Page 23 of Fallout

“Maybe one day, you could tell me the story. I’d like to hear it.” Richard glanced toward the car.

“Another time, absolutely.” She didn’t want to keep him from the woman waiting for him. His wife? She had never met Jasper’s mother and didn’t know much about her. No one really did.

“Thank you, Ms. Reed.”

She didn’t ask him to call her Destiny. The respect of him saying her name that way was something she appreciated. “You’re welcome.”

He started to turn away. “I’ll leave you to your?—”

His body jerked, and he grunted. Started to go down. Destiny grabbed his arm, and he cried out.

She let go, and he fell to his knees on the grass. Blood on his sleeve. “What happened?”

He gasped. “I think I’ve been shot.”

She looked around, trying to find some kind of cover in case whoever fired that bullet tried again. Over by the car, the woman now lay on the ground.

“Look!” She pointed.

“Elaine!” He started to get up.

“We need to stay low.” She pulled out her phone, her hand shaking. The rumble of Jeep tires on dirt swelled in her mind. She could feel the heat of the African sun and smell the tang of gunfire. “Stay low.”

Destiny turned the phone in her hand and swiped her hand up the screen, then dialed one.

“Vanguard.”

“Four seven two.” Her designation plus the “shots fired” code they’d made her memorize even though she’d argued she wasn’t going to be in danger.

“Copy that.” Whoever was on call said, “Do you have cover?”

“No, and there are multiple victims.” Destiny gasped. Why was her skin flushed? “I need an ambulance and help.”

“Sniper?”

“I don’t know!” Destiny raced low behind the senator over to his car. Another bullet pinged off a headstone beside her. She stumbled, twisting her ankle in the grass. Her phone went flying. “We’re being shot at!”

Richard turned, crouched by the woman. “My wife has been shot!”

Destiny needed to curl into a ball. Wrap her arms around her middle and squeeze her eyes shut. Pretend this wasn’t happening.

But it hadn’t worked last time. It hadn’t changed a thing.

Nothing had.

Instead, she pulled off her coat and crawled to the senator, pressing the fabric against the wound. The woman on the ground stared up at her with hatred in her gray eyes. “I won’t let you kill me.”

She scratched her nails down Destiny’s face.

TEN

“April, we need you to tell us what happened.” Detective Jesse leaned her hip against the side of the hospital bed.

The girl had been admitted and treated for injuries consistent with being beaten. She brushed hair off her cheek with a shaky hand. Two of her fingers had been taped together. She had a bandage on the side of her head, and her ribs had been wrapped.

Jasper hung back by the doorway of the emergency bay so he didn’t intimidate her, just in case this was about an attack by a stranger, and his proximity affected her willingness to talk.

Samantha’s CI was maybe nineteen. Slender, but not like she didn’t eat, with long dark hair that had some streaks of different colors in it. He’d listened to his mom talk about bad hair dye jobs often enough that he knew more than he wanted to.