Broken(8)

    I ignored it. Pain was good. Pain was my friend. The pain kept me crawling on as the night deepened. It was after midnight, now, and I was approaching the farmhouse after crawling for hours. I was going as slowly as I dared, my patience strained but not breaking because of what I had to do. There were about a million stars hanging over me, the only light save for a porch light that was about a hundred yards away from me and getting closer as I went. I was making as little noise as possible, almost none, and there was no noise of crickets to mask my approach. I hoped I was being quiet enough, because I didn’t want this to get loud before I was ready. I wanted to get close-up. Personal.

    I wanted it that way, but I didn’t want it that way, either.

    This is the way it should be, Little Doll.

    “Thanks for giving your opinion,” I whispered. “I shall cherish this advice always, and file it away with all the other fun memories you’ve given me, like that time you … oh, right. We’ve never had any good times together, only misery.”

    He mercifully shut up as I kept going. I knew before I’d started that I was in for a long night of this. I had started hours ago and miles away on a back road where I left my car (Zack’s car) parked. From what Kurt had told me, I was guaranteed to find my target at home. Apparently he never left anymore, not for anything. The tire tracks in the muddy driveway told me others had been here recently. The single page Kurt had included in the package he left on my doorstep along with the gun said it was pizza deliveries, sandwiches, occasionally groceries, and booze. The booze truck came every other day, and the credit card receipts indicated some heavy drinking being done at the house I was looking at.

    Good. I hoped it was still going on. Drunkards are easier to catch by surprise. It’s hard to pay full attention to the world around you when you’re busy getting hammered.

    And in this case, I needed all the help I could get.

    I reached the end of the tall grass that surrounded the farmhouse in all directions. If this had been a working farm at one point, it was in the distant past now. Now it was a near-abandoned house less than an hour south of Minneapolis and St. Paul, aged and damned near forgotten. That is, at least by everybody but me, the lone occupant of the place, some food delivery drivers and whoever dropped off five gallons of vodka every other day.

    I peered out of the grass, trying to keep my face hidden as I looked at the windows, the lights shining brightly within. Every light in the place seemed to be on, and I wondered for a flash if that was due to drunken forgetfulness or as some sort of lure. I saw a shadow move in the window, a figure cross to the kitchen from the living room, and realized it wasn’t much of a trap if so. My target was in sight. I didn’t even deign to think of him as a person anymore, just a target to be filled with bullets, as though I were at the range.

    It was how he would have wanted me to see it. It was how he trained me.

    I watched Glen Parks close his refrigerator door, his bushy gray beard hanging in front of him as he plodded back toward the living room. He disappeared out of sight with a bottle in his hand, the bright yellow label obvious against his weathered hand, and I breathed a sigh of relief. He did appear to be drinking. That was good news for me.

    I ignored the smell of the mud as I got to my feet. I crept forward across the driveway, sticking to the shadows as I ducked behind the old, rust-covered pickup truck that was in the driveway, parked about ten feet from the back door. I pondered entry points the way he’d taught me. Somewhere about twenty feet away from me, there was a sound of a blaring TV, loud enough that I could hear it from where I was standing. I estimated he was somewhere close to it, probably no more than twenty-five feet from where I was crouched, just a wall or two and some windows separating us. The volume of the TV was a good sign for me, likely to drown out not only my approach but also at a high enough volume to mask the sound of my entry, if I did it right.

    I took a breath, thankful that once again the idiots in my skull were being quiet. I knew how to force entry to a property, knew how to approach quietly, knew how to get myself within close range of him. My only challenge was going to be the moment of truth, the second where I had to pull the trigger. That was where I had always failed before. Not at the range, where it counted for nothing, but in the moment when I needed to take a life.

    And for this one, I needed to cut that hesitation out, because there wasn’t any time for it at all. Parks was a canny bastard, and even with the steps I’d taken to make this work, I wouldn’t have much time to act before he did. His response was impossible to predict, which was why I needed to fill his skull with bullets before he got a chance to employ whatever contingency plan he might have.