Page 2 of Ricochet

I could’ve killed them from my vantage point. Watched their brains paint the pavement, while the crowd dispersed in a ripple of panic.

The arguments for not pulling the trigger seemed to diminish with each day that Michael Culling was able to forget he’d ever given the order to murder my family.

Whereas, my memories continued to churn.

With every nightmare that plagued my sleep, a greater need burned somewhere in the darkest corners of my mind—one that left me questioning my own humanity. I needed to see the devastation on Michael Culling’s face as I took everything from him. I wanted to watch him curl into himself, cursing the heavens, as the pain of watching his entire world slowly drift from his fingertips mercilessly ripped his heart from his chest.

I needed Culling to feel what I’d felt in those final moments. To know that the crushing blow of reality existed behind a thin veil of hope that’d burn down at any moment.

He’d know my pain. My suffering. My desolation.

No quick bullet would deliver vengeance to that bastard. I intended to gift to Culling the understanding of true hell. The realization that what he wanted most, the very reason he lived, was gone forever.

Revenge.

The word simmered in my head, a steady boil of seething that’d kept me from blowing my own brains out the last three years. Like the word held some kind of sanity. A purpose.

The crowd below dispersed, as two men, dressed in rags, fought over one of the packages.

Police guards, who’d maintained a halo of space between the Cullings and the mob of homeless, shifted closer, drawing their guns. Shouts erupted, and a visual of Michael and Aubree being torn to shreds in the shithole neighborhood had the opportunist in me bubbling up from the darkest depths of my soul, urging me to slip the rifle through the hole in the window and shoot.

Done. Over.

I’d never have to see their fucking smiling faces again.

I took a step back from the window just to prove to myself that I could, that I wasn’t stupid enough to be fooled by the chimera of a quick kill. It would be a total suicide shot, anyway. The whole fucking plan would be out the window, and all the men who’d carried out Culling’s orders would remain free.

Alive and free.

Besides, it wasn’t the first time I’d had the opportunity to kill them, and it wouldn’t be the last. For three years, I’d watched Michael and Aubree Culling parade the streets like saints. Both of them smiling those bright, fake smiles that begged to be knocked to crags while handing out promises to the poor, despondent souls who lapped them up and followed like rats behind the Piper.

A glance down at my forearm revealed the iron cross with the snaking scorpion where James Nicholas had been tattooed, as well as the quote below it:

Anyone who injures their neighbor is to be injured in the same manner: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. – Leviticus 24:20

The cross was a reminder that I wasn’t always a monster.

There had been a time I didn’t believe in them—monsters. Sometimes, my son would wake from nightmares, screaming of them under his bed. Like all parents, I told him they didn’t exist.

Except, monsters did exist. They didn’t hide under the bed, though. They stormed through the fucking door and stole away everything we loved.

To defeat a monster, I had to become one.

I often wondered what kind of man I’d be, if they hadn’t robbed me of everything that night.

Snapping from my absent musing, I refocused on the scene beyond the window. Aside from a few residual pushes, both men had stopped fighting, the bigger of the two taking his package and pushing though the crowd, as if to get as far away from them as he could.

My gaze trailed back to the Cullings, and pain stabbed my skull, casting a flash of jagged light behind my lids as I clamped my eyes shut.

Clutching the side of my head did nothing to dull the needle-like spasms chipping away at the bone. When I lifted my lids, a yellow haze clouded my vision.

Not again.

Last time I’d seen a doc, about a year ago, he’d told me I could expect headaches— side effect of a fucking bullet to the brain, I supposed. Sometimes, I lost whole stretches of memory, too. Blackouts. A real pain in the ass on the occasions I’d snapped out of it and found myself standing in the middle of a goddamn crack house with no memory of how, or why, I was there.

“Beautiful, isn’t she?”

In spite of the throbbing at my skull, I twisted to find a figure, nothing more than a ghostly outline, cloaked in shadows. His voice was unmistakable, though.