Page 5 of Wolf
“I’ll see you tomorrow at our usual time,” I tell him. There’s nothing we can do aboutDawn.
“Crack of dawn. Perfect. See youthen.”
Long after I leave him, my old memories of Dawn and Bridges keep playing on repeat. There’s no justice in this world, when someone like me is still walking around, yet the couple whose marriage you think will make the record books ceases to exist, because of a fuckingaccident.
* * *
I inhale the crisp morning air and carry my weapons bag across the gravel gun range parking lot to meet Bridges. We used to have countless mornings just like this, except Dawn was the one who’d beat us both to the lot. She was punctual to a fault. Her gear and practice equipment were meticulous. Bridges was always the last to drag his ass and gear through the place, late as fuck, and Dawn would give himhell.
“Look at you,” I greet him, noticing he’s the one who’s early now. And there’s no Dawn now. “All the gear set upalready.”
He smiles and pats his rifle that he mounted on a folding table he brought with him. “The byproduct of years of goodtraining.”
“Yeah. Right,” I answer over the booming sounds of gunshots from the other gun range patrons. But I know he’s not talking about what he learned in the military. He means Dawn. She was the most positive influence on this man. Looking at him now, I see that losing her is probably the only other influence greater than everything that rubbed off on him because ofher.
He retests the legs of the table, his sinuous hands giving it a brisk shake to determine how much it might be affected by the recoil of his weapons. It doesn’t budge, and again, there’s a moment where I see Dawn lecturing him about tying down or stabilizing the legs so that he can’t use it as an excuse for missing any targets afterwards. Giving my head a shake, I focus on Bridges and push Dawn’s ghost from my mind. If I’m this affected by news of her death, I can’t fucking imagine what he must be going through rightnow.
“I’ll grab coffees while you set up,” he tells me, walking away as though he could tell what I’mthinking.
He’s back in time to see me loading my M40A5 rifle. “Ready?” he asks, setting down two Styrofoam cups between our mounted guns as he turns his focus to our paper targets in thedistance.
“Yep.” I step behind my weapon and let out a breath to relax. Adjusting the height, I lean forward until my cheek is pressed against the stock. When I’m satisfied with how it feels, I take another minute to carefully line up my eye to the optics. “Want to go first? I’m settoo.”
Bridges takes a long gulp of his coffee. Dawn used to take the first shot. That was our thing. He would tell her it was ladies first, and she would answer back that he should fuck himself. I used to laugh at the way they play-argued, sometimes telling them to get a fucking room because it was like their special brand of foreplay. There won’t be much laughing for Bridges here. Not for a long time. Ifever.
Setting down his cup, he moves into position. “Sure.”
He scans the distant target through the scope, adjusting his lens. He’s centered as his finger moves over the trigger. Exhaling slowly, he squeezes the trigger and waits a moment before standing up at his full height to see with the naked eye where the bullethit.
“How do you think I did?” heasks.
“Precise as fuck,” I answer. “You were always a better shot than me, even while you were three sheets to thewind.”
“It’s agift.”
We alternate our practice shots for about an hour, and I see his composure change when we stop for a short break. He’s thinking about Dawn, I’m sure of it. I’ll do my best to be here for him today, to let him feel the loss, if that’s what it takes. I just don’t want him to raise the topic of how Dawn died, like he did yesterday. It’s not that I mind him going all conspiracy theorist on me about her death. That’s not it at all. But he has to drop the suggestion that it’s a mysterious death when people are within earshot. Questioning such details in our line of work won’t just raise red flags. They can eat away at every fucking good thing he has left when it comes to preserving his memory ofDawn.
In our job, we’re paid to watch, wait, hurt, maim, and kill, and when that’s done, we clean up the mess as though it never happened. Hell, we should be called magicians, the way we sometimes have to wipe a person from the face of the earth and make it seem like they never fucking existed. I don’t want his thought process to land on that end point where Dawn is concerned. He’ll never have closure if this turns into an obsession. The way I see it, if it ever gets to that, all it’ll take is for him to start blaming himself for his own past sins. I prefer for him to honor Dawn’s life than to believe her death is some type of cosmic karma for all the bad things we did, for all the gaping holes we left in our wake over the years. All because we follow the orders we’regiven.
But from the look in his eyes, I see that’s exactly where his mind is headed. I don’t have the heart to stophim.
“Dawn’s death wasn’t an accident,” he whispers, kicking at some of his spent cartridges on the ground. “Remember how much she hated taking pills? She couldn’t stand the idea of losing control, even for a fucking Tylenol. Rememberthat?”
I press my lips together in a tight smile. “I thinkso.”
“And she used to hate how they felt going down. She had this crazy fear that one of them would get stuck in her throat, and she’d cough and freak out aboutit.”
“I remember,” I tellhim.
“The coroner’s report says it was an accidental overdose of prescription pills in her name. But I saw a picture of the bottle in evidence. You know what? The name of the pharmacist on the bottle is bogus. There’s no one by that name on any US registered pharmacistdatabase.”
Shaking my head politely, I say nothing. For sure, it sounds suspicious, but I don’t want to encourage him toomuch.
“Something’s not right about how shedied.”
I turn to face him. “I’m sorry she’s not with us. It’s hard to imagine. The thing is, in our line of work... sometimes families never have answers. Sometimes, you can be standing there right in front of a person and see exactly what’s happening, and even that is alie.”
We’ve had assignments where a kill order includes making the person’s death seem like it’s due to natural causes. There’s a hundred ways to do that. With pills, without pills, on staircases, even while they fucking sip on bottled water. If our employer or any entity with similar resources wants your death to look like it’s from a fucking paper cut, they can find a way to do it. This is the point I’m trying to get across to Bridges so he stops before all these questions drive him fucking insane. I know how cold it is for me to want to drop it. Dawn meant something to me too. But he’s the one with air in his lungs right now, and keeping it that way means more to me thananything.
