Page 23 of The Sniper

Until then, I’d call a couple of handymen I knew and get them to work fixing the place. It was the least I could do. For now.

7

HALLIE MAE

Istood barefoot in the shelter’s kitchen, hair pulled into a damp braid. Grace House had no central air—just a couple of creaky window units and a box fan that clanked every time it hit the left corner of its rotation. But it wasn’t too hot. Not like usual for a Lowcountry summer. The breeze through the open back door was surprisingly cool, like the weather had decided to show us mercy after everything else it let happen.

Most of the women were resting in their rooms, waiting—same as the rest of us—for word from the executive director. None of us knew yet if we’d be allowed to stay at Grace House. That decision was above our heads, and higher still, it was tangled up in things like funding and liability and security risk.

The problem was, Grace House was supposed to be a secret. Not officially, not on paper—but everyone who came through its doors knew the unspoken rule: you didn’t share the address. You didn’t post about it online. You didn’t even tell your hairdresser if she didn’t need toknow. Because men like last night’s intruder? They didn’t stop looking.

And if they found where their wives, girlfriends, or children had gone to hide … well, we all knew what could happen.

So, now the board was deciding if the shelter had been compromised. If word would spread. If the women and children here would be safer relocated to a different facility under a different name with new paperwork and new locks on the doors.

The thought made my stomach twist.

I understood it—of course, I did. Safety was the whole point. Grace House existed to keep people breathing. If it had to change locations to do that, then so be it.

But this place—this broken-down old Victorian tucked behind a grocery store, with its creaky floors and mismatched furniture and quilts—it meant something. It wasn’t just a shelter. It was home to some of them. It had become a second home to me, too.

I didn’t want to leave.

But if staying meant another angry, dangerous man could come walking through that door again … then I’d help pack boxes myself.

Still, the waiting gnawed at me. Melissa had taken the early shift with the kids, bless her, and someone had dropped off a tray of biscuits from the café down the street. I’d had one bite and couldn’t finish.

My stomach was still too tight.

I stood at the sink, hands wrapped around a glass of sweet tea that had gone warm half an hour ago. I hadn’t taken a single sip.

The courtyard looked different in the daylight.

The gate still hung crooked on its hinges, the latchbarely catching when pulled shut. The courtyard furniture had been righted, more or less, but the crack in the plastic table was still there, and one of the chairs leaned awkwardly to the side like it hadn’t quite recovered from the night before.

The toys were no longer scattered—they’d been gathered into a neat pile on the porch steps, as if order could erase memory. But nothing could erase that stain.

The blood was still there.

Dark and wet, clinging to the concrete like it hadn’t decided whether to soak in or keep breathing. The humidity hadn’t let anything dry completely. Not the porch rails, not the grass, and certainly not that stain.

No one had touched it. Not yet.

Maybe they didn’t know how.

Maybe they couldn’t bring themselves to try.

It sat in the middle of the courtyard like a wound that hadn’t scabbed over. A slick, terrible reminder that violence had bled through our walls and into the one place that was supposed to be safe.

And even though I told myself not to look—don’t look, Hallie Mae—my eyes kept drifting back. Like they were tethered to the truth. To the proof. To the thing that made last night something we couldn’t pray away.

I remembered everything.

The look in that man’s eyes. The sound of the shot. The way the shooter had kissed me like it was the last good thing in the world.

My stomach flipped just thinking about him.

Dane. That’s what Mendez had called him. But I still didn’t know if it was his first name or his last.

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