Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Stop.
Life is hard. And this circular thinking isn’t making it any easier.
Running over the questions I have in my mind isn’t helpful. Not to me, not to anyone. I may never have all the answers to plug into the spotty, uncertain parts of my memories. But that’s fine. I’ve always believed people put too much stock in memory anyway. Memories are unreliable. Memories are liars. Truth is what you make it.
Maybe, maybe not, but I have to find some way of getting okay with the fact that I’m probably never going to get back all the things I lost over the years. That little, carefree girl I once was? Gone. That idea of being an assistant and working in an office and having a “normal” life? Gone, if it was ever even a possibility to begin with.
A love I share with just Alec and Danny and the three of living our own happily ever whatever-the-fuck? It sounds so stupid when I think of it that I want to throw myself off this roof right now. But I’m done with that. Falling from roofs. So that’s not an option.
So, who cares? Who cares what I thought I thought or maybe remembered? None of it is happening here. Or now. And here and now is where I very, very much need to be.
Focus, Keene.
I fix myself again in the here and now. In the colors and smells and sights all around me. The building I’m perched on top of must, as it turns out, be a bread factory. Or a bagel factory. Or something. Because the smell of fresh baking dough is in my nostrils.
The sky above is steel grey, but not in an ugly way. It’s this almost surreal kind of grey that looks like it was painted on some sort of God-canvas. It contrasts with a flock of white birds passing overhead. I’m not sure what kind they are. They look like seagulls, maybe? I dunno. I’m no ornithologist. Whatever they are, they’re nice.
This is what happens right before I kill somebody. Which is a weird sentence if you think about it, but I try not to. Think about it, that is. But right before I pull a trigger, I try to observe the typically mundane parts of the world around me. The nice parts. The everyday, usually overlooked, but totally amazing parts. The parts we ignore but probably shouldn’t.
The blue parts.
The blue. The pretty. The parts that we wind up crushing open and breaking to bits. I like to take a moment and appreciate them just before I squeeze them to death and fuck it all up.
I don’t always get the chance, of course. Sometimes I’m too busy running for my own life and trying to keep myself from getting squeezed open to take the time. But when I can, I do try to.
It’s only a blink. The clarity of vision, the sights, the smells, the calm… it only lasts for a second. Maybe a half-second. But for me, just before I pull the trigger, it stretches out for eons.
I take another deep breath and line up my shot so that I can see clearly through the lone, narrow, horizontal window that runs along the top of the warehouse across the street. I have just enough field of vision to assess what’s happening inside and make fire rain down if I have to. (Just. I think.)
I shiver and zip my leather jacket up a little closer to my neck. There’s a tiny bit of a chill in the air. It’s brisk for spring. Even in Belfast. But that’s not why I shiver.
I shiver because I can feel that it’s almost time. I have a sixth sense about these things. Not all the time and not with everyone, but where Alec and Danny are involved, I can feel when something’s about to go down.
And it’s about to go down.
And what happens next? Doesn’t really matter. Because it’s not happening now.
Breathe. In and out. In and out.
In. And out.
I focus on what I can see through the scope of the rifle, ready my finger against the trigger, and…
Oh, fuck.
Take a breath…
… In and out, Christine.
Finger on the trigger…
… In and out.
Steady…
… In…
Just…
… And…
Breathe…
… Out.
CHAPTER TWO
“I’m not thrilled about it.”
“About what, man?” Alec asks.
“About Christine being all alone up on that fucking roof,” I whisper back. “We should have comms.”
Alec and I are preparing to enter the rear door of Declan Lynch’s chop shop so that we can all have a chat. And as we were all suiting up to take our positions, we discovered that there was some glitch with the shitty mic package we were able to procure on short notice without calling attention to ourselves. Our options were either postpone this whole thing or go forward without the ability to communicate. We opted for the second one. Which, for the record, I voted very much against.