The Sniper (Dominion Hall #4)

Chapter 1

HALLIE MAE

T here was a silence that only existed in places like this. It wasn’t peaceful. It was the kind that lingered after screams had faded, after something had shattered. It hummed low beneath the fluorescent lights and clung to the chipped tile floors, too heavy for me to name.

The shelter was full tonight. More than usual.

Rain had pushed a handful of new arrivals off the streets and through the warped doorframe of Grace House, a battered Victorian tucked behind the Piggly Wiggly in old Mount Pleasant.

It used to be a boarding house, then a halfway home, and now—by the grace of God and the stubbornness of a handful of women—it served as a sanctuary for the broken.

Maybe, in some quiet way, for me, too.

I knelt beside a little girl with tangled curls and deep purple bruises peeking from the neckline of her oversized T-shirt. She was drawing a house in the center of a page—square and small, with no windows and no doors .

“Dear,” I murmured gently, “what’s this here?”

She blinked up at me, her voice a whisper. “That’s the safe room.”

I didn’t ask why there weren’t any windows.

I already knew.

The crayons rolled to the floor when she leaned into me. Her tiny fingers clutched the edge of my shirt like she needed an anchor. I wrapped my arms around her carefully, like she might crack if I held too tight. Most of the kids here had learned not to flinch, but a few still did.

It gutted me every time.

“Miss Calhoun?”

I looked up. Melissa Stultz, one of the other shelter volunteers, stood in the doorway holding a clipboard and a frown. “We’ve got another intake coming in. Late twenties. Holding her side like something’s broken. There’s a kid, too. Looks about two years old.”

I nodded and stood, smoothing the wrinkles from my skirt. “Where’s Josie?”

“Helping with the med kit in room four.”

“All right,” I said. “Let’s make space.”

We moved together, wordless and practiced. Fresh sheets. Soft towels. A warm washcloth waiting in a plastic bowl on the pillow. Sometimes all you could give was gentleness. And sometimes, that was enough.

While Melissa handled logistics, I pulled the folded quilt from the top shelf.

My grandmother had sewn it with trembling hands—yellow sunflowers and bluebirds stitched over white cotton.

I never could bring myself to use it at home.

But here, where grace had to look like something real, it meant more.

When the front door opened again, I heard the child crying before I saw her. That desperate, chesty sob that only toddlers can manage—too young to understand, too hurt to stop. Her mother followed, clutching her side, eyes darting like a hunted animal’s. Her cheek was split open. Her lip, too.

He did that.

Some man who once swore to love her.

“This way,” I said softly, touching her arm and guiding her down the hall. “You’re safe now. I promise.”

She didn’t look at me.

They rarely did, not at first. Trust didn’t come easy when it’d already been used like a weapon.

Once they were settled, I went back to the kitchen. A pot of decaf coffee bubbled on the burner, the air thick with its bitter warmth. I poured a mug and curled my fingers around it like it might chase away the ache in my chest.

Because here’s the thing about places like Grace House—they don’t run on hope.

They run on grief. On rage. On the quiet, burning knowing that some men think they’re gods just because they’re bigger.

Men like that don’t love you.

They own you.

They corner you, sweet-talk you, slip rings on fingers and bruises on skin like the two are part of the same vow. They teach you that obedience is love and silence is safety.

And if you run?

Well. That’s when they really start to hunt.

I’d seen it too many times.

Doesn’t matter how many casseroles I bring or how many verses I can quote about forgiveness. Some things don’t get fixed with prayer. Some things just need to be survived.

A little after nine, I went to lock up the side entrance. The alley behind the building was slick with rain, mist curling through the chain-link. I paused before turning the deadbolt, staring into the shadows.

And just for a second, I swear I felt someone watching.

I turned fast, but there was no one. Just the old magnolia tree and the soft, steady hum of the streetlamp.

Still, the chill in my spine stayed.

I pressed the lock into place and stepped back, heart thudding harder than it ought to. Maybe I was tired. Maybe I was just being dramatic. My daddy always said I had a “poet’s nerves and a preacher’s mouth.” He wasn’t wrong.

But tonight …

Tonight something felt different.

I don’t know why I looked again. Why I stepped back toward the door and squinted into the dark.

But if I’d known whose eyes would be watching from the shadows?—

I’d have prayed harder.

And run faster.

Maybe it was the way the wind caught the corner of the storm drain, or the rustle of that magnolia tree’s low branches. But something lingered in the air—thick and wrong.

I stood there longer than I should’ve, hand resting on the cool metal of the doorframe, listening. Waiting.

Nothing.

Still, the unease followed me all the way back to the kitchen. I sank onto one of the mismatched stools at the counter and wrapped both hands around my coffee mug again, staring at the steam as if it might give me answers.

Most of the other girls my age spent their Friday nights getting drinks downtown or swiping left on men with too-perfect teeth and too-slick words.

Me? I was twenty-seven, single, and the daughter of a Southern Baptist preacher.

Born and raised in a tiny town called Estill, South Carolina with a Bible in one hand and a fear of disappointing God in the other.

I lived in Mount Pleasant now and taught kindergarten at Trinity Covenant Academy—a private Christian school not far from the waterfront where the kids said things like “yes ma’am” and “God bless.” Every morning began with a prayer circle, and every afternoon ended with finger paints and memory verses.

My students brought me hand-picked flowers and called me Miss Calhoun even when I begged them just to say Hallie Mae. I adored them. I really did.

But sometimes, when the sun slipped down behind the steeple and the world got quiet, I felt like I lived two lives.

There was that one. The soft one.

And then there was this.

This aching, heavy thing that had taken root in my chest the day I first stepped through Grace House’s front door.

It had started as a college service project—something I signed up for to make Daddy proud.

"Be the hands and feet, baby girl," he’d said when I told him I’d chosen a domestic violence shelter instead of the nursery at church.

I think he figured I’d make casseroles, smile politely, and be home in time for dinner.

He didn’t know that once I saw what it really looked like—what some women survived just to breathe each morning—I couldn’t unsee it.

Even after graduation, after job offers and apartment hunting and every sweet boy at Bible study who wanted to talk about how many kids we’d have someday ...

I stayed.

Every spare moment I had, I came back here. After work. On weekends. On holidays when the house was the loneliest. I learned how to make tea that calmed panic attacks. How to recognize the signs of a broken rib. How to sit in silence with someone too shattered to speak.

And somewhere along the way, I stopped believing I’d ever get married.

Not because I didn’t want love, but because I’d seen what happened when it turned cruel.

I saw the aftermath too often to believe the fairytales anymore. The rings didn’t stop the fists. The vows didn’t stop the violence. Love, at least the kind I’d grown up dreaming about, started to look more like a trap than a promise.

And I wasn’t even that experienced with men to begin with.

My mama raised me on Proverbs 31, and my daddy made sure I knew the value of keeping myself pure. I didn’t grow up flirting or sneaking out or pushing boundaries. I was the girl who kept her dress hem low and her gaze down when boys started looking too long.

I loved the Lord with my whole heart. I trusted Him. I knew that if He wanted me to be a wife, He’d send the right man in the right time.

But lately, I wasn’t sure that man even existed.

Certainly not in this world. Not in this town.

Not when I’d spent so much time mopping up the blood left behind by men who said “I love you” with a clenched jaw and an open palm.

I took another sip of coffee. Bitter. Too strong. I didn’t mind.

The hallway creaked behind me—soft footsteps moving toward the nursery room we’d converted into overflow beds. The toddler from earlier was still crying. Her sobs were quieter now, muffled behind the closed door, but they tugged at me.

She’d never know what it was to grow up trusting men.

I stayed still, contemplating, for what felt like a long time, then finally stood, rinsed my cup, and turned off the light.

As I moved through the shadows of Grace House that night—checking locks, whispering prayers over sleeping forms, folding an extra blanket at the foot of one of the cots—one thought refused to leave me alone.

That feeling outside the door?

That wasn’t my imagination.

Something— someone —was out there.

Watching.

Waiting.

It started with the back porch light flickering.

Just once. Then twice.

Then it went dark.

I was halfway down the hallway when I noticed it. That strange prickle on the back of my neck, same as earlier, only sharper this time. Hungrier.

I glanced toward the kitchen. The bulb above the stove sputtered. A second later, it popped with a faint crack, plunging the space into a dim, amber half-light.

“Probably just a power surge,” I whispered to myself. My voice didn’t sound convincing, even to me .

I reached for my phone in my pocket, but before I could check the time, I heard the first sound.

The front door.

The knob shook hard—once, twice. It was locked, but it wouldn’t hold for long.