Gregg Hurwitz - Prodigal Son

Rather than head for the main walkway, he cut behind the toilet shack. The men’s-room door was open, a waft from inside carrying a swirl of black flies and the fish-and-iodine stink of well-used urinal cakes. A sign warning of lead poisoning hung crookedly from the warped planks.

Declan emerged past a kink in the walkway, out of view of the range master, who he could hear giving instructions, his voice raised to be heard through ear protection.

All the shooters stood parallel on the firing line, sealed off on either side by sound-absorbing transmission barriers that blocked their view of one another. Declan drifted behind them, unseen and unheard. Each of them faced away, focused on the plastic Corflute targets affixed to bales of hay. A sloped sandbag backstop rimmed the retaining wall. The pistol ranges here were shorter, targets positioned from ten to twenty-five meters. Oblivious to Declan’s movement behind them, the shooters fired away, cases spinning to the dirt below.

Simple tepees of shingles roofed the firing points, providing shelter from the San Joaquin Valley heat. Gunfire thundered all around, punctuated with the flat thwack of rounds punching plastic and hay. Bright orange wind flags flopped lazily from thin flexible poles. The air smelled of gun oil and burning nitrocellulose. Declan turned his face to the sun. It was a beautiful day.

He found the target in the seventh firing lane, his back to the walkway.

Rafael Gomez stood in a modified Isosceles Stance, torso square to the range, knees slightly flexed to absorb recoil. Declan watched him shoot, watched the recoil shudder his shoulder blades and blur the Padres logo on the turned-around cap. He couldn’t get a clear look at the pistol, but it sounded like a .22.

A gun case lay open on the bench behind him, the ammo dumped into a gray rubber tray. A few other handguns rested on the convoluted foam inside the case, including a SIG Sauer nine-mil, the air force service weapon of choice.

No more than five feet away, Rafael switched out his magazine and kept on firing. He’d chosen old-school Birchwood Casey targets and was dumping round after round through the nine ring, a few edging the red.

The shooters on either side thundered away, the percussion and echoes deafening even over the sound-absorbing transmission. Unlike Rafael’s firing cadence, theirs were sporadic and uneven, recreational sportsmen doing their Saturday best.

Declan stepped beneath the floating roof. Using a gun-cleaning cloth, he plucked the SIG from the case. A pair of magazines rested on the bench, conveniently loaded. Manipulating the cloth like a glove, Declan slid the mag into the well.

He watched Rafael shooting, so proud, so consistent, timing the pops.

He waited for Rafael to fire again and clicked the magazine home, the noise disguised by the bang. The cloth formed a barrier between Declan’s palm and the grip, his finger and the trigger.

Around them countless guns roared and roared.

Stepping forward, Declan raised the barrel so the muzzle floated two inches off the Padres logo at the back of Rafael’s skull.

He fired.

Folding the cloth into his pocket, he crouched over Rafael and dug through his pockets.

Wallet, keys, a folded day pass granting him leave from the reintegration center. His back pockets were empty save for a small piece of folded paper.

It contained a phone number and nothing else.

1-855-2-NOWHERE.

Declan’s veins turned to ice.

He walked away swiftly past the other firing lanes. Cutting back around the bathroom shack, he ducked inside, dropped the gun-cleaning cloth into the toilet, and heeled the metal prong of the flusher.

Across the parking lot, back into the maroon Corolla, his chest heaving.

Queenie looked over at him. What’s wrong?

He said, “We’ve got a problem.”

50Dummyproof

Evan walked Joey up to her apartment because he wanted to see Dog the dog. He waited in her place while she retrieved the ridgeback from up the hall. The boy lost his mind at the sight of Evan, wagging his tail so hard his whole body hot-dogged back and forth. He shoved his rear end into Evan so he could scratch him just above the tail, and Joey slumped into her oversize leopard-print beanbag and watched them with reluctant amusement.

“Gawd. Get a room.”

She pulled her phone out and thumbed around, then flung it down next to her. The whole drive back to Los Angeles, she’d been checking it constantly with an undercurrent of irritation.

“It’s a giant butt pain having that dog around, you know,” she said. “Every time I want to go somewhere, I have to go deal with the neighbor lady, and she always invites me in and wants me to drink tea .”

“The horror.”

“I should fix you up with her, since you’re all schoolboy skittish about Mia. This lady’s just your type. You two could be, like, the lamest-haircut couple ever.”

Evan sat on the floor, the better to pet Dog. “What’s wrong with my haircut?”

Joey rolled her eyes and flung her hands wide, apparently stunned at his inability to grasp the obvious. “It’s just a total generic guy cut.”

“I’m a generic guy. And it’s good for you to have to interact with other humans. Weren’t you just complaining that you long for ‘real life’?”

Dog tilted his head up to slurp the underside of Evan’s chin.

Joey scowled. “I meant real life without…”

“Responsibility?”

“I didn’t say that!” She considered. “But yeah.”

“Responsibility’s where you find meaning.”

“Oh, yeah, Fortune Cookie Head? If responsibility’s so great, why are you retiring?”

“I’m not retiring today. I’m heading to Creech North.”

“Yeah, right.” Joey dug in her pocket, pulled out a vape pen.

Even from across the room, Evan caught a whiff of weed. “What the hell, Joey?”

“Chillax, X. This isn’t what you think it is.”

“It better not be.”

“If we really want to know what’s going on, we need you to get into the network at Creech North. We both know that Hargreave’s parking sticker is only gonna buy you a little time. You said you need a cover—”

“I’m working on that.”

“—and you’ll need to sneak a hacking device inside the base. What’s the least suspicious electronic device imaginable?” Joey twisted the vape pen, opening up a hidden inner core that showed off a circuit board.

“How do I use it?”

“You, like, toke.”

“Josephine.”

“JK! Don’t worry. It’s dummyproof. Even for you.”

She snatched up her phone once more, glared at it, threw it back into the beanbag.

Evan said, “What’s with your phone?”

“What?” She reached over her shoulder again and started digging at that spot on her back. “Nothing.”

“You keep—”

“Look, it’s fine, okay? Gawd.” She stretched back, grabbed a Speed Cube from the windowsill, and started playing with it. It turned to a blur of colors in her capable hands, a magic orb. “Bicks is ghosting me. I was just checking if he texted me back, but he didn’t. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Hard pass.”

Dog nosed his empty Red Vines water bowl and whimpered. Evan stood and carried it into the bathroom. On the counter an array of lipsticks rose like rockets, and there were two kinds of concealer despite the fact that Joey had flawless skin. The sight brought him up short. How hard she was trying to fit in.

He filled the water bowl and brought it back to Dog and sat down again as the ridgie slurped and drooled on the floor. Joey kept spinning the cube, eyes down. Easier to focus on the plastic toy than on a human.