Total pages in book: 52
Estimated words: 48018 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 240(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 48018 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 240(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
“I mean that you have not truly freed yourself from your past, Riley. You’re avoiding what happened rather than accepting it and making it right.”
“There’s no making this right.”
“Some might say that, but I find that justice is not so hard to find if one is prepared to be creative in exacting it.”
Angelo pulls over at the side of a busy road. I don’t know why we’re here, it’s just a suburb of no apparent importance. We’re outside a diner that is fairly well populated, one of those throwback 1950’s affairs with the red and white tile and the neon signs that are never well-maintained enough not to flicker.
Of course, the windows of Angelo’s vehicle are tinted. It allows us to see without being seen. Angelo has parked with the passenger side door close to the footpath.
“What’s interesting about this portion of town is that the security cameras here are all down for maintenance,” Angelo mentions casually.
“That is interesting,” I agree, glancing back at him. He is composed, as always. He is undoubtedly plotting, as always too. Obviously, this latest plan involves me, though I am not yet certain how. It would be smart to be worried about this turn of events, but I have begun to trust Angelo in a way I have trusted few people in my life.
I knew better than to think Angelo wanted to go for a casual drive. This man does not do anything casually. He manipulates his world in the way a chess master manipulates the board, but he plays with far more variables and much greater risk.
Do you see the man in the window? The one with the burger and fries? Slightly balding?
I see him. He looks familiar, though he comes from the time before the mental fuzz descended. I can’t quite place him. An old neighbor? Did I go to school with him? Did I…
“That is the man who shot you. His name is Mark Pruitt.”
My blood runs cold.
The agency never revealed whose gun the bullet came from, but I know they investigated, before finding themselves and their other agents free of wrongdoing.
Angelo presses a gun into my hand. It is cool and smooth and it feels very comfortable, like an appendage I lost. I have spent many, many hours in gun ranges. I no longer have a license, of course, but that doesn’t matter because what Angelo wants me to do is completely illegal.
I know this is a test. Shooting this man will put me forever on the wrong side of the law. I’ve dropped out of society, but there’s still the chance I could reintegrate. Once I pull the trigger in this particular way, things change forever.
I look at Angelo and see him looking at me. There’s no expectation in his dark eyes. There’s invitation to join him and Bobby in their lives, to relinquish the last vestiges of belief in a system that used me, abused me, and abandoned me to the madness of grief.
“What he took from you cannot be reclaimed,” Angelo says. “Not in the traditional way, but some vengeance might be exacted. Some proper justice of the old kind.”
He is not making explicit statements, but I know what he is trying to tell me. He is communing with the deepest, darkest part of myself, whispering to the twisted core of my being.
The bullet that man fired hit my uterus. The organ had to be removed, along with one of my ovaries. My reproductive organs became a shield for the rest of my being.
I will never carry my own child. This is a fate that befalls many women, and I know in time I will come to terms with it. But in this moment, in this precise second, I am looking at the dull, meaty face of the man who made that happen to me. He took the natural creation of life from me, and it feels only natural that I take life from him too.
I squeeze the trigger before I have consciously thought about it. The bullet erupts from the chamber with a glorious shout and sings its way through all too thin air, nothing to stop it from finding its destiny.
It hits him right where I intended it to. He never used his brain to begin with, and now he doesn’t have one. Now that erstwhile gray matter is splattered across a mercifully wipeable menu and a washable tablecloth.
The window of the car slides up, and we purr smoothly into the distance. It will take time for forensics to ascertain where the shot was taken from and by then we will be very far away, and this car will no longer be able to be found. It is close to a perfect crime, and I know that I will get away with it.
Tears are flowing down my cheeks. Tears for myself. Tears for all I have lost, and all I have now renounced. I was one of the good guys, and now I am something much wilder and far more dangerous.