20. Sniper
twenty
Sniper
Iwas on my third hour watching the back side of Psycho Burgers, two blocks off the main drag, the kind of side street nobody drove unless they were making a very stupid delivery.
The truck was dark. Engine off. All the warning lights killed, dash covered in an old towel, windows half down for airflow.
I’d parked nose-out on purpose, sightline clear to the service door, and let the late shift of Kingman’s nightlife finish its pathetic crawl to last call.
That left the lot empty except for my own bike.
This was night nine of Jasmine missing. Every dumb clue, every rumor, every half-drunk tip from a prospect’s girlfriend had washed up against this burger joint like a piece of trash bobbing for air.
Adam Steele: friendly neighborhood burger man, part-time king of the Stepford dad scene, maybe the only guy in the city who could slip through the local cop net without leaving a ripple.
The name had come up five times now. Every time, I put it down as background noise.
But here I was, parked in the dark, because “background noise” was all that was left.
At 12:04, a man slipped out the back door, the latch catching and clicking twice as it shut.
He was small, not short but wiry, hair buzzed so close you could see the shine.
His face had a split under the lip, still crusted but no longer wet—three days into healing and already planning to scar.
He wore a Desert Reapers cut. Not local; this was out of Henderson or maybe even further south, a side-patch I didn’t recognize.
He walked the alley like a man who wanted to look nervous but had learned to tamp it down to a kind of twitchy boredom.
He carried a hardcase, nothing flashy, the kind you’d use for tools or maybe to stash a kilo if you didn’t care about making it through customs.
He didn’t look back. Didn’t look up. Just made for the mouth of the alley, past the battered green dumpster and the puddle where every morning the kitchen crew dumped the fryer’s worth of used grease.
He walked under the sodium arc and kept moving.
I watched the shadow fall behind him, sharp and steady.
I let him get halfway to the cross street, then I got off the bike. Soft shoes, no click. I closed in before he knew he was being followed.
He clocked me. Instinct, not training. He shifted the case to his left, kept his right hand free.
I cut the angle, fast, and put him to the wall.
My left forearm went high on his chest, not crushing but enough to make the breath whoosh out in a who-the-fuck-are-you.
My right hand kept clear, the Glock pressed cold to his waistband, just above the belt.
“Dwayne,” I said. Didn’t phrase it as a question. It was on his kutte.
His eyes widened a notch, but he was game. “Yeah?”
“Why is a Reapers patch working Kingman after midnight?” My voice was flat, just above a whisper.
He tried to squirm, but the wall was harder than he was. “Just a supply run, man. Nothing to it. Nobody told me it was MC business up here.”
“You ever talk to a guy named Adam Steele?”
He shook his head. “Nah. Never heard it.”
I pressed an extra inch into his rib cage. He winced, teeth showing through the split. “You want to try again, Dwayne?”
He caved, just like I needed him to. “Okay, look. Yeah. I deliver here sometimes, but it’s just for cash. Never even talk to the guy. Drop-off, that’s it.”
“What’s in the case?”
He glanced down, like it might have turned into a bomb in the last ten seconds. “Bunker water seal. Two cases, fifty-pounders. Customer says it’s for an underground job, but I don’t ask.”
I eased off, just a hair. “You ever see where it goes?”
He shook his head again, this time honest. “Never inside. I leave it at the back door, cash is taped to the wall. Like a scavenger hunt, you know? Been like this for a year and a half. Maybe more.”
“Always the same number text you for pickup?”
He nodded. “Never a name. Just a number. Always the same time. I’ve got it if you want.”
I let him up. “Show me.”
He unlocked the phone, shaking a little, and scrolled to the thread.
Fourteen messages, all from the same burner.
The first was a year and a half back; the most recent, yesterday.
Each one a different time, but always a window between midnight and three.
The address for Psycho Burgers changed only once, about six months ago, when the van delivery started.
I took a photo of the number, the whole thread. The phone screen was so bright it left afterimages in my eyes.
“Who do you report to?” I asked. “And don’t give me bullshit, because I don’t care about the rest of the Reapers. This is about the guy buying the product.”
He shrugged, shoulders bony. “I never meet him. Money’s good, always cash. My patch knows, but they don’t ask. It’s not even in our territory. It’s just a payday.”
“Anyone else use you for these runs?”
“No. I’m the only one dumb enough to drive out here after midnight.” He tried a smile, but it just stretched the scab under his lip.
“Go home, Dwayne. Don’t answer any calls from this number for the next forty-eight hours. You don’t, you get to keep your job. You do, and you’re done.”
He nodded. “Yeah. Okay.”
“Go.”
He went. Walked fast, never looked back. I watched him disappear, then checked the case. He wasn’t lying: two big canisters, the label said ‘HYDRO-SEAL 800’ with a hazmat logo and enough warnings to make you think twice about touching it without gloves.
I left the case by the dumpster and walked the alley, slow, letting the world shrink down to the sound of my boots and the echo off the brick.
At the end of the block, I cut right and came up behind Psycho Burgers, eyes on the van.
Still there, same angle, only now the windows were dark, and the plates matched my list from yesterday.
I circled once, feeling the air, then walked out to the main road and crossed the street.
I stood across from the storefront. Up front, the place looked dead. The neon was off, but the inside was so clean it hurt—tables wiped, counters gleaming, every chair lined up at a perfect angle to the wall. You could eat off the fucking floor.
Then the van rolled out from the back. Not in a rush, not with any sign of hurry or panic. It drifted to the stop sign at the corner, waited the full three seconds, then pulled onto the road and headed north, up toward the mountains.
I got a perfect look at the driver’s face. Adam Steele. Same expression he’d worn at his own kitchen table: bored, tired, maybe a little hungry, but not scared. He didn’t look my way. Not once. The van drifted away, red taillights painting the blacktop in a straight line all the way out of town.
I got back on my bike. My hands stayed on the bars for a long time, the chrome cold and slick under my palms. I stared at my own reflection in the rearview. It looked tired, but not done.
I had enough: the phone number, the proof of delivery, the van, the product, the time window, the endless need for concrete bunker sealer. All I had to do was connect the last dot.
This was going to hurt. But it was the only way to finish the story.
I waited another three minutes, then started the engine. I turned east, toward the mountains, and let the rest of the world fall away.
***
I took the grade slow, headlights off, letting the moon and memory do the work.
The access road climbed out of Kingman like a scratch on the earth, winding through chaparral and rock.
When I got close, I coasted to a stop in the lee of a drainage ditch, a quarter mile shy of Adam Steele’s prefab paradise.
Desert at night is never quiet, not really.
It’s got its own language: high wind whining over the stones, the chew of insects, something alive rustling under the brush.
All of it adds up to a kind of static, and you learn to listen for what doesn’t belong.
I killed the cab light before opening the door, dropped to a crouch, and waited thirty seconds for my eyes to adjust. The cold punched harder up here, but I didn’t feel it. My hands were steady.
I made the rest of the approach on foot, boots hitting hardpan in a rhythm I kept just off-beat so no one could pattern it.
The sky was so loaded with stars it made you dizzy if you looked too long.
I kept my head down, walking the faint curve of the old utility road until the silhouette of the house edged up over the crest.
I dropped to a knee in the shadow of a juniper. From here, I could see the whole front of the place. No lights, not even a bathroom window glow. The porch bulb was off. The van’s interior was a tomb. No engine ticks, no voices. The air felt like it was holding its breath.
I watched the property for four minutes.
No more, no less. During that time, I measured every angle, every dead patch where the lights wouldn’t reach, the three steps from the van to the door, the way the gravel fanned out from the back and left a perfect sweep zone for tire tracks.
I made mental notes on the window types, the hardware on the door, the way the breeze moved the hedges near the garage.
Every detail, because there would not be a second shot at this.
On minute two, a shape flickered behind the inside curtain, too fast and vague to tag as human. Maybe a dog, maybe nothing. I marked it anyway.
At three, a second van drove past on the highway below, its headlights briefly silhouetting the prefab and throwing my own shadow two yards long. I waited for the return, the signal, any motion at all, but the world just settled back into its pattern.
At four, I felt it in my teeth: this was a bunker play, not a home invasion. Whatever was going on here, it happened below grade, with more locks and more insurance than anyone would ever put on a burger joint or a suburban house. That was the move. I could taste it.
Jasmine was inside, underground. I was fucking sure of it.
I stayed in the shadows and walked around the house, not seeing anything close to a bunker entrance. Then I noticed the two gray pipes coming up from the ground about twenty-five yards away from the house.
“Jasmine,” I whispered into the darkness.
There was only one way to do this. I know I should have checked in with the club first, but what if? What if I waited and, in those few minutes of waiting, they killed her? No. I pulled the Glock from my waistband and checked my vest for the extra clip.
I took a step toward the pipes, then stopped.
The cold crept up through my boots and into my knees.
I thought about Jasmine. I thought about the way she’d arch one eyebrow when I said something she found stupid, the half-smile that meant she’d already decided I was wrong but was going to let me figure it out myself.
I thought about the scar on her chin, the one she got falling off a bike at fourteen, the way she refused to let it be called anything but a battle wound.
I thought about her voice on the last voicemail, casual and bright, telling me about the brake rotors, the way she laughed at the end like the joke was just for us.
“Fuck it,” I said and walked to the front door, Glock in hand.
I rang the doorbell, and someone answered.
From behind me.