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Am I freaking dreaming?
I just found out Lu’s secret: she writes about me.
No, there’s no mistake. Except the story is dark, and I only pray Lu’s intuition is not that great, and I’m not a villain in her eyes.
But her feelings? Can it be?
There are too many variables in this story, but one thing is clear: I’ve just become a—wait for it—book boyfriend.
28
JACE
I waseighteen and fresh out of the system when I went into boot camp, and, after a year of extensive training, I was deployed overseas.
With my unprecedented shooting record in boot camp, I could bypass the years in service and enlist in a sniper school right away. I stalled, despite the pressure from the higher-ups and the rumors about me being a prodigy marksman.
Deployment wasn’t what I signed up for but I got it anyway. My shooting talent was a curse of sorts, yet a job. Besides taking down important targets, I’d like to think I saved many of my buddies’ lives. Including Roey’s, who was my Company Commander.
That’s how we bonded.
He retired from the service while I was still overseas.
“You don’t want to get the sniper qualification? I get it,” he said before shipping off home. “Then get out of this shit, Jace. War is an addiction of the worst kind. It’ll mess you up.”
It messedhimup all right. In his early thirties, he still tries to fight his PTSD, but drinking is a shitty way of doing it.
“You complete your four years, get back to the States, and call me,” he said.
That I did.
In a way, Roey saved me when he brought me in to work with him and taught me all I needed to know about bounty hunting. The technicalities, the ethics, the discipline.
Roey’s career in bounty hunting didn’t start in the traditional way. He never did jail bond jobs, tracking those who skipped bail. Correction, he did two, helping his old army buddy. But in both cases, the guys were on the FBI’s most wanted list, so there was an extra bounty besides the bond award.
His specialty is those on the darker side of the law or those who go against the powerful and wealthy, and the clients choose not to involve law enforcement.
“We are not punishers,” he explained. “None of the macho-I’m-gonna-knock-your-teeth-out-and-snap-your-neck bullshit. Targets’ personalities and priors are none of our business. Our job is to seek out and deliver valuable people who broke the law or royally screwed others.”
There are quick jobs—debtors, usually, as well as runaway wives or teenagers of the wealthy. Dealing with rich people’s personal problems is easy.
There are medium-heat jobs, usually involving smart and dangerous people who know where to hide and how to clean their tracks. Fighting skills are more useful than weapons. Miller’s IT skills and connections help to do the jobs that regular private investigators can’t.
And there are high-risk jobs. Mafia, contractors, debtors of the worst kind, with priors and violent records. We hardly ever resort to using weapons. We treat people right, unlike our biggest rivals from Brexton Recovery. But occasionally, things get tricky.
That’s where I come in.
I shoot forty-forty, a natural born, they say. I’m nothing like the Canadian sniper of Joint Task Force 2 who, several years ago, beat the world record and shot the target at a staggering 2.2 miles. The bullet flew for ten seconds. No matter how good your scope is, that’s some insane trajectory math that takes into consideration the weapon, the distance, and the wind.
I never came close, not even when I shot our target’s car tire from the roof of a ten-story building 0.8 miles away during my first bounty job with Roey a year ago.
Roey high-fived me. He’d seen me do trickier stuff overseas.
On hearing that it was a twenty-three-year-old former military shooter who aced the shot, the captured target licked his lips and stared at me with curiosity. “When I’m out of jail, kid, come work for me.”
He died in jail. Not that I wanted to work for the Chicago Syndicate’s most wanted man, anyway.
In my current job, my skills are meant to damage and incapacitate. Mostly, inanimate objects. I prefer the peaceful way, as is the case with Reznik.
