Blip. Blip. Blip. The cross-hairs jumped and settled, jumped and settled, always dead center, as each beat of the shooter’s heart delivered a tiny surge of blood pressure. But fate would not be averted by such minute deviation.

Four hundred yards. No wind. Seventy-five degrees. Slightly overcast. An easy shot. Keith Quinlan glanced at his Seiko, a gift from his wife in better times: 3:07. Eight minutes. If his target held to routine, he would spend another five minutes walking the track, then smoke a cigarette by the doors that opened off the exercise yard. His last cigarette.

Leaving the Remington propped on its sandbag rest, Quinlan rechecked the area. Clear. No roving cops. No curious eyes. The rickety barn’s hayloft probably hadn’t seen hay since The Great Depression, and the farmhouse was long gone, it’s hardy builders dust in some forgotten grave, but it could serve one last purpose, Quinlan decided, before being plowed under for Mickey D’s, strip malls, or matchbox houses disguised as progress.

Right on time, Jacob Strauss quit the track. Unhurried, he lounged against the back wall of the Marion County Detention Facility, lit a cigarette, blew smoke at the sky. Quinlan’s twenty-five power spotting scope brought him sharply into focus. Strauss looked calm, unconcerned, bored, just as he had every day of his trial. He was alone in the exercise yard--even hardened cons have a code, and Strauss wouldn’t have lasted long in general population.

Quinlan reassumed his position on the rough oaken planks and, with the unconscious precision of a task long mastered, tucked the rifle butt into the pocket of his shoulder. Automatically, his left hand grasped the rear sling swivel, while the right curled around the stippled grip of the fiberglass stock. The tip of his forefinger rested on a trigger tuned to break crisply at 3.5 pounds. Legs splayed. Heels down. Body relaxed. Just like he’d been taught.

Face quartered by bold black cross-hairs, Strauss reappeared in the scope. He should have skipped his carefree smoke. It might have given him another day. Because only there, against the wall, was all chance of deflection by the fence eliminated.

Two fallow fields. Four lanes of traffic. Two fences. An exercise track. One hundred sixty-eight grains of match-grade bullet crossed these in less than three tenths a second, punched into Strauss’ skull just above the nose, and painted the bricks behind his ruptured head with blood and brain.

No more fickle juries, legal loopholes, or lenient judges for Brian Strauss. And no more victims.

Death is, after all, the ultimate deterrent.
 

Excerpt
The hallway was dark. Musty. Thick with dust. Griffin took one side of the door, Big Wade the other.

How many doors had they taken together? Too many. But no matter the number, doors never failed to get the blood pumping. Why? The mystery of what might be waiting on the other side. Gunfire? Death? No way to know. Griffin found Wade’s eyes through the gloom; nodded. No need for words.

With a brittle crunch, the aged oak splintered under Wade’s huge foot. Griffin hurled himself through the gap...