First Class Killing

Chapter 45

I CLOSED MY EYES AND TRIED TO FEEL THE STILLNESS in the early-morning air, to pull it inside of me and hold it there. Each time I breathed out, I tried to let go of a little more tension in my shoulders and my neck and my back. I let my arms hang at my sides. And then I tried to do the same with my mind, to let it relax and open up to whatever impulse I wanted to send its way. I wanted to empty it of all the events of the past few weeks, all the emotions save one. I held on to the anger. I let my mind go blank except for a bright, burning red stain that drew my complete focus. I took that stain and projected it out, across the distance from me to the target, and onto the bull’s-eye. The rest of the target fell away.

I picked up the gun. It felt comfortable in my hand. My fingers found their place around the grip, my index finger extended to the trigger. Everything felt right, and all I could see was the bright red target in front of me. As I raised my arm, the target grew larger. They say athletes who get in a zone see the basket or the cup or the baseball grow so big they can’t miss it. That’s how I felt. I was locked in on a target that looked to me as big as the entire wall. I knew I couldn’t miss it. I knew I wouldn’t.

I went through the checklist in my mind, the one Tristan and I had worked on. Arms raised, elbows slightly bent. Feet shoulder-width apart. Headgear and protective glasses in place. I adjusted my sleeve so that it didn’t make the stitches on my arm so uncomfortable. My wounds were almost completely healed.

The legal issues would take longer to sort out, but it looked as though self-defense would hold up. The cops had found enough in the cabin to support my story. What they hadn’t found was the archive. Bo had taken it. He had replaced it in the floorboard hideout with the brick that had killed Robin Sevitch. He had pulled it from the desk, exactly where Monica had told him it would be. The police had considered that a most interesting discovery.

Jamie was working through his issues. When he asked me if I thought he should tell Gina, I remembered the way I had felt the first moment I had seen his face on the screen. I told him I didn’t think she should pay the price for something he had done. We had done. I would keep his secret. I knew he would keep my secrets, too, if ever I had the courage to tell them to him. To anyone. I needed someone to tell my secrets to.

Harvey had come to visit in the hospital, and I had been glad to see him. We had decided to leave things on hold for a while. He was not, I was happy to hear, working for OrangeAir. With the exception of Monica, who had cut a nice deal for herself, neither were thirty hookers from Angel’s ring.

“Fire whenever you’re ready.”

I squeezed off the first round, and the target flinched. I didn’t even need to look to see where the bullet had passed through it. I fired again and again until the.38 was empty. I felt steady. I felt sure. I felt that I was in the right place at the right time, doing what I needed to be doing, and I didn’t even think about whether I would pass or fail. There are worse things in life than flunking a firearms test. I had seen some of them. Seeing them had changed the shape of my life, added corners and edges where there had been none before, and made the path clear.

I knew what I wanted. I knew what I was.

When I finished shooting, I set the gun down. I took off my earphones and my glasses. When I did look up, it wasn’t at the target but at the face of the officer monitoring the test. He looked at the target and back at me, and I knew that I had passed. It felt good.