The silence goes on for too long and she takes a deep breath and lets it out. “Merc was right, I guess. I’m a crybaby. And you hate me, don’t you?”

“I don’t hate you,” I reply, a little defensively, blowing out my own long breath. “I just don’t know what to do with you. I don’t know why you’re here.”

She shrugs, then winces as her hand goes to her shoulder.

Well, pain I can deal with. So I start there. “I have a med kit in the pull-out drawers in the back of the Hummer. Take one of the tablets called Motrin before you hit the sack.” I don’t know what to say about the father thing. I’m no good at this shit. I’m the last guy to look to for sympathy. All I know is business. Death is my business. I walk over to her and kneel down so I can see her Glock. And then I pull out my Five-SeveN, pop out the magazine, pull the barrel back, and empty the chamber, letting the cartridge fall out into my palm. “Here,” I say, handing it over to her grip first. “You wanna trade guns, Smurf? This thing’s nice and light. Almost no kick at all. Just a .22 round, but you know, the shape of the bullet gives it velocity.”

She takes the gun, then the mag. Every few seconds she sniffs as quietly as she can, trying not to call attention to the fact that she’s crying. “Cop killer,” she says as she pops the magazine in.

“Yup, that’s what they call them. Cop killers. You know why, right?”

She nods. “Because the cartridge goes through Kevlar.”

“Yeah, that’s why.” She knows her shit. “Load it up. You wanna shoot it?”

She sniffs again. “Where?”

I smile and pan my arms wide. “Here. There’s no houses for miles. No one’s gonna care. Pick a target. Shoot something.”

She scans the area, making a little circle as she does it. Then she points off in the distance. “How about that sign at the edge of the property?”

“Wow. You’re cocky, huh?” She smiles at me and I smile back. “I tell you what. If you hit that target in this light, I’ll let you keep that gun forever. We can trade, huh? I’ll take that Glock off your hands and you can have this Five-SeveN.”

She gets a wide grin but tries to hide it. “I can hit that target.”

“Show me. Pretend your dad is watching you. Right now. He’s looking down on you and he sees you with me, and maybe he’s a little worried.” My voice drops and she looks up at me, her face a mess of grief, but at the same time I know she’s listening. She wants to hear something real from me. She needs something real from me. “He’s probably a little suspicious of my motives. And maybe he’s worried that I’m a bad guy. So show your dad you can handle me just fine. Shoot that target and take my gun.”

She stares at me for a moment. “Are you a bad guy, James?”

I nod slowly. “Yes.”

“I’m a bad guy too.”

“So I guess we’re even,” I say back.

“Maybe,” she says as she takes aim. She draws in a long steadying breath, then breathes out and squeezes the trigger. The Five-SeveN is loud, but the ping of a bullet going through a metal sign echoes for a second after the gun blast dies away. That’s all we need to confirm her aim was true. “If we’re even,” she says, turning back to me, “then what do we do?”

“Well”—I reach down and pick up her Glock, check the magazine, finger the thread on the barrel where a suppressor would fit, then stuff it in my pants—“I guess we need a plan.”

“I guess we do.”

I nod as I stand. “I’ll let you know when I get one.”

And then I walk back over to the open skylight, half expecting to hear the crack of a high-velocity round being fired before crashing straight through my head.

But I hear a long, sad sigh instead.

I guess her trust—even if it’s conditional, temporary, and precarious—is the best I can hope for at the moment.

Chapter Twenty-Seven - James

I go back inside, walk straight through the house, go out to the Hummer, open the door, sit inside, and slam it shut.

Fuck.

What the f**k am I doing?

I weigh my options in my head. I imagine all the ways in which each path could make life better. Then worse. Every decision has a consequence. Every moment in my life accumulates to this moment. And this moment will determine my next moment.

Life is a tower. A very tall tower. Decisions lead to actions, and action stack up—one on top of another, on top of another. And sometimes you know why you’re clawing your way up that tower, but most of the time, it’s just pulling yourself up, hand over hand. Finding each foothold one crevice at a time.

And every now and then, as you climb your tower, there’s a bridge. And you stand there looking across that bridge, but you know that’s too f**king easy. There’s no other side. If there was another side, you’d hop off the f**ked-up tower you’re climbing and try something new.

But there’s no other side in sight. Just a bridge.

So it’s a risk. Do you keep climbing? Do you use all your stacked moments to lift you up towards the ending you’ve been envisioning since you started this journey?

Or do you step onto the bridge and cross over into the unknown?

I guess it comes down to regrets. Not things like, Did I kill the right people? Or, Did I do my job the best way I know how?

No. Life is not about work, it’s about… love.