Page 1 of The Sniper

1

HALLIE MAE

There was a silence that only existed in places like this. It wasn’t peaceful. It was the kind that lingered after screams had faded, after something had shattered. It hummed low beneath the fluorescent lights and clung to the chipped tile floors, too heavy for me to name.

The shelter was full tonight. More than usual. Rain had pushed a handful of new arrivals off the streets and through the warped doorframe of Grace House, a battered Victorian tucked behind the Piggly Wiggly in old Mount Pleasant. It used to be a boarding house, then a halfway home, and now—by the grace of God and the stubbornness of a handful of women—it served as a sanctuary for the broken.

Maybe, in some quiet way, for me, too.

I knelt beside a little girl with tangled curls and deep purple bruises peeking from the neckline of her oversized T-shirt. She was drawing a house in the center of a page—square and small, with no windows and no doors.

“Dear,” I murmured gently, “what’s this here?”

She blinked up at me, her voice a whisper. “That’s the safe room.”

I didn’t ask why there weren’t any windows.

I already knew.

The crayons rolled to the floor when she leaned into me. Her tiny fingers clutched the edge of my shirt like she needed an anchor. I wrapped my arms around her carefully, like she might crack if I held too tight. Most of the kids here had learned not to flinch, but a few still did.

It gutted me every time.

“Miss Calhoun?”

I looked up. Melissa Stultz, one of the other shelter volunteers, stood in the doorway holding a clipboard and a frown. “We’ve got another intake coming in. Late twenties. Holding her side like something’s broken. There’s a kid, too. Looks about two years old.”

I nodded and stood, smoothing the wrinkles from my skirt. “Where’s Josie?”

“Helping with the med kit in room four.”

“All right,” I said. “Let’s make space.”

We moved together, wordless and practiced. Fresh sheets. Soft towels. A warm washcloth waiting in a plastic bowl on the pillow. Sometimes all you could give was gentleness. And sometimes, that was enough.

While Melissa handled logistics, I pulled the folded quilt from the top shelf. My grandmother had sewn it with trembling hands—yellow sunflowers and bluebirds stitched over white cotton. I never could bring myself to use it at home. But here, where grace had to look like something real, it meant more.

When the front door opened again, I heard the child crying before I saw her. That desperate, chesty sob thatonly toddlers can manage—too young to understand, too hurt to stop. Her mother followed, clutching her side, eyes darting like a hunted animal’s. Her cheek was split open. Her lip, too.

He did that.

Some man who once swore to love her.

“This way,”I said softly, touching her arm and guiding her down the hall. “You’re safe now. I promise.”

She didn’t look at me.

They rarely did, not at first. Trust didn’t come easy when it’d already been used like a weapon.

Once they were settled, I went back to the kitchen. A pot of decaf coffee bubbled on the burner, the air thick with its bitter warmth. I poured a mug and curled my fingers around it like it might chase away the ache in my chest.

Because here’s the thing about places like Grace House—they don’t run on hope.

They run on grief. On rage. On the quiet, burning knowing that some men think they’re gods just because they’re bigger.

Men like that don’t love you.

They own you.

---