Chapter 20
Simmons woke to a dull throb behind his right eye.
For a moment he lay still, staring at the cracked ceiling, listening to the hotel settle around him. The room still smelled stale and a water stain spread across the ceiling tiles above the bathroom, brown and irregular, like a map of somewhere he didn't want to visit.
He remembered Joe dropping him off late the previous night, telling him to rest, telling him he looked like hell, telling him he'd be back in forty-eight hours.
Then the truck's taillights faded into the dark and Simmons had limped into the room alone.
Now morning light leaked through the threadbare curtains, casting everything in a gray-yellow wash. The curtains themselves were a faded floral pattern. His ribs protested when he sat up and the bruise around his eye felt like someone had shoved a warm stone under the skin.
When he touched it gently, the flesh was tight and hot, swollen enough that his vision on that side was slightly narrowed.
He swung his legs to the floor and rubbed his hands over his face, careful to avoid the damaged eye. The stubble on his jaw was rough. Reacher had been right to leave him behind. Simmons hated that he knew it was true.
He stood slowly, testing his balance. His head felt wrong but not concussed. Just exhausted. The kind of fatigue that came from an adrenaline crash, pain, and not enough sleep. His left side ached with every breath.
He'd had broken ribs before.
This felt familiar.
He reached for his watch on the nightstand. Saw the time. Exhaled.
At some point he would need to check in with Agent Winthrow. She'd expect something useful from him. Not that he had much to offer. He’d put that call off for as long as he could. Hopefully, not until Reacher was back.
He dressed carefully. The shirt went on first. He had to lift his arms slowly, wincing as his ribs screamed in protest. The fabric scraped against the bruises on his torso.
Then his shoulder holster, the leather familiar and worn.
His jacket went on last, and he had to pause halfway through getting his left arm in, breathing through the pain.
He avoided looking at his reflection until the end, and when he finally did, he almost laughed.
The eye was a mess. Purple and swollen, the bruise spreading down his cheekbone in shades of violet and yellow.
A smear of yellow along the edges where the blood was breaking down under the skin. His lip was split, scabbed over.
He looked like he'd gone ten rounds and lost all of them.
His hand drifted for a moment to his jacket pocket, feeling the folded paper inside. A note he'd been carrying for two weeks. His girlfriend—ex-girlfriend, technically—had left it in his mailbox. She thought she might be pregnant. She wanted to talk.
The paper was soft now from being folded and unfolded. He'd read it maybe twenty times. Each time hoping the words would change or that he'd suddenly know what to say.
I think I might be pregnant. We need to talk. Call me.
Twelve words. Twelve words that had been sitting in his pocket like a live grenade.
He'd loved her. Maybe still did. But the job had gotten in the way. It always did. Late nights. Canceled plans. Weeks undercover where he couldn't call, couldn't explain. She'd gotten tired of it and he didn't blame her.
And now this.
If she was pregnant, everything changed. He'd have to figure out what that meant. Whether they could make it work or if they were just two people who'd made a mistake.
Today wasn't the day for that. Maybe tomorrow or certainly after this case was done.
He checked his sidearm out of habit. Drew it from the holster, checked the magazine, checked the chamber, slid it back.
He just needed coffee. Something hot. Something to cut through the fog.
He took the stairs down to the lobby and didn’t see a coffee maker anywhere. There might have been one in his room but he wanted something better, if possible.
Simmons stepped outside and the cold Michigan morning air slapped him awake. The temperature had dropped overnight, probably into the low thirties. His breath fogged immediately. Frost still clung to the edges of car windows, thick and white.
The parking lot was nearly empty and the sky was overcast, heavy and gray. The trees at the edge of the lot were bare, their branches black against the pale morning light.
Simmons tucked his hands into his jacket pockets and started toward the diner just up the road. His boots crunched on gravel and frost. Each step sent a dull ache through his ribs. He kept his breathing shallow.
He thought briefly of the kid on that drug bust last fall—the one who'd been hiding under the kitchen table when the SWAT team came through.
Twelve years old. Skinny. Terrified. The house had been a meth lab, and the kid's parents were both face-down on the floor in cuffs.
Simmons had knelt beside him afterward, talking quietly, promising things would get better.
Promising the kid would be okay. That someone would take care of him.
He wasn't sure the kid had believed him. He wasn't sure he'd believed himself. The system didn't always work. Sometimes kids like that just fell through the cracks.
He pushed the memory aside and kept walking.
Just coffee. Maybe some eggs. He wondered if they had cinnamon rolls. Maybe a shot of sugar into his bloodstream would help. Besides, he was a sucker for cinnamon rolls.
A crack split the cold, thin air. It was a perfect, flat sound, like a single handclap.
For a fraction of a second, Simmons felt something. Not pain, just impact. A punch to the center of his chest that drove the air from his lungs. His brain registered it before his body could react.
A second bullet entered his forehead and snapped his head back.
Simmons didn’t hear that one.
And he felt nothing when he landed flat on his back on the cold and icy pavement.
She held the rifle lightly, letting its weight settle into the frame of the abandoned sedan she was using as cover.
The car was old, rusted, and forgotten. Someone had parked it, or more accurately, abandoned it, at the edge of the lot near the tree line where the shadows were deepest.
Perfect concealment.
She'd arrived two hours before dawn, moving through the darkness, ignoring the cold, and settling in to wait.
The scope had given her a perfect view of the hotel, the frost on the pavement, the man moving slowly toward the lobby. She'd been watching him since he stepped outside. Watching the way he moved. He was clearly injured and favoring his left side.
This would be Simmons.
She didn’t see any sign of Reacher. And no sign of the truck they were driving.
She would have preferred to kill Reacher first, as he was likely the most dangerous. But the order wasn't her call.
The command had been clear: kill both of them.
The truck was gone but her spotter had already leaned on a local contact who knew someone at the hotel’s front desk. The message came back clean: One of the men is still checked in. Second one’s whereabouts were unknown.
That was enough.
She settled behind the rifle, breathing steady, heartbeat slow. Anything faster and the shot suffered. The man crossed the parking lot with the awkward gait of someone carrying pain. He didn't look around. Didn't sense anything.
Most people walked through the world assuming they were safe and every morning would be like the last. Assuming no one was watching. Assuming the morning was just a morning.
Mostly they were right, but occasionally, they were wrong.
She ran through the checklist in her mind. The same checklist she'd run through hundreds of times before. Every variable accounted for. Every factor measured.
Distance: 142 yards. Well within effective range. The .300 Win Mag could reach out to 800 yards with the right conditions. This was a chip shot.
Shot angle: clear. No obstructions. Clean line of sight from her position to the target's center mass.
Wind: zero. The air was still. Cold and heavy. Perfect.
Background: safe. The motel office was behind him, but the angle was such that a miss would hit dirt, not glass. Not that she'd miss.
Witnesses: none. The parking lot was empty. The office blinds were closed. No one was watching.
Second target: location unknown. That was the only variable she couldn't control. But it didn't matter. She'd find him. She always found the ones who ran.
She adjusted her position slightly. The rifle's bipod was stable on the sedan's hood, the metal cold under her gloved hands.
The scope's reticle settled on the man's chest. Center mass.
The kill zone. She could see the rise and fall of his breathing.
Could see the way he hunched slightly against the cold.
She tightened the slack out of the trigger. Felt the resistance. Knew exactly where the break point was. Two pounds of pressure. Maybe less.
One breath out. Slow and controlled. Her heartbeat slowed further. Fifty-eight beats per minute.
Steady.
The world narrowed to the scope. To the reticle. To the target.
She fired.
The suppressed round snapped across the lot with a sound like a branch breaking.
The rifle's recoil was minimal—absorbed by her shoulder, by the bipod, by the weight of the weapon itself.
She didn't flinch. Didn't blink. Just watched through the scope as the bullet covered 142 yards in less than a second.
The man stopped instantly. No struggle. No sound. She shifted ever so slightly and executed the head shot.
Her target hit the pavement and didn't move. Dead before he hit the ground.
She lowered the rifle and broke it down fast. Bolt first—pulled back, removed, placed in the soft case.
Barrel next—unscrewed, wiped clean, nested in foam.
Optic—detached carefully, lens caps replaced, secured.
Magazine—removed, cleared, pocketed. Suppressor—still warm, wrapped in cloth, packed away. The whole process took ninety seconds.
Soft case zipped. Rifle invisible.
She stood, stretched slightly, and scanned the parking lot one more time. No movement. No reaction. The body lay where it had fallen. No one had heard. No one had seen.
One down.
The second target would be found. She had time, patience, and a rifle that could reach out and touch someone from half a mile away.
Even Joe Reacher.