Page 1 of Sniper

Chapter One

Katey

“You need me to walk you out to your car?” Luis, the head cook at Slingin’ Hash, asked the same question every shift. I didn’t know how he knew to ask, only that he did, and that I was always grateful.

I glanced out the window to my champagne-colored sedan parked in the middle of the lot and shook my head. “I’m good today, thanks. Enjoy your day off.” I waved at my coworkers and made my way across the parking lot, keeping my head on a swivel until I was safely inside the car with the doors locked.

It was time to head home.

Home right now was Smallville. That was the actual name of my current temporary home. I’d lived in nine different cities in the past twelve months, and desert living was by far the worst. Not that there was anything inherently wrong with the desert, except the weather. I worked the overnight shift at a diner attached to a truck stop, and despite the triple-digit temperatures that plagued the California desert during the daytime, all I knew of this place was near-frigid temperatures and the black of night. There was no fresh air, no sunshine, and no blue skies, just cold and darkness.

This morning I felt rebellious and opened the window. The cool—okay cold—air hit my skin and sent a shiver through my body. Still, I kept it open, determined that I wouldn’t hate every minute of my life any longer.

I had an apartment, okay, it was a room I rented from Mrs. Inglemeier, an octogenarian who liked cigarettes and shoot ‘em up movies, as she called them. She accepted cash and because it was just a room there was no need to get any mail, which made it harder to find me and that was the goal in all of this.

To not be found.

It was the same old story—girl meets boy and thinks she’s in love until boy reveals his ugly, abusive side. Girl leaves and he tracks her down multiple times. Girl chops off her hair, dyes it constantly while moving from city to city to stay one step ahead of her psychotic ex. I’d quit my job. No, not my job, my dream career as an emergency medicine doctor so that Ethan, my ex, couldn’t find me. Instead of stitching people up and saving their lives, I cleaned shitty motel rooms, served truckers and tourists at whatever eatery was willing to pay cash, and I slept in even shittier rooms because those were the ones that accepted cash on a week-to-week basis.

Until Mrs. Inglemeier. She recognized a woman on the run and had taken me in, offering up her mother-in-law suite with very few questions. She was the one bright spot in the past twelve months, a kind soul who only asked for a little companionship. The situation was just what I needed, which explained why I’d been here for nearly three months. Well, that and the fact that Ethan hadn’t found me.

Yet.

It was always only a matter of time before he found me again. No matter what I did—change my phone number, my appearance, my job—he always managed to find me and make my life hell. Some days I thought about submitting to him againjust to stop running, but then I remembered what it was like, and realized I’d rather die first. Luckily, it hadn’t come to that. Yet.

I turned onto the wide street lined with palm trees that was home for now, and my blood ran cold as I took in the leather and chrome bike that sat in Mrs. Inglemeier’s driveway as if it belonged there. “Son of a bitch!”

My instinct was to keep driving, to move on to the next place as I’d done almost a dozen times. It’s why I traveled light and didn’t keep anything in my room that couldn’t be left behind. But I couldn’t leave an old woman who’d been nothing but kind to me to deal with Ethan on her own.

“Fuck my life.”

I parked on the street and left my keys in the ignition before I inhaled deeply and let it out slowly. And then I headed inside. The house was quiet except for the familiar sound of a delicate teacup clinking on the saucer. “Mrs. Inglemeier.”

“In here,” she called out. “And it’s long past time you call me Edna.”

We were friends, but it felt odd to refer to a woman her age so informally. “Is everything all right?”

Edna set her cup and saucer down and stood, making her way to the hutch where she kept her ‘good plates’. “Everything except that the scoundrel you’re running from is here.”

I knew he was here, and I was prepared but somehow, he still managed to get the jump on me. He grabbed me by the hair and tugged downward to knock me off balance. It was effective and left me scrambling to get a solid foothold on the ground.

“Think you can leave me, bitch?” Ethan pulled his arm back and unleashed it, landing two blows to my left eye. “You are mine! Get that through your thick fuckin’ skull!” He landed another blow right to my chest, his face red and twisted in rage as he pulled back to hit me again.

A shot rang out and sent Ethan stumbling back. I realized immediately that the shot hadn’t come from him, it had come from Edna. My landlady might have been a fan of violent movies, but it was clear she also knew her way around a weapon. The warning shot she fired had missed him by a hair. “Yes, officer. There’s an intruder in my home,” Edna said and repeated her address. “Stay away,” she shouted over the speaker while she aimed her gun at Ethan again, this time it didn’t look like she was messing around. “Go,” she mouthed the word and nodded to the front door.

I stood frozen in place until Edna made a shooing motion to get me to snap out of my shock. “Thank you,” I mouthed and got to my feet, offering her a one-arm hug before I rushed out the door and back to my sedan. I started the car and pressed the gas as hard as I could as if that would get me farther away from Ethan once more.

I hit the highway immediately and drove east, despite the way my left eye swelled. My vision blurred and I had to squint as the swelling intensified, but I refused to stop until I felt as if I’d gotten far enough away from my old life.

Two hours later I picked up the phone and called the one person I could trust in this world. “Hey Cal.”

There was a long silence, and the background noise faded to nothing. “Katey, hey. How are you?”

“Until about three hours ago, I was fine. Alive and safe and doing a job I didn’t love, but Ethan showed up as he always does.”

“Shit,” he bit out. “Are you okay?”

“A little banged up but I’m fine. About two hours away from my last location. Heading your way, if that’s all right?”

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