Shoot
Authors: Kieran Crowley
Also Available from Titan Books
Hack
Shoot
Print edition ISBN: 9781783296514
E-book edition ISBN: 9781783296521
Published by Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP
First edition: October 2016
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Copyright © 2016 by Kieran Crowley. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
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It feels like a stranger touching me lightly between my shoulder blades at the base of my neck. My muscles tighten and my head begins to turn, to look behind me and see who’s tracking me, but I’ve learned to stop the thoughtless impulse before my head can swivel visibly.
The trusted feeling of being watched was a gift that came without conscious effort. Magic. The hard part had been training myself to catch my reaction before it could betray me to a watcher. That’s why I’m not zipped-in, still alive. Basic Darwin.
You may not believe in occult lore like this but the U.S. government does. They taught me to trust the feeling and act upon it. They also instructed us combat operators not to look too long at our targets—in case they had itchy necks, too.
I was hoping a pet columnist for a New York tabloid newspaper wouldn’t need down-range skills. I took a deep breath of New York cab exhaust air. I was surrounded by hundreds of morning commuters, pedestrians, like me. Including one guy who had those Day-Glo orange sneakers you can see from space. It was no biggie that someone might look at me. But the odd thing was, I almost never got the feeling of being watched in Manhattan crowds because people almost never looked into anyone’s eyes, or even at anyone else, except to avoid collisions. It wasn’t a casual glance. The eye in the back of my neck only blinked when it felt the breath of a predator.
We all moved as one, but alone; a tight mob—a hundred fearful strangers, rushing as if we were being chased, just on the edge of desperation or breaking into a run in the warm June sunshine. Serious, striding close and fast but never touching. Most on their cellphones, some guys checking out girls’ asses, but no one spoke or acknowledged anyone else’s existence. Everyone distracted, driven, pursued, but I was probably the only one actually being followed by someone.
It occurred to me that I was away from America for ten years and by the time I came back they had all gone crazy. It took me a while to realize I was crazy, too, and for some of the same reasons. Shooting. Killing. Hating. Patriotism. I was so crazy, I promised myself I’d never take another order or fire another gun. So far, so good, considering that, since I returned home, I’d been threatened, attacked, drugged, strapped to a table, shot, locked in a flaming cab and dumped in a lake. And all for just trying to write a pet column and a few news stories for a Manhattan newspaper. I did say crazy.
After ten years in Afghanistan, Iraq, Afghanistan again and lots of other chaotic places I’m not allowed to mention, my body knows when it’s being watched. I’ve always wondered why. Maybe it’s a caveman psychic thing. You know, when the saber-toothed tiger is stalking you, you somehow sense that your image is appearing in his brain and you should run like a mother. I slowed down on a crosswalk but the thin, loping shadow also slowed down. I tried looking in store windows but I only caught glimpses of a backwards Yankees baseball cap and red sneakers, dodging through the throng with a rolling gait. Couldn’t see a face or hands; could be black, white, Hispanic, anybody.
I’ll say one thing for the crowded streets of New York: most of the people smell a hell of a lot better than I did before I came home. In those places, with the same phones but usually without running water, my body stank of the usual unpleasant odors, with the added scent of serious fear. The food helped a bit. We all ate the searing local food, with hot peppers, cumin, onion and garlic to destroy a wide range of intestinal bacteria. We washed it down with lots of arak—a high-octane booze that tasted like licorice-flavored rubbing alcohol. Eventually you sweated it all out your pores and everyone gave off the same subtle stench: a dumpster outside an Indian restaurant. And a licorice stick. In a barnyard.
But on this balmy early summer day Madison Avenue smelled more like a stampede at Bed, Bath & Beyond; a swirling vortex of spring-fresh fabrics, fruity organic shampoos, musky perfumes, soaps, toothpaste, and deodorants. I looked at my reflection in a store window: jeans, blue t-shirt, creased by black shoulder straps of the small black backpack holding my laptop—a gift from Jane—and a few other items. People rushed past behind me, protecting cardboard cylinders of expensive, sugary, hyper-caffeinated coffee milkshakes. My eyes were drawn to the three old parallel white scar lines on my left cheek, fading into my short sandy sideburns. Not my good side. You should see the rest of me.
I took out my new iPhone and held a button until a dinging double xylophone tone answered me and a silver microphone symbol appeared on the screen.
“How may I help you, Shepherd?” my phone asked me, in the familiar female voice.
“Siri, who is following me?” I asked her.
“I don’t know who your friend is, Shepherd,” Siri replied. “But you can tell me.”
Siri was my wingman. Wingwoman. She was great for finding restaurants, nearby cabs and data on most people. I had gotten into the habit of asking her things a phone shouldn’t know because I loved her smoky voice and, sometimes, her funny answers. I got hooked. I know her clever replies are the result of the late Steve Jobs and his computer gremlins programming pre-packaged answers to make her wicked cool. But I was an optimist and I hoped Siri would one day rise to my challenge. Of course, I couldn’t tell Siri who was lurking behind me unless I found that out first. I didn’t have time for this. I was already late and I didn’t want to drag some jerk to my actual destination.
“I thought you knew everything, Siri,” I scolded her.
“Let me check on that,” she said politely. “Here is some information on that.”
Siri displayed a dictionary entry for the word “everything.”
Now she was just screwing with me. I once asked my sexy phone voice what her name meant and she answered: “‘Siri’ has many subtle, metaphorical, and, frankly, contradictory meanings—none of which I am at liberty to discuss, Shepherd. Sorry about that.”
I put the phone in my pocket and did a one-eighty on the pavement. I barged against the flowing crowd, right toward the watcher. People complained and cursed me out, as I slightly inconvenienced them by going upstream. Some stepped aside without comment, protecting their scalding Starbucks. Some played chicken with anger on their faces, slowing me down. Ten heads back, the crowd broke and surged, cursed, bumped, and blocked. He was good. And fast. And gone. The flash of blue clothing on the vanishing back made me certain it wasn’t Ginny McElhone trying to steal another newspaper exclusive from me. She had followed me before but I’d know her body shape and movements anywhere. I walked around the block and ducked into a Sushi Bagel joint and confirmed I’d shaken my tail. My triscar pulsed gently on my temple, usually an indicator of a change in the weather. Next time, I would do a better job of meeting my new admirer.
It wasn’t just idle curiosity. The “Hacker” serial killer was behind bars but I still had a vindictive billionaire out there, my former boss Trevor Todd. He was probably the one who ordered his minions to kill me but he left the country before cops could question him. So far, the investigation had not resulted in his arrest and I wasn’t holding my breath because he would like nothing better than for me to stop breathing. So, old friends, new friends, I needed to find out.
And then ask Siri.
I crossed the huge lobby of the
New York Daily Press
, with its giant, rotating globe, covered with a very outdated map that still showed the Soviet Union in red. Germany was divided in half by the “Iron Curtain.”
In the elevator, I thought about the events of the last month. Most of the bad guys I had met were now cavorting in the Happy Hunting Grounds. That would include two of my former editors at the tabloid
New York Mail
, two charming members of the
Mail
’s Human Resources team and four rich victims—reality TV show stars. Even if you won’t admit to reading an infamous tabloid like the
Mail
, I’m sure you heard about it. I was pretty famous for a while. Front-page intrepid investigative reporter on the track of the serial killer, whatever. All before my thirtieth birthday. If you didn’t hear about it, you should know I only killed one of those four bad guys. He was about to shoot me. Just because I gave up guns doesn’t mean I have a death wish. The good news is that moving to New York wasn’t all bad news. I met a great woman, Jane. A vet, as in veterinarian. I’m a vet, but not a pet doc, just a former member of the armed forces, keeping America safe. You’re welcome. I was also adopted by my best buddy, Skippy, a Siberian Husky and a hell of a pooch, whose master was murdered. Now that the whole mess is over, I just want to write my pet column. I like doing the column, which is from the point of view of the pet, not the owner. The investigative reporter thing was fun but I’m not sure it’s for me. I did like working with the cops, especially Detective Lieutenant Izzy Negron, and catching the bad guys. But no one is offering me a detective’s job.
