(2013) Shooter (7 page)

"Bad idea, friend."

I seized his shoulder with more force than I thought myself capable of, and whirled him around to face me, grabbed him by the shirt collar, flung him to the wall, where I had been not a moment ago, and struck, open palm, right in the center of his face.

The attacker's head snapped back and hit the wall with a thunk, and with no more give between my hand and the immovable wall, I felt his nose give way beneath my hand.

Hm. Let's see what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object.

I pulled back and hit again.

And again.

And again.

Each time, I was rewarded with a crunch, until the attacker finally went limp and fell to the floor, dead from the pieces of bone and cartilage being shoved into the brain.

The facemask underneath my fingers was damp with blood.

I suddenly realized that the slight wheezing I was hearing was coming from me.

"Gracie? Are you okay?"

I turned to find Constance eyeing me warily, like I was an animal that was docile now, but could quickly turn violent at a second's notice.

The adrenaline coursing through my system wasn't letting me think clearly, but it was fading with the seconds that went by. My heart was still racing.

My face was hurting, my mouth was bleeding, my nose was bleeding, and my abdomen was definitely bruised. "I'm fine."

I was lying through my broken teeth, though. I was currently finding it difficult to see straight, and I'm fairly certain that's a bad thing. I wobbled on my feet.

"You don't look like it."

"Might have been worse." I shrugged.

"Grace. Why the hell is there a dead man on my floor?" she snapped back to business quickly. At least she doesn't lose her head in a crisis.

That snapped me right back to business. We have to make sure there's no dead man on this floor. Like, right now.

"Give me a trash bag, and some tape." I started toward the body, but Con didn't move. "Right now, Constance, we don't have much time."

She did as I instructed, but didn't look too happy about it.

I bent to tie the bag around his head; contain the mess, but curiosity stopped me halfway there, and I slipped the swat-style mask from his head.

If froze for the length of a heartbeat. I recognized this brutalized face.

"What the fuck is going on here?" I hissed under my breath.

CHAPTER 5

I suppose Constance was in her 'don't mess with Grace' mode, because she was completely silent during the car ride. Until, I suppose, the idea of having a dead body in the trunk of her green Malibu got to be too much for her.

"What the hell is going on, Grace?" she muttered quietly, and I barely heard her.

"Burglar. You were there." I tried to keep it simple, to keep up my lie.

"And that was his gun in your hand, huh?"

"No. That one's mine."

"And you have a gun for what?"

"To defend myself, as it is apparently necessary for me to do."

"You did that very well, didn't you? You killed him."

Ah, so that's what shes driving at. I played dumb anyway. "Your point?"

"So, what, are you like some Special Forces agent or something? Because I don't think it too likely that a telemarketer knows how to properly dispose of a corpse." Constance shifted in her seat, agitated. "It's apparent that you've been lying to me for a long time."

I really had to hand it to her; she didn't lose her head in a crisis. Unfortunately, this came with the very likely outcome that I would have to spill my guts soon.

Hell, why not right now?

"Yes, I have… and you're not going to like the truth."

"Is it on the wrong side of the law?" I didn't like that this was her first assumption. But at least she was correct.

"Yes." I answered simply. I glanced over out of the corner of my eye at my sister. She was paler than usual, and her jaw was set. She took a deep breath.

"I didn't really think it was Special Forces. You're too small." Was her feeble attempt at levity. "Drugs?"

"No."

A sigh of slight relief. "Gang?"

"No. Little white girl like me? Please."

"Organized crime syndicate?"

"No. Isn't that close to gang?"

She ignored me. "Substance trafficking?"

"No."

"Black market?" she was running out of illegal activities.

"No."

And then she finally hit on the correct answer.

"Contract killings?" She grunted with a slight tone of hysteria in her voice. She was grasping at straws.

I winced, sighed through my nose. "That's the one."

"What?" She stared at me, not believing. Like I would even make a joke out of that.

"I'm kind of a hitman, Connie."

"You're kidding, right?"

"No." My knuckles turned white on the steering wheel, and my teeth gritted together with screaming protest. I need to see a dentist. Badly. "I'm not."

She must have seen the truth in my stiff posture, because she made a weird choked sound, and stared at me in horror. "God…"

I didn't begrudge her a bit of a breakdown, because hell, she just found out her little sister kills people for a living, has a cadaver in her trunk, and also has no idea where her serial killer sis is taking her.

Just when you think you know someone, right?

But it still hurt me that she was looking at me that way. I was still Grace, wasn't I? Still her little sister. The one she herself had raised and loved for all the time I had been on this earth. It didn't just hurt, it tore me apart inside and rubbed salt in the wound.

She was glaring at me as though I was some sort of monster.

But then, she'd never seen me as anything other than her rude but dependable little sister.

"It's still me, Constance." I fought back the tears that threatened to stream out. "I'm still Grace. I always have been."

Why doesn't she
see
? I am not a monster
. My inner voice shouted, but my resolve wavered.

Yes you are
. My conscience said.
Ever since you took that first life
.

Constance seemed to have found her voice at last. "No you're not. I don't know who you are, but you're not my Gracie."

I almost heard the
rip
as my heart tore in two.

She was as cold as ice, her frigid tone cutting me to the quick. And the utter truth of her words hit me as well. She's
right
.

No, I'm not little Graecia Pryor. That weak little girl who was too afraid to say
no
when they put a gun in my hand and told me to shoot. That frightened little girl who took away another innocent life just to save her own. I was too terrified to die when Kendall handed me a revolver and ordered me to murder a faceless stranger. To see if I had the
nerve
. I didn't have nerve. I just had the will to survive. And that was what I had told myself for the longest time; that I had been preserving my own life. It was justified.

My pathetic logic withered before my self-scrutiny.

It wasn't justified at all. Because I had continued to do so for years afterward. And why? Because there was an immediate threat to my pathetic life? Because Keller was going to kill me if I didn't do what he told me to?

And why in the blue fucking hell do I still follow his orders? What is this? I'd become attached to my captor. This is so
fucked up
.

Why had I never thought about it before?

I choked out a sob. "You're right."

One tear slid down my cold cheek. I hadn't bothered with a coat and was shivering. But I didn't care. In fact, I barely even noticed that we had somehow reached our destination.

The freezing black waters of the reservoir stretched out ahead of the car for about a mile. I stepped out, leaving Constance in the car, shivering more violently. I popped the trunk and grabbed a handful of black plastic trash bag.

Somehow, I managed to heave Reno's body over the edge by myself. I'll never figure out how I got those two hundred pounds of dead weight over there. But I did.

He fell slowly, it seemed like, for ages before he hit the water with a sharp splash and sank. "Goodbye." I murmured to myself.

And now I had done the last thing I could do for my sister, by eliminating the evidence. She was safe now, and that was all that I wanted. I stood there by the cliff's edge, and a thought occurred to me.

It would be so
easy
to just stop hurting. Right now. Right here.

Why not? All I do is hurt people. All I do is take people away from those that love them. No one would miss me. Not even Constance, now that she knew what a monster I was.

Julia? Maybe, but she'd understand why I did it.

And that way, I couldn't hurt anyone else. It was better this way, wasn't it? Was it?

And I realized that I still had my gun in the waistband of my jeans.

"Grace? What are you doing?" I heard my sister behind me. She sounded… concerned? I noticed I'd been leaning toward the edge, my toes touching the rock that covered the cliff face.

A shuffle of feet. She scooted closer. As though she were afraid she would spook me. "Nothing." I answered. But I reached behind me and gripped my pistol in my frozen hands; pulling it out and looking at it, contemplating.

"Grace…" Constance froze, staring at the gun in my hand. "Stop."

"Stop what?" I asked distantly, studying the cool gunmetal.

"Look, Grace, it's not worth it."

I laughed mirthlessly. "Isn't it, though?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Connie, this way… I can't hurt anyone anymore." I think I smiled, but I couldn't really feel my face. But apparently it scared Con even more, because she edged closer.

And, seemingly of it's own accord, the gun inched upward until it caressed my jaw and my finger tickled the trigger.

I guess that was my intention. I don't know… I really wasn't thinking clearly.

"I didn't mean it, Gracie." She blurted, panicked.

And as much as I realized I wanted to hear those words, they didn't help one bit. The damage had been done. That door was open, and all of the long suppressed shame and self-loathing was pouring through.

Out of the blue, with a yell, Con charged toward me, and in my surprise, I lowered the gun and tried to move out of the way, but I stayed still because in that split second, I realized that if she missed me, she would go tumbling into the water below.

BANG.

My gun discharged when Constance smacked my wrist away, tackled me to the dirt, and wrestled it from my hand.

"Oof!" I hit the dirt hard with a loud thud. Constance hauled herself off me and stood, glaring and flinging the gun off of the cliff and into the water.

"What the fuck are you thinking? Jesus!" She shouted as she hauled herself off of me. I, meanwhile, was stunned into both silence and stillness. So I sat there on my butt and stared up at my sister. Leave it to her to yell at someone who had just been about to kill herself in a very messy way. "I don't think you have any clue how much that scared me."

I snapped out of my trance in time to realize that I had actually been contemplating suicide. Me? Suicidal? It almost seemed crazy now. Almost. But there was till a little nagging voice that poked at me. It taunted me.
'You know…'
it said
, ' there was a valid point to all that mental ranting…'

I shoved that thought away. No. I will not.

"Not really." I mumbled, like a child who knew they'd done something wrong. "I just… I really don't know what happened there. I'm sorry."

My good sense and personality popped back into its rightful place when Constance spoke again. "I didn't mean it." She repeated.

A soft laugh forced it's way from me. "Sure you did. But I don't really blame you."

"You won't do them any good by blowing your brains out." She stated frankly. I basically ignored that statement and tried to get up. I failed once, but succeeded on the second try.

I stood up and went back to the car, ignoring my sister's protest when I dropped into the driver's seat and started it up. Constance sat beside me, watching my every movement warily. As though I would drive the car into the reservoir or something with her in it.

Right.

"We have places to be." I muttered.

"Where?" she asked, cautious.

"Wanna see where I live?" I grinned toothily at my sister, but it must not have been very pretty. I was still bleeding, after all.

I pulled Con's green Malibu alongside my motorcycle and hopped out again. This would be interesting.

Unfortunately, exactly how cold I was seemed to occur to me as I quivered violently. I suppose being in twenty degree cold in nothing more than a cotton t-shirt and jeans and a pair of sandals wasn't beneficial to one's health. My teeth chattered, which didn't help that fact that several were loose.