Rob Thurman - All Seeing Eye

“But you didn’t want the shot, Jackson, and as you were so certain you were leaving today and no more readings were in the works, I backed down. No one likes a pushy nurse. And I’d had my three other shots at you. It seemed only fair.” In keeping with her bouncy Eden persona, she was wearing whimsical fairy earrings. I didn’t want to die period, but I really didn’t want to die at the hands of someone wearing fairy anything. “It was fine with me if you escaped with your life. I only kill people who are in the way. I get paid for my work. I’m not into extra credit. I don’t even mind all that much about Fujiwara. He was a good partner, but with this job, I have enough to retire, and with his share, I might get two villas instead of one.”

“You killed Charlie.” Hector sorted through it all to home in on what had started it all. The project breakdown, giving Fujiwara enough time to gather all of the data about it. She couldn’t have foreseen what would happen with Charlie, who wasn’t quite as dead as she’d hoped, but what a lucky break for her. Charlie had caused more confusion and crippled the project even further. Until I came along, everything was as sweet as those blackberry pancakes she’d made me. And even then, I hadn’t been a threat to her or Fujiwara, who deserved an Oscar for his acting skills. But Eden was as competent a killer as she was a nurse. No sense in taking chances. It was only after three failed attempts outside the infirmary that she was willing to risk taking a run at me inside it. I imagined that if she’d gone through with it, she’d already be in another country by now with the information Fujiwara had gathered. This plan-my house equipped with the weapons of the past-was nice for cleaning up a few loose ends like Hector and Thackery, who might eventually have figured things out about Fujiwara, but it hadn’t been strictly necessary.

But some killers embraced the better-safe-than-sorry standard.

And so did some scientists.

Hector wasn’t waiting for more talking-if there was going to be more, which I highly doubted. Eden was happily polite in her murdering ways, but she was one for getting things done. The shotgun in Hector’s hand, put there by Tess I now knew, wasn’t pointed at Eden, not specifically. The muzzle was tipping halfway between waist high and the floor as he faced her. It wasn’t a chest shot, but right then, any shot would do, and he took it.

The roar of the gun firing came at the same time as she disappeared, lunging to one side. Standing as she had been in the doorway, that put her outside and out of view, either with shattered legs or unhurt but not nearly as cheerful as before. Hector started for the door, pumping the shotgun as he went. I was right behind him, a little slower, as he’d already used it on me, and the pain of that didn’t fade like a scraped knee. It only grew more white-hot with every passing minute.

That didn’t stop me from grabbing a handful of his shirt and yanking him off his feet as I dove toward the floor. The faint shadow of the gun I’d seen through a window filmed in red dirt turned into an explosion of glass and three bullets that passed over our bodies to embed themselves in the wall. Hector growled and this time was at the door long before me, out into the sun and gone. I did follow, but I couldn’t catch up. Shot once today, shot once the day before with a broken rib to show for it, it took the marathon out of my running. But I kept moving doggedly through the grass growing taller into fields I still recognized from sixteen years ago, following a path I’d once run as the colors of the day all faded to black and white behind the horrible truth I’d known.

It was in that tall grass that I found Hector, down and swearing, with a bullet hole through his upper leg. “Go after her,” he gritted between his teeth. “She missed the femoral artery, but she hit the damn bone. It’s broken. Don’t let her get away, Jackson. Not after all she’s done.” He held the shotgun up to me.

She’d killed Charlie. She’d arranged for Meleah to have her throat sliced, me to relive something no one should relive, and my friend to be shot. No, she wasn’t fucking getting away from any of that.

I started after her, and Hector snapped, “No, you son of a bitch. You take the damn gun. Take it, or she will kill you, do you understand that?”

I shook my head. Everything in my life had changed or was trying to change since Hector had shown up, but this never would. “I don’t need a gun.” And for some reason, I believed it. Hector yelled that I was a “Suicidal bastard!” but I honestly believed it. I didn’t need a gun for Eden. It was crazy, completely insane, I knew that, but it wasn’t suicidal, because I knew. I just knew. Eden would be taken care of, no gun needed.

I was still running, my hand covering the slow bleeding where the Kevlar had failed me, when I saw her far ahead. Her hair was the brilliant shine of chestnut streaked with red and gold under the sun, and she ran like a gazelle. I didn’t say anything, but she must have heard me stumbling through the grass. Her head turned to take me in. I couldn’t see the green of her eyes, she was too far off, but I could see her smile. All triumph. Still running, she brought her gun up and over her shoulder to aim dead on me. I could feel the weight of it as heavily as the sun’s heat that pressed down. Eden’s smile widened.

And then she was gone.

I slowed down to a walk then. I hurt, and with every breath, my broken rib stabbed at the surrounding flesh. There was no hurry, anyway. I knew where Eden was, and she wasn’t going anywhere.

When I finally reached the well, it was quiet. Not a bird flew in the sky. The incessant hum of insects had turned to the quiet of a church. I looked down into the dark water that was a bare glitter and gleam thirty feet below and saw nothing else. No pale smear of a hand raised up. No body floating on the surface. Eden had gone to the depths… of a well that had been plugged with concrete by the county sixteen years ago after a young girl named Tess had drowned there. There was no concrete now and no sign that there had ever been.

Wasn’t that a mystery?

Her nine-millimeter was balanced on the edge of the stone, deadly as a water moccasin. I nudged it with my foot and dumped it into the well. With the distant splash, I murmured, “You forgot something.” Then I walked away and back to Hector. When he asked about Eden, I shrugged and answered.

“She wasn’t much of a swimmer.”

A month later, I was doing my version of cooking: microwaving four cheese pizzas, one after the other. While some things changed in life, the combination of me and an oven remained a catastrophe of nuclear proportions. I also had bowls of chips and dip and a case of beer in the refrigerator. Abby had promised to bring cheesecake for dessert. Houdini was intrigued by the smell of so much extra food, but he was suspicious, too. He wanted to believe that it was all for one big Houdini-and-Jackson buffet, but sometimes even dogs know when something seems too good to be true.

I gave him a slice of pizza and pointed toward his couch. “When Hector gets here, he’ll probably try to con you out of a seat whining over his broken leg. Don’t give an inch.”

Chuffing curiously, he trotted over, jumped up, and went to work on his dinner. He’d be surprised when Hector and Meleah, now engaged, showed up along with Abby. Abby he was used to. Add two more people to that, and, well, that was two more people than he’d seen in the house. As I’d thought, things change, and he’d probably adjust faster than I would. But adjust I would. I didn’t have much choice after what I’d seen, although half the days I still spent firmly lodged in denial. Blood loss, hallucinations, a statewide secret project to unplug abandoned and dangerous wells-possibly for population control-who knew? But there were the other days, and those days had changed me.