12. Sniper
twelve
Sniper
It was six days since Jasmine went dark. Nobody was calling it six; it was always five and a half, or “not even a week yet.” But it was day six, and midnight, and the only people still awake in the compound were Bruiser and me.
I stood at the map, one hand steady on the edge, the other rubbing at my left eye until it felt like I might pop it out and get a better look that way.
My shirt collar was permanently stained with coffee, the button below it missing, and the left sleeve rolled up one turn above the wrist. My boots tapped a rhythm against the concrete—faint, but it carried.
I didn’t notice I was doing it until Bruiser cleared his throat, loud enough to shake me back to the room.
He sat at the folding table across from the map, two laptops open and flickering, the left one running plate searches and DMV archives, the right one sifting through a spreadsheet that might as well have been the matrix of the goddamn universe.
Behind him, a corkboard was choked with printer paper, Post-its, receipts, half a county’s worth of property records.
Decker worked the way a lab rat works a maze: running the same lanes, faster and faster, until he found the cheese or died trying.
He didn’t look up. “I got it down to six,” he said. “Properties. Everything else is crossed out.”
“Hit me,” I said.
He lifted his chin at the map. “Green string—every property that’s been confirmed empty by eyes-on.
Red string—properties that can’t be, because there’s been activity in the last twenty-four.
These six are the only ones left in the zone.
” He tapped at the screen, highlighting each one in order.
“Three abandoned farmsteads, two vacation rentals never rented, and one shell company mailbox. All within thirty miles of the car.”
I scanned them. “And the camera?”
“Fucking nothing,” Bruiser said. “Every traffic cam is either fake or pointed the wrong way. All gas station footage is wiped after twenty-four. The only thing left is if someone saw something and didn’t know it yet.”
I nodded, more to keep my head moving than because I agreed. “Keep it up,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “Sure.”
I went back to the map, eyes running up and down the grid, trying to see it the way Jasmine would have—backward, skeptical, like every obvious answer was camouflage for the real play.
I closed my eyes, pictured the path from the highway shoulder to the first intersection, then the next, then the dead zone behind the old storage lot.
If someone wanted to disappear a person, this was the place.
All you needed was a vehicle that didn’t draw eyes, a window less than five minutes, and a little luck.
My phone vibrated. I checked the screen: unknown number, local area code. I answered with my name, not my club name. That was how you knew I was tired.
On the other end, a voice: young, male, breathing hard enough to sound like he’d run a mile to make the call.
“Uh, is this Marcus Jackson?” He said it like he wasn’t sure if he should use my government name or the patch, so he split the difference.
“Speaking,” I said, eye on the map.
“My name’s irrelevant,” he said, which meant he’d practiced that line. “I’m a prospect with the Iron Dogs in Bullhead. My patch told me to stay out, but—fuck it, this is important.”
I waited. Bruiser looked up, sensing the tempo change.
The voice steadied. “There’s a guy, white, maybe forty, comes into the cash-and-carry off Stockton Hill.
Bulk buys. Always cash. Never talks. Last week, he loaded a cart with canned food, bottled water, wet wipes, and—this is weird—like a hundred bucks of tampons and pads.
It was enough for a Girl Scout troop. He paid and left.
License plate, partial: six-zero-zero, Arizona.
Blue van, high roof. Older. Maybe a Dodge. ”
I picked a pen off the table and wrote the number on the palm of my hand, pressing the digits so hard they left a dent in my skin. “You got a time and date?”
“Yesterday. Around 9 a.m. I saw him once before, maybe six months ago, same deal. Always comes in early, always alone.”
I put my thumb over the number, like it might vanish if I didn’t keep pressure on it. “Why are you calling me?” I asked.
The silence on the other end lasted just long enough for me to think the kid might hang up.
“I got a sister,” he said. “She’s missing, too. Different story, but I figure you’d do the same if it was your family.”
There was nothing to say. I just breathed for a few seconds, feeling my own lungs scrape the cold inside.
“Stay by your phone,” I said, then hung up.
I stood in the war room, phone still pressed to my ear, the numbers imprinting into the bone of my hand. The lights above the map threw the pins into sharp shadow, every string a fault line ready to break. I stood so still it felt like my own blood might curdle if I moved.
Bruiser said, “What you got?”
I tore a blank receipt off the notepad, wrote the plate partial in block letters, and handed it over. “Blue van, six-oh-oh, Mohave County. Run the owner. Run every vehicle that’s ever had that plate, even for a day.”
Bruiser’s hands were already on the keys before I finished the sentence. “Copy,” he said.
I didn’t wait. I picked up the phone and dialed Chief Briggs. He answered on the second ring, voice gravel-thick and groggy.
“Briggs.”
“Jackson,” I said. “You’ll want this.”
I read him the plate, make and color, body pattern, and timeline. He grunted, then I heard a pen scribbling in the background.
“You think this is it?” he asked.
“I think it’s the first real lead we’ve had,” I said.
“Good. I’ll have my people run it, too.” Briggs sounded more awake now, the old wolf sniffing blood on the wind. “You want me to tip the FBI?”
“No,” I said. “Not yet.”
He said, “All right. You get something solid, you call me direct.”
I hung up, set the phone face-down on the table, and stared at the map until my eyes lost focus. I could feel Decker’s fingers rattling the laptop keys, a staccato heartbeat that matched the new tempo in my veins.
I stood there another thirty seconds, reading and re-reading every red string, every green push-pin, every goddamn inch of wasted space.
I thought of Jasmine, of her voice on that last voicemail, the way she said my name like it was a punchline she’d already heard before.
I thought about the kid on the phone, about what it meant to call a rival club for help, and how much desperation it took to burn your own house down in the hope of saving a single person.
Then I walked to my office, shut the door, and sat in the dark until the world went quiet enough for me to hear the story the numbers were telling.
It wasn’t the ending yet. But it was the next chapter, and I was done waiting for someone else to turn the page.
***
My office was pitch black, except for the LED from the hall bleeding through the crack beneath the door. I didn’t flip the switch. Didn’t need light to see what was already there.
The chair behind the desk was old, vinyl stretched and groaning when I dropped into it.
I sat back and let my head fall into my hands, fingers laced so tight my temples ached.
The clock on the wall ticked in the dark, but the only other sound was the hollow, hissing breath of the building’s ventilation and, through the cinder block, the muffled machine-gun rhythm of Bruiser’s typing.
I sat that way for three minutes, which is exactly as long as it takes to decide if you’re going to hold the line or let go.
My phone was still in my jacket. The pocket pressed cold against my ribs.
I didn’t pull it out. Instead, I ran the math on the situation, over and over, every time coming up short by exactly one variable: her.
I could do logistics, violence, politics, all day.
But Jasmine was the one equation that refused to solve.
Somewhere in that dark, my brain rolled back to the last voicemail she left.
Morning of, casual and bright, telling me not to forget the hand truck for the brake rotors and to remind Bruiser to check the battery on the shop lift.
She said she’d be back by noon, and at the end there was a laugh, low and private, like she was holding a secret only I would ever get.
I’d listened to that message eleven times in the last week.
The phone was still charged. I could have played it again, but I didn’t.
Instead, I pressed my hands to my face, harder, until my vision sparked red behind the lids.
My jaw felt like it was wired shut, but I kept my mouth closed, teeth grinding.
I counted to ten, then did it again. When I finally dropped my hands, I did it slowly, letting them slide down to the desk, palms flat.
The vinyl chair creaked, and I straightened, feeling the tightness in my neck fade into something almost like resolve.
I stood up. I left the office without looking back, shutting the door as softly as a priest in a hospital room.
In the war room, Bruiser worked two laptops side by side, his face lit blue by the glow of the screens.
On the left, Mohave County vehicle registry poured down the page.
On the right, a street map overlay tracked every delivery route for the last six months.
Decker had a fresh notepad by his elbow, and at the top, in bold block letters, was the partial: 600-?
??. He’d circled it three times, the paper torn from the pressure of the pen.
He looked up, eyes rimmed with red. “There’s a match,” he said. “Old Dodge Ram van, blue, registered to a shell company PO box. Address is a fake, but the last service check-in was at a garage in Chloride.”
I nodded. “Print it.”
He did. I took the paper, ran my thumb across the ink. It was still damp, and the numbers smeared into the side of my hand.
I went to the map, found the push-pin closest to the Chloride grid, and pinned the note there. The string radiated out from the center like a spider web—six points left, now five. I watched the pattern emerge, the way a vanishing point sharpens as you close in on it.
Decker started typing again, but slower this time, his work done until the next play.
I stared at the map, the cold coffee, the numbers. I let myself think of Jasmine for one full minute. Then I let her go, replaced her with the next task, and got ready to move.
The world outside the clubhouse was still as the bottom of a mine. The war room glowed, pins and string and ink, the only stars in the universe.
I didn’t need luck, or hope, or even a prayer.
I just needed the next step.
And now, I had it.