Page 93 of South of Nowhere

He knew he should leave.

But he used the spotter scope to spend a few wonderful additional seconds watching the target writhing on the ground, desperately ripping off his belt to make a tourniquet.

He wondered if he’d accidentally struck a critical vessel.

Wound, not kill…

Yet, he reflected, if things had gone slightly wrong, and the man died?

Well, you could hardly blame him.

If his client didn’t like it, he could come here and do the dirty work himself.

40.

“Mommy, what was that?”

The answer was: a gunshot.

But Dorion Shaw said, “I don’t know.”

And gave no visible reaction, though she was of course troubled by the sound. She was presently FaceTiming with her eldest daughter, Rebecca.

Back to the problem at hand. “It has to be somewhere. It can’t have vanished. That is physically impossible,” she said to the eleven-year-old.

Rebecca had misplaced her drawing tablet, and Dorion was presenting her case, which was based on the laws of the physical world, as well as personal knowledge of the facts of the situation.

Logic.

It was how Dorion ran her life.

How every Shaw sibling ran their lives.

“But I can’t find it!” the girl’s voice implored.

“The sunporch.”

“I looked.”

Dorion was standing beside her brother’s Winnebago, umbrella in one hand and iPhone in the other.

What was the gunshot?

She looked down to the command post tents.

On the small screen was the small face, brows knotted in worry.

She said to Rebecca, “The porch was the last place you were playing with it. Last night. I saw you.”

Digital art was Rebecca’s preference. She excelled in all media but Dorion and William were exceedingly grateful that she preferred the sort that did not leave pastel chalk dust or linseed oil and turpentine scents throughout the house.

When they’d FaceTimed last night, the girl had showed her mother a piece she was working on that had more than a little Picasso in it—angular people, angular pets. The distortion was intentional (if pressed, the girl could do a portrait in colored pencil that approached photorealism).

Becca had been in the family’s sunroom. Dorion had praised the work, told her to put the device away—it was bedtime—and to pick a story for Mommy to read. Her sister, Mary, summoned, they’d curled up in bed and listened to some Dr. Seuss. Dorion admittedly had poor performance skills when it came to prose narration—especially the different character voices, which the girls still liked—but she could hold her own with children’s verse.

After several encores, they’d handed the phone over to her husband. Their children had a bedtime pardon while the parents conversed, then it was lights-out for everybody, William included, as the three of them were on East Coast time.

Just moments ago, her phone had given a FaceTime chime. Those who had children and those who had their own businesses always answered their phones. Dorion fit both descriptions.

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