“You don’t even know her.”
I shook my head, closed my eyes tightly, and tried to catch my breath.
“And you’re fucking talking to yourself!” I spat back. I looked down the scope again, but the woman had disappeared inside. Refocusing, the crosshairs found the woman with the terrier. She had scooped up the small dog and was running across the park with a couple other screamers. I was pretty sure I could take them both out in one shot.
“Why? What’s the fucking purpose?”
“Shut up!”
My hands started to shake, and sweat poured from my forehead into my eyes. I hadn’t put on a bandana to keep it away, and my accuracy was going to suffer. The shaking was totally fucking me up when it came to placing the crosshair over my target, and when I fired, I missed completely.
Sirens.
“Waited too fucking long.”
I let go for a moment, wiped sweat and whatever out of my eyes, shook my hands, and took a deep breath.
“You can do this shit. You’re good at this shit.”
As I glanced away from the scope and down the side of the building, I could see multiple people in flak jackets and helmets beginning to evacuate the park and surround my apartment building. I could have gone over and down the side of the building at that point, but figured it was probably too late, so I went back to firing.
Seven cars lost tires, but nothing was as satisfying as the parking garage door. I switched to my last magazine and shifted my aim to the right. The SWAT team hadn’t surrounded that area yet, and there were lots of bystanders around. If I killed one of them, they were probably going to locate their own sniper to take me out. I could hear a helicopter in the distance and figured that’s where he’d be. It was either that or open up fire on the SWAT guys, but the helmets made it more difficult.
I blew out the windows of the residential building on the right side of the park and then focused on someone standing half way down the stairs leading to North Columbia Drive. The crosshairs found where an ear was hidden underneath dark, silken hair.
Beautiful hair.
She turned, and the fading sun glittered off the necklace around her throat. It was a simple, silver chain with a large, round pendant of some sort. No wait, not a pendant – it was a…a…
“A quarter.”
My finger stopped moving. My breath stopped. Hell, my heart might have stopped beating at that point.
“No fucking way.”
Odin barked, yelped, and then went silent.
The noise from the screaming people below was overshadowed by the noise from behind me. Their words meant little, even though I knew they were likely screaming at me to let go of the weapon and stop trying to blow up the fucking neighborhood.
Whatever.
I couldn’t take my eyes from the shining quarter necklace and the familiar face above it.
“Lia.”
“Release the weapon now!”
It had to be a hallucination.
There was no way – no way she could possibly be here.
Absolutely impossible.
“Release your weapon now, or I will be forced to fire!”
Fatigue covered me. I couldn’t fight it anymore. My hands moved to the ground below the gun, and I pushed back away from it even as I kept my eye on the scope. I had already dropped my hand from the trigger, but nothing was making any sense to me in the slow motion events to follow.
I didn’t want to be there, and I didn’t want to be doing what I was doing. I never wanted any of it to come to this. Rinaldo wouldn’t like it – this wasn’t something he would approve of at all, and I couldn’t take it back now.