Blood, Ash, and Bone

CHAPTER Thirty-one

Trey drove us back to the hotel without a word. It was fully dark now, the bridge silver-white against a clear black sky. Marisa wanted a meeting, he said. I wasn’t one bit surprised at that. What did surprise me, however, was that she wanted me in on it too.

I kept my eyes on the water below us. “You never told me you were a sniper.”

“No. I didn’t.”

“Why not?”

He thought about that, then shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Is this what Marisa was hinting at? In your files?”

“No. Maybe. I don’t know. I resigned from the sniper team two months before the accident, so I didn’t include that part of my service in my Phoenix application. Marisa is a thorough researcher, however. She probably pulled the records.”

“But you said there was nothing in those files!”

“I didn’t know there was!”

I didn’t reply. Trey rarely raised his voice. When he did, I knew to back off and let him get a rein on things. I knew this, but didn’t always do it. This time I did.

He took a deep breath. “I want to tell you about this. But I can’t right now. I know I’m saying that a lot, but it’s true. Things are closer to the surface now. Your words. And it’s hard…it’s very difficult…”

He shook his head again, this time with agitation. “After the meeting with Marisa. I’ll tell you about it then. All of it. I promise.”

***

Trey went up to the room without me. I told him I’d be in the bar for a few minutes, that I needed a second to get my head together. This was almost true. What I really needed was Garrity.

So I sat in a corner booth, phone in hand, hesitating. Garrity was my go-to guy for anything involving pre-accident Trey, but he’d nail me to the wall the second he heard the story. Amateur, he’d say. Come back to Atlanta and let the professionals handle it.

And he was right—I was an amateur. Not like a sniper. They were the ultimate professionals. I understood people getting mad enough to kill each other. You get angry, your vision goes red, soon enough the bat or pistol or switchblade finds it way into your hand. And then, bam. You’re a murderer.

Snipers were different. Snipers killed only after a cold, calculated analysis. For them, putting a bullet between someone’s eyes was logical, the end result of an equation. It was a job, one that didn’t get their hands dirty.

And I had two of them in my life at the present moment. One taking shots in my general direction, the other in my bed. And the worst thing was, I wasn’t sure which one was the most dangerous.

I took a deep breath and punched in Garrity’s number. He was not sympathetic.

“Of course he was a sniper. What else did you think he did?”

“I don’t know, busted up heads, knocked down doors.”

“Well, yeah, that’s how everybody starts in SWAT. But that gets boring, especially if you’re as smart as Trey.” His voice went suspicious. “Why are you asking?”

So I explained. He reacted entirely as I expected.

“Sweet Jesus, Tai! What the f*ck?”

So I explained some more. He listened. At some point in the conversation, he stopped being obnoxiously bossy and started being concerned.

His voice softened. “You really didn’t know he was a sniper?”

“How was I supposed to know? He’s never said one word. I knew all the other stuff—dignitary protection, SWAT, marksmanship awards—but that did not add up to sniper.”

“I forget you’re a civilian sometimes. The signs are obvious. The way he handles physical space, always measuring distances and calculating angles. The way he controls his breathing and heart rate. The running, the decaf tea, the patience, the detachment. Textbook sniper.”

“If he’s so textbook, why’d he resign?”

Garrity made a noise. “Because his car slammed into a concrete embankment and he scrambled the judgment-making part of his brain! You don’t hand somebody like that a sniper rifle and say hey, go get some bad guys.”

“But he resigned before the accident.”

A pause. “What?”

“Two months before. Didn’t you know?”

“No, I…Before? Are you sure?”

“That’s what he said.”

There was silence at the other end of the line. I stared out the window over the river. I’d spent so much time this week on the edge of it. It was an unpredictable body of water, changeable in its eddies and currents, salt and fresh mixing in a brackish chaos.

Garrity’s voice sounded far away. “Did you say two months before the accident?”

“Yeah.” I hesitated. “You know what happened, don’t you?”

“I got a good guess. But that’s his story to tell, not mine.”

“He killed somebody, didn’t he? Somebody he shouldn’t have.”

Garrity sighed. “The exact opposite actually.”

It was too much at that moment. I knew Trey and Marisa were upstairs, waiting. Or not waiting. Regardless, I had to go up there eventually. I couldn’t stay in the bar forever.

Before I could ask Garrity any more questions, however, a familiar figure caught my eye, out of place in his camo pants and hunting jacket. Jefferson. He stood at the entrance to the bar, waiting for me to notice him.

“I gotta go,” I told Garrity.

“Call me tomorrow. I’ll be in-field, but I want to know what happens, you hear?”

I assured him I would. As I set the phone down, Jefferson came and sat across from me. His eyes were calm and concerned.

“Daddy told me I was to come check on you,” he said.

“Tell him I’m fine.”

Jefferson stretched one arm along the back of the booth. His sleeve rode up, and I saw the triple tau tattoo on the inside of his forearm. One of the selectmen council, Billie had said. I also saw his wedding ring, and knew that he probably had pictures of his kids in his wallet. Two little girls, one seven and one three.

“Your cross-burning social club know you’re here?” I said.

“This is a family visit, not business.”

“Oh, that’s right. Business is your Grand Wizard meeting Winston on the sidewalk and then snatching his briefcase from his dead hands.”

“That shooting was none of ours. Neither was the stealing. We trade and trade fair, so I suggest you stop mouthing off about things you don’t understand.”

He had Boone’s eyes, cold green-gray, but like his brother Jasper, he’d gotten his build from my mama’s people. Husky, broad-shouldered, sturdy.

I shook my head. “Boone must be proud, you being a KKK officer and all. They give you an extra pointy hood for that?”

He ignored the jibe. “Daddy says each man has to choose his own path. He made his choice ten years ago, and he hasn’t strayed from it. But he doesn’t see what’s happening, what me and Jasper see, how the white race has become the government’s kicking dog, how we are denied our heritage and our culture in the name of political correctness.”

I clenched my teeth to keep from spewing obscenities. “I’m not drinking that poison.”

“We’re not the ones spreading poison! It’s the—”

“Say that word and I will slap it out of your mouth, I swear I will.”

Jefferson leaned forward, eyes blazing now. “There’s a war coming, and it’s coming fast. You better choose the right side while you still can.”

I shoved my drink away, gathered my things, and stood. “I chose my side a long time ago. Tell Boone I said thank you for checking on me. But tell him I won’t be troubling any of you again.”

And then I turned around and left him sitting in the booth, the lights on the river burning and rippling behind him.