought he might, and he said Dani with a lilt that was wonderful: wonderful he even knew her name. Then Gray came pooling up beside her asking edgy questions and the moment was over. Sam rubbed the stubble on his head with a hurried motion and looked sheepish and cocksure all at once, and from there it was hopeless, and Gray was spiky, and the whole thing went awry; and life carried on without Sam in it. Just the potential of him.
     
    ‘Sam Corrigan. Moneyshot PR.’
    Dani has retreated to the Moot – Parley’s great glass meeting space – to wait for Sam. The draw-on walls are doodled over with innovations and flowcharts in erasable markers of many colours. After ten minutes of shifting in her chair and pretending to check data on her laptop, Mary eventually showed Sam up. And here he is, haloed by glare from the floor-to-ceiling windows.
    ‘I’m – hi, Sam,’ she says. ‘It’s me. Dani.’
    She’s half out of her seat, bent against the table edge. His suit is narrow and his face is blank. She takes the yellow-and-purple card he’s holding out. It says, Sam Corrigan. Senior Associate. MoneyShot PR. When she looks back up he’s jump-cut to the former Sam, with a beautiful grin and arms out wide.
    ‘I know that,’ he says. ‘Come here, you.’
    And she’s in his arms, chair bumping the backs of her knees. He’s so alive. His muscles make eddies under the fabric. He smells of warm raisins.
    He pulls away, rubbing the newborn fluff on his head, appraising her. Those wolf eyes: he’d known her all along.
    Except suppose he hadn’t? At the moment she might have seen him catching on she’d been looking down at his card. She flips it against her hand. The cheek of his grin.
    This is what she remembers first about Sam: when he steps out of line, nobody’s looking.

¶therealnobody
How do we know these people’s data was even really hacked? All we know is they’re getting spammed by messages from some bullshit kid’s programme toy