Chapter four
Halo
“Blink”
I’dwatchedherfora week.
I knew the pattern of her footsteps on concrete, the rhythm of her routines. Mondays, she opened the café alone. Tuesdays, she wore her hair up with a pencil. She never used the pencil, it was like she forgot it every time she stuck it in the messy bun atop her head. She’d fumble around trying to find something to write with, and by the end of the day… she’d remember it was there. Thursdays, she left a second cup of coffee on the counter before the doors even opened; it was for some local old-timer she refused to charge. I watched through glass and mirrors, from the corner of parking lots, from the driver’s seat of a borrowed car. I noticed Matteo’s men were regularly parked across from her cafe. It looked like they were spooking her more than anything, just making my fucking job more difficult.
It didn’t help that this girl never seemed to go anywhere but work and home. She got groceries delivered, she watched movies alone on the couch with her cat all night. Slept in on the weekends. There weren’t many good places outside of her house to catch her alone, or to take her out with a gun and little fanfare.Now she was on edge after the pair of men rolled up and said something to her. I’d watched the color drain from her face as they spoke and then drove away.
I was having a hard time wanting to put forth much effort into killing her. She wasn’t my usual mark. There was something… off about her. Not wrong, just different. She smiled too easily and they wererealsmiles. She knew every customer’s name and made up the ones she didn’t. She refilled water bowls for dogs tied up outside. She gave away the last scone every night to the last person who came in. And when she thought no one was looking, she read old novels behind the counter with her lip tucked into her teeth and a crease in her brow like the world was ending inside those pages. I watched her capture a spider with a paper and a cup and release it onto the flowers outside the window.
It was hard for me to believe people like this really existed. They usually crumbled when they thought no one was looking, but this didn’t seem like a facade. What was it that Hunter S. Thompson said?Too weird to live, but much too rare to die.
Today, I knew I had to do something. I couldn’t keep waiting for her to end up somewhere secluded. I broke into an old building just down the street and across the road from her cafe. The place was taped off, abandoned, and unstable. The floor threatened to fall out from beneath me with every step as I set my rifle up in the window. I had my bike parked by a dumpster in the alleyway I was masked up and had my plan of escape ready. By the time she hit the pavement, I would already be on my way downtown.
I fixed the door of her cafe in my scope as she walked back and forth inside. She kept forgetting something, coming to the door more than once before retreating back into the parts of the store I couldn’t see. I was patient though.
Then she came to the door and stepped out onto the sidewalk. I put her face in my crosshair, sliding her into the appropriate position. She was a click away; the air was still like the world was holding its breath for me. I squeezed the trigger gently, applying slow pressure. She paused, looking down and digging through her purse. Did she forget something else?
She was just standing there. It was the perfect moment for me to send the bullet straight through the center of her skull. At this angle, with her chin tipped down as she searched the depths of her bag, it would be more than instant. It would go straight through her brain stem. Fast, easy, merciful.
If I didn’t do it, messier people would. Crueler people, people that would toy with her and feed off her fear, men that would touch her and violate her before and after she was dead. This was mercy, putting down a doomed creature so it wasn’t left to suffer.
In the end, she was dead anyway. It was just a matter of how easy I wanted to make it on her.
Why was I trying to justify this? This is what Idid.
I let out a long breath, shifting, but all I could think about was the way she said “thank you” to every delivery driver and waved to strangers. I noticed how her hair was more red than it had looked in Matteo’s picture. Then I did something I have never done before.
I blinked.
My concentration and my focus shattered as I pulled away from the sight. The breath I let out afterward felt like failure. I cursed under it and sat back on my heels as my muscles itched with the tension of not pulling the trigger. I looked down at my palms, covered in calloused chemical burns from removing my own fingerprints a decade ago, they were steady, unshaking, but my palms felt sweaty and cool.
She just… disrupted the math. That was all.
I watched her walk off down the sidewalk, her shoulders hunched against the breeze, a crumpled receipt sticking out of her purse like a white flag. She moved like someone who’d never had a shadow follow her before, like she didn’t know how close she’d come. It would be easy to sneak up on her even now; she had no idea what was going on around her. She walked slowly, distracted by the sky and every fucking thing she passed. I could approach her and distribute a few quick stabs to the gut. I could get in five, six, seven before she even realized what was happening. Just pull her in close against me, straight into the blade.
Maybe it would be easier at the shop. Close range, quiet. I could do it face-to-face, and she’d never see it coming, and she wouldn’t have time to be scared. I got really into close-quarters violence sometimes; maybe it would help take the edge off by adding a little excitement for me. I liked to be hands-on. It was a character flaw.
But the thought still made me a little sick. Maybe Iwassick. Maybe I was coming down with something, and that was what had me thrown off. I’d never taken a sick day in my life, I’d worked through more illnesses and injuries than I could count, but I had no explanation for what I’d done.
Blinked.
I stayed low as I packed up, every piece of gear going back into its case with mechanical precision: one bolt at a time, one screw at a time. The rifle broke down like clockwork. My fingers moved without needing thought, but my mind was still working through what had just happened. By the time I got back to the bike, the sun had dipped beneath the buildings, and I waited just a little too long before throwing a leg over the seat. I should’ve been halfway home by now, should’ve had this done, but instead, I was letting her walk home.
Letting.The word echoed in my head like a dare.
She didn’t even know it. She had no idea her life had been held in the pause between my heartbeat and a trigger pull. No idea that I’d blinked and spared her by mistake.
I ground my teeth and started the engine, the roar snapping me back into my body. I’d give it a day or two. I’d walk into that damn coffee shop, scope out the interior, and see if it was feasible to enter just before close. Lock the door behind me, catch her off guard. I could stage it like a robbery gone wrong. This was a bad part of town, and no one would question it at all.
Maybe if I saw her up close… really saw her… I could remind myself she was just a job.
Just a job.
I gunned the throttle, and the squeal of the tires echoed in the alley behind me.
