Page 1 of Ricochet

PROLOGUE

You never forget the sound of gunfire. How the ringing drowns the screaming inside your head. No matter how loud, it's always louder, until the bullet hits its mark in an explosion of pain. Unrelenting fucking pain that sears through the flesh and leaves a gaping hole in its wake. Blackness settles in, and for one fleeting moment of bliss, all is silent.

You become numb, traipsing the fine thread between life and death.

I wish the bullet had killed me.

At least, if it had, I'd be certain of three things:

I could forget the dullness of her eyes as the blood drained out of her body.

I'd no longer hear the promise that I whispered in her ear.

And the barrel of my gun wouldn't be crammed down the throat of a man who'd begged for his life just moments before I cut out his tongue.

But that's what happens when you shoot at something impenetrable.

It ricochets.

CHAPTER 1

Nick

Cull: transitive verb

1: to select from a group; choose

2: to reduce or control the size of (as a herd) by removal (as by hunting) of especially weaker animals; to hunt or kill (animals) as a means of population control

According to Newton’s Law, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

You punch a brick wall, your knuckles bleed.

You shoot a gun, it recoils.

You destroy a man’s life, he seeks revenge.

An eye for an eye.

So, there I waited, beside a broken window, ten stories in the air, fingers stretching and clenching to a fist, while the early October winds whipped past the abandoned building where I’d hidden.

The place must’ve been a classroom at one time. Desks stood spaced and lined, some tipped, a few standing. Dirty, weathered books lay plastered to the floor, splayed open like dead crows in a snowfield of papers. Like an apocalypse had stricken the city and the workers had been forced to flee with no warning.

Outside the window, broken and abandoned husks dotted the landscape, set against a gray, dishwater sky. Scarred and beaten, the perfect metaphor for the people who lived within its forgotten neighborhoods, Detroit was like an abused kid, just waiting for the day someone would come along and give a fuck about it.

The third world city of America.

In any other part of the country, what’d happened would’ve been an atrocity. There would’ve been a candlelight vigil, stuffed animals set outside the ashes and rubble where my home used to stand. Parents would’ve clutched their kids a little tighter at night, given thanks they weren’t me.

Instead, the murder was never reported. Not even the fucking neighbors bothered to call the fire station to report a burning house.

I tugged the black hoodie forward to conceal my face and tipped the barrel of my M24 below the windowsill, out of sight.

On the streets below, a crowd had gathered around two white vans packed with care packages for the homeless. In the throng, a white couple, casual but too clean-cut to belong so far east, passed out the large clear bags with easy smiles plastered on their faces, pausing every so often for the camera.

Michael and Aubree Culling.

Care packages. The mayor didn’t give a shit about the city, let alone the scum homeless who littered his streets and left a blemish on his blue prints. I wouldn’t have been surprised if those packages had been laced with rat poison by the asshole, or his obedient little wifey, always there to stroke his shoulder and smile for the camera.