I’m out of time, so I flatten myself and check the scope.
Fuck.
With shaking hands, I refocus while trying to estimate the distance and wind speed, which feels like a cruel joke. I’m grateful I had the bales of hay yesterday. I think the car is between five hundred and seven hundred yards away. Maybe.
There’s a breeze on my face, trees with their leafy branches waving in the distance. My breath is calm, and I am the gun. I let my thoughts go, including the one that reminds me I’ve never made a shot this far on a moving target, Parker is sitting less than a foot away from my target, who is quickly driving out of the range of my ability, and the man I love is bleeding out in the front seat of a glorified golf cart. I have all the time in the world, and I am the gun.
On a breath, I pull back on the trigger, steady, steady, with good follow-through.
It’s a perfect shot, through the glass like butter.
But the car keeps going, disappearing into another dip in the road.
I wait a few more seconds, and the car reappears, but there’s no change in trajectory.
Nausea rolls my stomach. Please tell me I didn’t kill my friend.Please tell me I did not kill my friend.
Before spiraling entirely, I remember something about glass…tempered glass. Fuckfuckfuck. What’s the fucking rule of thumb?The glass deflects the bullet higher than the point of aim.I shot too high. I have to lower the shot while still getting it through the back window. What’s the formula? There’s a mnemonic, something…something…fuck it.
I curse the assholes who paired a seventy-five-dollar scope with a five-thousand-dollar rifle and quickly recalculate distance, drop, wind speed in my head, making the adjustments, reminding myself that this shitty scope is off to the left by just a hair. I make one more slight adjustment and breathe, controlling the trigger pull, controlling the follow-through and kickback.
A second small hole appears below the first in the back window.
I take a breath.
And another.
The car slows, angling off to the side into a line of grapevines before it stops completely.
I stay on my rifle for another five seconds, waiting for him to exit, but it’s Parker who gets out. She runs around to the driver’s side, pulling the body out of the car. I shove the rifle to the ground and grab the backpack in case he needs extra killing when I get there.
I jump in the truck, taking a second to check on Everett, who, thank fuck, is breathing and conscious. I squeeze his hand and shove the truck into gear, racing down to Parker.
She’s taken off her robe and is using it to wipe blood and brain from the windshield in nothing but a Garfield nightgown. We spot each other and give the dry laugh of the damned. We both look like Carrie bathed in pig’s blood, and I reach out, removing a little gray squiggle of brain from her pretty black hair. Thankfully, none of the blood she’s sporting belongs to her, so I breathe easy.
“I need help getting Everett into the car.”
She nods, tossing the robe on the ground as we walk past the guy who looks like my husband, save for the left side of his head. I check the windshield, and there’s a small exit hole with a few spidery cracks and a lot of smeared blood, but it’s all more or less intact.
Parker helps me to support Everett’s weight as we walk-drag him over to the back seat. I slide in next to him, settling myself under his legs.
As she’s buckling in, she turns around and asks, a slightly manic grin on her face, “Are we taking him to the hospital? Or are we taking him to some old crotchety backwoods vet?”
I let out a dry chuckle. “Anders has privileges at Hill Country Memorial.”
“In Fredericksburg?”
I nod, trying to keep my shit together.
“Wait, Anders is a doctor?”
I hold up my hands. “I guess. Can we go?”
She immediately faces forward and puts the car in drive. We head west to Fredericksburg, breaking every speed limit in the known universe, and I focus on the wind whipping in from the shattered driver’s-side window. I nearly lose it when we come upon a wide-load trailer on a two-lane section of highway, but she passes it, and about five other cars, before I can even complete the thought. I check the speedometer once but quickly decide I don’t care how fast she’s going.
Instead, I concentrate on Everett’s chest moving up and down while I press my hand to his side. I’m looking outside as ranchland and hills fly by us when his warm hand covers mine.
Not gonna lie, given the events of the last half hour, I’m running a little on edge and may or may not have screamed like a damsel in a fifties horror movie.
