Theaella

40

His toes hooked over the sill behind him, protruding into the room above the row of urinals. The bathroom door was locked, a cleaning cart positioned in the hall outside, accessorized with a mop tilting from a yellow bucket and a RESTROOM BEING SERVICED A-frame sign. The cart featured a canvas basket nicely sized for carrying industrial laundry loads or a portable sniper hide.

A 607-yard shot from a sixty-four-foot elevation wasn’t a hard shot. It wasn’t an easy one either. Especially not with a head sporadically swimmy from a concussion.

The built-up Remington had been modified to accommodate a detachable mag that took ten rounds, which were all Matthew would require. The rifle was set up on a bipod, the Manners stock resting against his left shoulder. He was so still that he might have been statuary carved into the building itself, a gargoyle with a sniper habit.

Getting the measurements from Trevon in advance was enormously helpful. Matthew had already checked the range card taped to the stock, so he knew how much holdover he needed for the distance and how much cosign compensation the downhill angle required. The combination baseline for scope and rifle was zeroed at four hundred yards, and he’d already ascertained his hold for the round he was using, a 168-grain Federal Gold Medal Match. Knowing ahead of time where to hold on the optic meant that there was no need to mess with the scope.

There Alexan Petro was, tucked into his café table in the restaurant courtyard, sipping espresso and talking on his Turing Phone. He sat alone, which seemed only to enhance his status: Important Man Conducting Virtual Business. Five of his bodyguards were spread around the courtyard and restaurant. Nineteen minutes ago Matthew had watched them enter, counting them off like cattle headed to the abattoir. Only two of the men inside were visible at the moment.

That would change quickly.

The sixth member of Petro’s core team waited outside by the armored Town Cars, leaning against a fender and thumbing at his phone.

But Matthew wasn’t focused on the bodyguards now. He was focused on Petro.

A handsome man by any standards. That rich mane of silver hair. A certain grace of movement. The overcompensatory noblesse oblige of the newly affluent.

Matthew’s world narrowed to a circle marked by stadia reticle increments. He felt his vision get loose, verging on blurry, but he squeezed his eyes shut, and when he opened them again, everything he saw obeyed the normal rules of physics. He was a left-eye-dominant shooter, a stroke of luck since the dilated right pupil was harder to coerce into cooperating at the moment.

His earpiece activated on voice command, sparing him the slightest movement. “Dial.”

The RoamZone in his cargo pocket complied.

Through the scope he saw Petro pull the Turing Phone away from his cheek to check caller ID. His features set in a show of amusement. He clicked over, and a moment later his voice spoke in Matthew’s ear. “Hello, boy.”

“Petro.”

The man’s face, magnified in the scope, tightened. “So you found a name. Am I supposed to be scared?”

“Not by that.” Matthew kept gentle, steady pressure against the comb of the stock and gauged the come-up, adding the superelevation below the horizontal line.

Petro smirked. “Then by what?”

“By the fact that you had Grant Merriweather killed. And a doctor and two nurses. And Lorraine Lennox. And that you tried to take out Jack Merriweather.”

“You think those names mean something to me?”

“No,” Matthew said. “I think they mean nothing to you. Or to your men.”

A low ticking laugh came across the line and then the purr of that ten-grit voice. “The world, my world, is a much bigger place than you think. Expand your perspective, boy. At least for the few remaining days you have on this earth. My men have done things for me you can’t even imagine. I’ve watched them take people apart piece by piece while keeping the heart beating until the very end. Do you have any idea how much skill that requires?”

“Anything you’d like to say?”

“Before?”

“I mean, any last words?”

Petro’s eyes darted around. Then he relaxed back in his seat, smoothed the lapel of his suit, and grinned. “If you expect to scare me, you don’t know me at all.”

“How about your men? You want to ask them if they’re scared?” Matthew made a microscopic adjustment, dropping the crosshairs to the spot where Petro’s arm met his trunk. The Timney trigger split the pad of Matthew’s index finger. “At least the five within earshot right now?”

It took a quarter second for the words to clear the Turing Phone’s encryption. Another quarter second for Petro to register their meaning. His neck corded, a sheet of muscle as his flesh tightened with panic.

Matthew applied 3.5 pounds of trigger pressure, and a crimson rose bloomed on Petro’s shoulder. He toppled back in his chair, landing splayed in clear view on the stone of the courtyard.

The platform gave the faintest wobble from the recoil but held firm.

Through the earpiece Matthew heard the clatter of the Turing as it struck ground. He cycled the bolt, the expended case spinning in a lazy arc past his temple, and buried the next round in the meat above Petro’s left thigh. Petro gave a pained animal howl, bellowing for help.

The next two bullets knocked out the visible bodyguards.

Matthew swept the Remington across the restaurant rooftop until he saw the bodyguard standing rigidly before the Town Car, one finger pressed to his earpiece. He found the man’s sweaty forehead, badly bruised from its encounter with the bathroom sink. The instant before he squeezed off another round, his vision streaked and then doubled, the glare of the windshield turning into a comet of light.