Kill Shot

by Susan Sleeman

  Olivia tried not to laugh, but she couldn’t stop it.

  Rick gave her a funny look and set his phone on the counter. “Not that I’m saying you’re right, Yo, but what do you suggest we talk about?”

  “Oh my, it’s worse than I thought. You have a beautiful woman sitting next to you, and you need an old lady’s advice on what to say.”

  Rick gaped at her for a moment, then tossed back his head and laughed. It was deep and melodic and what Olivia would have expected if he ever fully relaxed. And it drew her to him like a tugboat pulling her emotions.

  “See.” Yolanda pointed her tongs at Olivia. “All you had to do was lighten up, and she’s smitten with you.”

  Rick’s smile fell as he swiveled to look at her. Their gazes met, and she felt a physical pull. She fought it off but remained locked on his gaze. The sound of plates clanking onto the counter in front of them was the only thing that kept her from kissing him. She jerked her gaze away and found Yolanda smiling at them.

  She patted Olivia’s hand. “I’m so glad you can see in him what I know he tries his best to hide.”

  “Yo, don’t—”

  “Don’t what? Tell her what a compassionate, caring man you can be? I don’t need to. She’s already figured it out.”

  He glanced at Olivia again, and she nodded her agreement with Yolanda.

  “See,” Yolanda crowed. “I’ll get your tea and utensils.”

  “I told you as much in the car,” Olivia said.

  “You did, but I thought it was your counselor-speak.”

  “Trust me,” she whispered so Yolanda didn’t hear. “I’ll tell you when I’m talking to you as a professional. Otherwise you can assume anything I say is coming from Olivia the woman.”

  * * *

  Rick was enjoying lunch with Olivia until his phone dinged, reminding him of his responsibilities. He glanced at the text from Max saying he’d e-mailed the SRBs for Griffin and Santos. Rick quickly confirmed the files waited in his e-mail account, then pushed to his feet, albeit reluctantly. He might be feeling comfortable in this big mausoleum of a house for once, but he couldn’t sit at the counter and bask in the warm fuzzies when he had work to do. Sure, he liked being with Yolanda. Liked being with Olivia just as much. But he had a killer and lethal bullets to find.

  He peered at Yolanda. “I’d love to keep chowing down on your amazing food, but I have work to do.”

  As if confirming his need to leave, he received a text from Cal. Security guard lead didn’t pan out.

  “Thank you for the delicious lunch, Yolanda.” Olivia stepped down from her stool.

  Yolanda waved a hand. “Shoot, I’m happy to feed you anytime you want.”

  Rick gave Yolanda a quick hug. “I’ll be waiting for tonight’s dinner.”

  She smiled up at him, her broad cheeks rising as a sigh of happiness escaped. Her contentment had always drawn him to her. No matter her life situation, no matter her turmoil, the only way he ever knew she was having a problem was that he would find her reading her Bible more frequently than for her usual daily devotions. Reading the Bible, along with regular church attendance, was something he’d given up when Traci died. Maybe he was blaming God. Could that be part of his problem?

  “Now you two come back anytime,” she said, and planted a big kiss on his cheek.

  He hugged her tight again, maybe clinging to the one solid rock he’d had in his life other than God. He’d clung to neither of them in so long, and he was adrift. He needed to anchor himself again, and then maybe he’d figure out the mess of his personal life.

  Olivia studied him as if she could read his mind. Shoot, maybe she could. She was a shrink, after all. A good one, he suspected. Especially since she’d told him she was a Christian counselor. As she’d stated, not all counselors were bad, and being an ethical Christian counselor had to make a world of difference.

  He smiled at her and received a surprised look and shy smile in response.

  “Now aren’t the two of you cute as can be.” Yolanda clapped her hands. “They’re singing in heaven over this connection, Ricky. Now don’t mess it up.”

  Rick rolled his eyes and gestured for Olivia to go ahead.

  In the hallway she turned to Rick. “Yolanda’s quite a lady. Her family is very lucky.”

  “She never married.”

  “So you’re like a son to her.”

  He frowned.

  “What did I say?”

  “She always meant a lot to me.” He ran a hand over his head, messing his hair, then tried to right it but without a mirror had to give up. “But honestly, I didn’t realize until this visit that I was as important to her. I should have tried harder to visit her more often over the years.”

  “You can change that.”

  “I can at that.” Before they could get sidetracked again, he held out his phone. “Max e-mailed Ace and Cesar’s military records. Maybe you could help me find a connection between them.”

  “Sure.”

  “We can print the e-mails in my father’s office.” He led the way even deeper into the house to an office with paneled walls, a heavy mahogany desk, and dark leather chairs.

  Thankful he had the wireless network password so he could print from his phone, Rick went straight to the printer. After Griffin’s report finished, he tapped the pages to order them, then found a clip and handed them to Olivia. She took the report to the table while he waited for the remaining pages of the other SRB to finish printing along with the autopsy reports.

  “Where do we start?” she asked.

  He joined her at the table. “At the beginning. Both Ace and Cesar were infantry and may have gone through boot camp together. Find Ace’s enlistment date and location of training.”

  As she scanned the file, he quickly located Santos’s information. “Cesar enlisted in 2000.”

  “Ace was 1998.”

  “Okay, so they didn’t go through either School of Infantry phase together. Move on to their assignments.” Rick ran his finger down the page and called out Santos’s assignments, but Olivia shot each of them down.

  “Ace attended sniper school at Camp Lejeune.”

  “When?” Rick asked, his excitement building.

  “October 2003.”

  “Bingo!” He pumped a fist high above his head. “They were in sniper school together.”

  “And we know they both graduated.”

  Rick sat back, thoughts burning through his mind. “Wait…’03. That was Levi’s class.”

  “Your friend,” she said. “The one whose son is your godson.”

  “Yes. Levi was my spotter for my last years of enlistment. He’ll know the names of the other guys who graduated from his class.”

  “Do you think the shooter’s in that class, and for some reason he’s killing off his classmates?”

  “Could be.” The thought of his best friend, the only person besides Yolanda who gave him a sense of family, taking a .50 to the gut sent a cold wave of fear over him.

  She grabbed his arm. “We have to warn him.”

  “He’s deployed right now, and I know that no soldiers from his class are in his platoon, so he should be fine until he returns stateside.” At least that’s what Rick prayed.

  “When will that be?”

  “A few days,” Rick said, suddenly realizing that when he next talked to Levi, he would have to tell his bud about the death of two guys who would have meant the world to him.

  “Can you call him? To get the names of the other snipers in his class?”

  “I’ll text him and ask him to call. He’s traveling, though, so he may not be able to respond quickly.”

  She chewed on her lower lip. “What about other ways to get the information?”

  “I’ll put Max on it, but it took days to get SRBs. Could take as long for the list of the ’03 class graduates.”

  She tightened her hold on his arm. “Then we better pray that Levi’s somewhere he can take the call. Because without that information
, we might be looking at another sniper losing his life.”

  Chapter 21

  Levi’s reply to Rick’s text came at one a.m., when everyone else had gone to bed. Not Rick. He couldn’t sleep until he’d heard from his friend and warned him of the danger. Rick opened the text and read. 32 in the class. 8 guys graduated. 1 died in the line of duty.

  Eight of thirty-two snipers was lower than the ratio for a typical class. Levi could never murder a fellow marine. Griffin and Santos were gone, as was this other member Levi mentioned in the text. That left four possible suspects in their graduating class. A very manageable list to run down. But was he thinking too narrowly?

  Also possible was that one of the men who hadn’t graduated held a grudge against the graduates and was killing them. He hadn’t killed before because he couldn’t make such a long shot unassisted. To qualify for the Schoolhouse, he’d have to have earned a marine corps rifle qualification badge, meaning he’d repeatedly hit targets from five hundred yards. The odds of getting caught at that range were greater, but smart bullets gave him sniper abilities. And if he was a washout, he’d never received a HOG’s tooth, so he could be taking them as a souvenir to prove that even without one he was superior to the graduates.

  Levi would have a feel for the entire class, but he wouldn’t know the washouts as well as he knew his fellow graduates. Rick would focus on the smaller group and have Kaci gather information on the nongraduates, then widen his circle as necessary.

  He typed into his phone, Can you talk?

  I’ll call you, came the immediate reply.

  Rick moved to his desk and dug out a pen and notepad. Engraved at the top of the paper was the logo for the Saint Francis High School Knights. The Knights. His former football team was called the Knights, too. Odd that he hadn’t thought of that before now, but then he rarely thought of his life in Atlanta. He had fond memories of the football team, but attending the posh private school where they groomed students to emulate people like his father? Not so much.

  He woke up his phone and stared at the device, willing it to ring soon. When it did, he punched talk. “Give me their names.”

  “Hello to you, too.” Levi chuckled.

  “Sorry. Can you please give me the graduating snipers’ names?” He used the diplomatic tone he had been taught at Saint Francis, and that made Levi laugh even harder. “C’mon, man. Don’t keep me in suspense.”

  “Okay, let’s see. There’s Dirk James, Marcus Floyd, Jim Patton, Archie Griffin—Ace to us—Philip Neal…he’s a senator now.” Levi snorted. “He never had a political bone in his body. Now he’s serving on the Senate Committee on Armed Services and making the decisions you and I once complained about. I would never have seen that coming.”

  Rick jotted down the names and underlined Neal’s. Could these murders have to do with the guy’s political office, specifically the Committee on Armed Services? Maybe the other killings were meant to cover up an assassination attempt planned for Neal.

  “And the other guys?” Rick asked, as he only had five names on paper.

  “Cesar Santos. And then there was Karl Little. He was this humongous guy, and we called him Tank. He’s the one who died. Happened about five years ago. We all got tattoos in his honor.”

  That clarified what Griffin had told Olivia and matched Luna’s dates as well. And if they’d gotten the tats five years ago—right after Rick left for civilian life—it explained why he hadn’t known about Levi’s tattoo.

  “Tell me about the tat,” Rick said.

  “It’s called a chaos tattoo. It has—”

  “Eight arrows coming from a circle.”

  “Hey, man. How’d you know?”

  Despite a gut tight with emotions, Rick told Levi about his friends, trying to soften the blow, but there was no way around saying two of the guys he’d gone through hell and back with had died, too.

  “Man. Oh man…man…Like wow. That’s rough.” Levi fell silent.

  Rick gave him time to process and didn’t push the conversation, but sat back to wait for Levi to speak again.

  “You’re running this investigation, huh?” he finally asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Then promise me this. You’ll get this jerk, and you’ll do it before he hits anyone else.”

  “I can promise I’ll get him and do it as fast as I can.”

  “That’s all I can ask, I guess.” A long sigh filtered through the phone. “What else do you need to know?”

  “Have you ever heard of a Dr. Olivia Dobbs?”

  “Sounds familiar, but I don’t know why.”

  “She’s a counselor who specializes in PTSD.”

  “I know Ace and Cesar got help for that. Maybe that’s where I heard the name.”

  “You stay in touch with these guys?”

  “Ace not so much. We all tried, but he ended up on the street and was hard to find. Cesar kept an eye on him, though. Cesar credited Ace for getting him through the Schoolhouse, and he mentioned a few trips to Atlanta to check up on Ace.”

  That explained the trips Luna had mentioned. “Do you think Santos might have referred Griffin to Dr. Dobbs?”

  “Sure, yeah, if she really was Cesar’s doc. She got him back on track, and I know he was grateful. So yeah…sure…he’d give her a good recommendation.”

  Rick made a note to tell her about Santos’s appreciation of her help.

  “So was she Ace’s doc?” Levi asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Obviously you think these killings are related to my class,” Levi said. “You worried the rest of us are in danger?”

  “I am,” Rick said. “And I also think someone from the class is doing the killing.”

  “No way,” Levi snapped out. “No. No way. You know how it is. Going through the Schoolhouse together. We’ll be brothers forever. Even with the guys who didn’t make it. We’d never turn on each other, and you might as well stop thinking that right now.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “But you won’t listen to me,” he shouted. “You’ve forgotten how it feels to be part of our family and started to act like that straitlaced lawman you’ve become.”

  Rick detected a level of frustration far deeper than the situation called for. Or did Levi think Rick was turning his back on him? “This isn’t personal, man.”

  “Isn’t it? You’re bad-mouthing my bros.”

  Rick could see Levi’s point, and if the situation were reversed, Rick would be protesting, too. “Then tell me about them so I can clear their names faster.”

  “What’s to tell? Marcus met a mine with his name on it in Afghanistan, and he’s living off disability. Dirk and Jimbo are still serving. Dirk’s attached to the 1/7 and Jimbo the 2/4.”

  With two of the guys still in the marines, their whereabouts at the time of the shootings could easily be determined.

  “If you had to vote one of your remaining classmates most likely to turn killer,” Rick said, “who would it be?”

  “You gotta know it’s not me.”

  “Of course it’s not.” Still, Rick would have Levi investigated as protocol dictated. “So who would you pick?”

  “Dude, don’t even make me guess.” He sighed again. “You’ll be all over the person I name, and I won’t do that to one of my guys.”

  “I’ll make sure he’s treated fairly.”

  “Not happening, so leave it alone.”

  He respected Levi’s commitment to his brothers, but Rick had a job to do. He glanced at the notepad and zeroed in on the suspect who’d been wounded and might have an ax to grind. “Tell me about Marcus.”

  “Okay, but we need to be clear that I’m not saying he did anything.”

  “I’m clear.”

  “The loss of his leg really changed him. He lives in Nevada out in the desert in a compound. He hooked up with some liberal antigovernment groups, but other than that, he keeps to himself.”

  “Did he blame the marines for his injuries?”

  �
�He has some issues there, but if he went postal because of it, the guys on the team are the last ones he’d take out.”

  “Still, I’ll have to send someone to question him.”

  “And warn him, right? I mean, if this is about the team, he could be in danger, too.”

  “Right,” Rick said. “You’re sure one of the guys who washed out wouldn’t want to kill you all?”

  “C’mon, man. We settled that. I’m not ratting someone out.”

  “Okay, then how about outside of the class? Can you think of a reason anyone would target you all?”

  “Man, I don’t know. I mean it’s been a long time since we were together, and I’m guessing this situation is recent, right?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” Rick hated to be so vague with his buddy, but he couldn’t tell Levi about the smart-bullet theft.

  “You know, you could be wrong about everything. So what if two of the guys from our class were killed? Doesn’t mean it has to do with the class at all. Could be something Cesar and Ace were involved in.”

  “True, and if so, our investigation will reveal that, but I want to get your gut feel on who could be targeting your class. Did any of you serve together after graduation?”

  “Cesar and Dirk did, and so did Marcus and Ace.”

  “But never Santos and Griffin?”

  “No, and I don’t know about the other guys. This is bizarre, isn’t it? We survive the war and then this? Seems unfair. Will you keep me updated?”

  “As much as I can,” Rick promised. “And you can be sure we’ll check in with all the guys to make sure they’re safe and provide protection for them.”

  “Then be aware that Marcus doesn’t like visitors and won’t take too kindly to you suits showing up there.”

  Rick ignored the suits remark. “You stateside yet?”

  “Still en route.”

  “When you arrive in Atlanta, I’ll have a fed waiting to protect you.”

  He groaned. “You gonna send someone back to Pendleton with me, too?”

  “Yes, if we haven’t found the shooter by the time you’re ready to leave,” Rick replied. “I get that you don’t think you need anyone by your side. Especially not some FBI agent. But don’t fight me.”