Page 9 of The Sniper

My stomach turned, but I didn’t let it show.

Southern girls don’t fall apart in public.

We do it in the shower. In our cars. On our knees in prayer, behind closed doors where only the Lord can hear the sounds we make.

I’d fall apart later.

Right now, I had work to do.

I moved toward the little girl’s mother—her face pale and waxy, like the blood hadn’t come back to her skinyet. She was trembling, whispering to the child, but I didn’t think she even realized she was speaking out loud. I knelt beside her gently, careful not to startle either one.

“She’s safe now,” I said softly. “You both are.”

The woman nodded, but her eyes stayed fixed on the spot where he’d died.

I didn’t push her. Instead, I touched the toddler’s arm—just lightly. She flinched. Then looked up. Her eyes were big and empty. Like someone had taken all the light out and left the shell behind.

“Hi there,” I whispered. “You’re okay. You’re brave. You’re so very brave.”

She blinked once. Didn’t speak. Just curled deeper into her mother’s side like a wounded animal.

Something in me cracked.

I stood slowly, my legs stiff, and turned toward the gate. The rain had stopped now, but the world still smelled like storm—like something had been broken open and hadn’t quite finished bleeding.

I didn’t know who had taken that shot.

Didn’t know where it came from or how fast or how clean.

But I knew this?—

Whoever pulled that trigger had saved us.

And someday, when the world was quieter again, when the children were tucked safe in their beds and the blood had been scrubbed away, I would want to know who that was.

Because someone had been watching. Someone who didn’t run.

I stood at the edge of the courtyard, the tarp billowing just slightly over the body in the breeze. I didn’t look directly at it. I couldn’t. But I couldn’t look away either.

There was blood on the concrete. Just a little. It pooled fast when a bullet moved that quick. I’d seen it on TV before—movies, crime dramas, even war footage from some documentary my daddy made me watch back in high school—but nothing had ever prepared me for the silence that followed the shot.

There was no echo.

Just the end.

A clean kill, someone whispered behind me. I didn’t know who said it. One of the deputies, maybe. It wasn’t for my ears, but it settled into me, anyway.

A clean kill.

I wrapped the blanket tighter around myself, biting down on the edge of my thumb like it could hold back the questions clawing at my throat.

Who was he?

Not the dead man—I knew what kind of man he was. He’d come into Grace House breathing hate and waving a gun like it was his birthright. No, I meant the other one. The man who’d fired the shot.

The one who'd saved us.

I’d grown up believing that all violence was wrong. That the Lord was a shepherd, not a soldier. That we were meant to turn the other cheek.

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