Read Blood Trade: A Sean Coleman Thriller for Free Online

lifestyle that she’d grown up in, but her days were about to get much busier
in the upcoming months. Thus, Sean was thankful for whatever bookkeeping help she
could lend him in the meantime.
    When the sound of his name grabbed his attention, he stood and made his way through
the maze of occupied, interlocked seats and entered the long familiar hallway. At
the end of the bright corridor hung a long, vertical mirror, which he interpreted
each time as a cruel joke, a way of forcing people to take a thorough, pensive look
at themselves before it was their turn to take the needle.
    He couldn’t help but notice that the man staring back at him looked different than
he used to—healthier. He had lost some weight in recent months. His once protruding
gut had shrunk and the outline of his body no longer looked like he was wearing a
spare tire around his waist. His pants were now looser and he even had to wear a
belt. Had he realized sooner how much weight his habitual drinking added to the scale
over the years, he might have given up beer earlier.
    At least, that’s what he tried to convince himself. He knew it probably wasn’t true.
    He had recently given his dark hair a short buzz cut, which gave him a leaner appearance.
At the age of thirty-eight, he was almost satisfied—for the first time in a long
time—with how he looked, though he noted how bloodshot his tired hazel eyes were.
    He rounded the next corner and entered a large room. In it were roughly thirty reclined
beds. Almost all were occupied by people. The beds lined broad walls in the shape
of a rectangle. Sean’s eyes met those of a young, blond man with a thin frame and
pointy shoulders. Clad in a white lab coat that looked a size too large, he used
a nodding motion to direct Sean over to an open bed in a back corner.
    Sean took a seat on the vinyl-upholstered recliner, then sprawled out along it until
his wide back sank in comfortably. His boots dangled over the edge of the raised
footrest.
    A half-dozen, twenty-inch television screens hovered just below the ceiling at moderate
angles, letting the room’s occupants enjoy a movie that Sean couldn’t identify. It
was something with Will Smith. The volume was muted, as it always was, and the people
watching it wore earphones to listen. Sean rarely chose to listen to whatever was
playing. He never liked the feeling of wires wrapped around his neck or face. Too
constrictive. Too unnatural.
    He wasn’t much of a reader either, so he typically elected to people-watch. He’d
convinced himself that it was good trade practice, a way of honing his instincts
as a security guard. He often studied people and worked on reading their mannerisms,
predicting how they might react under different situations.
    He also found the practice mildly entertaining on a personal level. He enjoyed speculating
on people’s origins, backgrounds, and occupations.
    As he began pumping his fist to build up a vein and let the blood in his arm flow
more freely, he chose his first target. It was a short, stubby man dressed all in
black, sitting directly across from him in another recliner.
    Though some faces in the room looked familiar from past visits, this man’s did not.
He was mostly bald up top with a few long strands of brown but graying hair that
had been combed over his head in a futile attempt to conceal his scalp. He wore tinted
glasses with round frames and looked to be in his fifties. There was a paperback
book propped up in front of him. He held it with his free hand while blood was drawn
from his other arm.
    Like everyone else in the room, the man’s blood was pumped through a long, clear
tube and into a centrifuge machine that sat on a cart beside him. The machine had
a spinning component inside that helped separate out the plasma from blood. The contraptions
always emitted a dull humming noise, and Sean could hear several of them murmuring
around the room.
    A semi-clear, cylinder-shaped container hooked in front of the machine