He thought briefly of the kid on that drug bust last fall—the one who'd been hiding under the kitchen table when the SWAT team came through. Twelve years old. Skinny. Terrified. The house had been a meth lab, and the kid's parents were both face-down on the floor in cuffs. Simmons had knelt beside him afterward, talking quietly, promising things would get better. Promising the kid would be okay. That someone would take care of him.
He wasn't sure the kid had believed him. He wasn't sure he'd believed himself. The system didn't always work. Sometimes kids like that just fell through the cracks.
He pushed the memory aside and kept walking.
Just coffee. Maybe some eggs. He wondered if they had cinnamon rolls. Maybe a shot of sugar into his bloodstream would help. Besides, he was a sucker for cinnamon rolls.
A crack split the cold, thin air. It was a perfect, flat sound, like a single handclap.
For a fraction of a second, Simmons felt something. Not pain, just impact. A punch to the center of his chest that drove the air from his lungs. His brain registered it before his body could react.
A second bullet entered his forehead and snapped his head back.
Simmons didn’t hear that one.
And he felt nothing when he landed flat on his back on the cold and icy pavement.
She held the rifle lightly, letting its weight settle into the frame of the abandoned sedan she was using as cover.
The car was old, rusted, and forgotten. Someone had parked it, or more accurately, abandoned it, at the edge of the lot near the tree line where the shadows were deepest.
Perfect concealment.
She'd arrived two hours before dawn, moving through the darkness, ignoring the cold, and settling in to wait.
The scope had given her a perfect view of the hotel, the frost on the pavement, the man moving slowly toward the lobby. She'd been watching him since he stepped outside. Watching the way he moved. He was clearly injured and favoring his left side.
This would be Simmons.
She didn’t see any sign of Reacher. And no sign of the truck they were driving.
She would have preferred to kill Reacher first, as he was likely the most dangerous. But the order wasn't her call.
The command had been clear: kill both of them.
The truck was gone but her spotter had already leaned on a local contact who knew someone at the hotel’s front desk. The message came back clean:One of the men is still checked in. Second one’s whereabouts were unknown.
That was enough.
She settled behind the rifle, breathing steady, heartbeat slow. Anything faster and the shot suffered. The man crossed the parking lot with the awkward gait of someone carrying pain. He didn't look around. Didn't sense anything.
Most people walked through the world assuming they were safe and every morning would be like the last. Assuming no one was watching. Assuming the morning was just a morning.
Mostly they were right, but occasionally, they were wrong.
She ran through the checklist in her mind. The same checklist she'd run through hundreds of times before. Every variable accounted for. Every factor measured.
Distance: 142 yards. Well within effective range. The .300 Win Mag could reach out to 800 yards with the right conditions. This was a chip shot.
Shot angle: clear. No obstructions. Clean line of sight from her position to the target's center mass.
Wind: zero. The air was still. Cold and heavy. Perfect.
Background: safe. The motel office was behind him, but the angle was such that a miss would hit dirt, not glass. Not that she'd miss.
Witnesses: none. The parking lot was empty. The office blinds were closed. No one was watching.
Second target: location unknown. That was the only variable she couldn't control. But it didn't matter. She'd find him. She always found the ones who ran.
