Gage
It was easy to take a man’s life when you saw them through the lens of a scope. Center your attention, steady your breathing, take the wind into account… take a life.
When you have to get up close and personal, that’s when you make the hard choices. Seeing someone’s blood on your hands, hearing their pleas for mercy, their cries for help. Their last breaths of life. That is something you don’t hear when you are hundreds of yards away behind a rifle.
Not every kill is the same. When I started this journey, I decided that I was doing it for justice, not revenge. Sometimes the man I was killing would need to appear to be in an accident, something quick, though never painless. Why would I let a monster get off that easily?
Other times, I would follow my father’s example and take him with me to a remote location, usually the cabin in the woods, and torture him for a few hours, if not for days. I would love to do that with this asshole in front of me. Unfortunately, the moment he disappeared, his father would have the entire state full of law enforcement crawling over the area looking for hismissing piece of shit son. So, as much as I would have loved to torture him for days on end—accident it was.
I had watched as Parker walked over to my friend before leaving, wanting to make sure that she could at least get him to speak to her. I knew he wanted her, could see it in his eyes as they followed her every movement, even if he’d tried to pretend that he didn’t. I didn’t doubt she was capable of breaking through to him; I just didn’t know if she would push him too hard first. And it looked like I wasn’t wrong.
I had to hold back Ry when he’d jumped up to intervene the moment Dante’s hand went around Parker’s throat. I knew firsthand that the small woman was capable of defending herself. The fact that she was allowing Dante to hold her there told me everything I needed to know.
“Let them be, Ry,” I said quietly, as I turned to walk back inside the house, ready to change into clothing that would be inconspicuous and grab my bag of tools.
“He’s hurting her,” he fumed at me. “You, of all people, are just going to let a man hurt a woman?” he demanded, as he stomped after me.
I snorted and shook my head as I shrugged off my T-shirt and pulled out a black one that was a common brand that could be purchased nearly anywhere. “Ry, that woman is the least defenseless woman I’ve seen. Trust me, she’s okay with Dante.”
“What if he hurts her?”
I looked at him as I pulled on a pair of worn tennis shoes that were a size too small. “Then he’s going to feel bad about it later when he’s done fucking her.”
“You really think she’s going to break through to him?” he asked, part hope and part disbelief warring in his eyes.
“I think she already has.”
After I left,I drove into town and parked by the all-night diner that one of my grandma owned. She no longer worked as much as she used to. Instead, my cousin ran the place more than my grandma did anymore. But everyone in town still considered it my Grandma Grace’s diner.
Ry was right when he’d said that the Methodist minister would have his son out of jail by dinner time. It wasn’t the first time the punk had been in trouble with the law. My dad, Ethan, hadn’t let him get away with his shit when he became chief, unlike the previous one. He never caved, no matter how much the minister threatened to have his job. There wasn’t a law-abiding citizen in this town who would want my dad out of office, so all he did was dare him to try and take it. The Mayor knew better than to piss off the town unless he wanted his own elected position taken. My dad wouldn’t have let him walk away this time either if I hadn’t called him and told him to let the piece of shit go.
The house was several blocks from the diner. I knew every alley and street with little to no lighting, cutting through yards with no dogs or cameras. After growing up in the town—and with my dad, Brent’s experience, I knew where the cameras were and which safe paths to take. Even if I did end up on some kind of evidence somewhere, I knew it would be taken care of without a trace by my other dad.
Pulling on a pair of thin, black leather gloves, I opened the back gate leading into Amy Fuller and Mark Shumar’s shared home. My intel told me they lived alone, with no pets, no cameras, and the neighbors were elderly, who were in bed by eight p.m. every night. A quick check of the back door showedthe single lock was engaged, but I shook my head as I lifted the corner of the rubber mat.
Picking up the key, I fit it into the lock and twisted my wrist until the handle freely turned. I pocketed the key and let myself inside, my steps silent on the tile flooring. It was after ten p.m., and the television was on in the living room. I paused in the doorway, listening as Mark Shumar snorted halfway through a snore, then resumed the same loud, rhythmic snoring I’d heard since I walked in.
I took my pack off and set it on the tile floor, just outside the living room. There wasn’t much I would need inside of it. Mark was a small man who liked to use his strength against even smaller women. He wouldn’t put up much of a fight against a man much larger and stronger than he was. But, by the look of the table next to his recliner, he was wasted with more than a six-pack of beer and a half bottle of Jack in his belly and bloodstream.
Glancing around, I saw the stairs that his fiancée had supposedly fallen down and grinned. The only hard part would be getting him up those stairs without manhandling him. Not that it would actually be hard to get him up there. No, the hard part was that Iwantedto manhandle him. I wanted to give him a taste of his own medicine. He needed to feel what it was like to be helpless against someone bigger and stronger than he was. Too bad that would leave evidence.
Ignoring the man for the moment, I walked up the stairs and down the hallway. The pictures hanging on the walls were crooked, looking as though they had been bumped into carelessly. Glancing into the two open doorways, I first saw what had to be the primary bedroom, with a large, unmade bed. There were blankets askew and pillows thrown to the floor. It appeared that at least part of the fight had been inside their bedroom.
The next room had a crib inside, though there was little else. The walls hadn’t been painted a cheerful color. No paintings hung on the walls. There was a stuffed animal inside the crib, though. I walked inside the room, my curiosity getting the better of me, and saw a pink bear. I picked it up and sawMommy’s Girlin white stitching. Amy Fuller bought the bear for a little girl she would have to bury after giving birth alone. A little girl who was murdered by her father.
I gently set the bear back into the crib in the same place it had been. Without a backward glance, I walked from the room and went to the top of the stairs. Pulling out my burner phone, I opened a recording I’d prepared earlier, turned the volume up, and hit play.
The loud cries of a newborn baby started blasting from the phone speaker. Knowing the man was wasted and wouldn’t wake up even if an actual baby was sitting next to his face, I let out a piercing whistle loud enough to wake the dead.
From the recliner downstairs, I heard the drunken idiot snort loudly as his snores cut off abruptly.
“What the fuck?” There was the sound of fumbling and a crash as several beer cans fell off the table he’d likely stumbled into. “Amy! What the fuck, bitch? Do you have a baby in this house? I thought I got rid of that brat?!”
Mark’s heavy footsteps stumbled to the stairs, then started slowly climbing, one at a time. There was more cursing and the sound of a fist hitting the wall. A picture hanging along the stairwell crashed to the carpeted floor. It tumbled down the steps, the sound of the wooden frame splintering along with glass shattering as it finally hit the tile flooring below could be heard over the recorded sounds of the crying baby.
“Shut that fucking bastard up, Amy! If I have to shut it up, you’re both going to regret it. Do you hear me, bitch?” The hatred was clear in his slurred words. Mark was an evil piece ofshit, and I would have zero regrets watching the life drain from his eyes.
Just before his foot reached the top of the stairs, I stepped out of the shadows where I’d been hiding and held up my phone and waved it slowly back and forth. “Tell me, Mark,” I drawled, “how, exactly, were you planning on making your fiancée regret having your baby after you murdered it?”
