Shot Girl Read online

  More applause, and Tedley joked, “If you keep succeeding like this, you may run out of fingers for more rings.”

  Belly laughs all around.

  Tedley leaned in and whispered. “Nice work, Barney. You’re getting the funding you asked for. By next month, you can quadruple your staff.”

  “I appreciate it, Wilson. You know there are over two thousand gun shows per year. We’re missing a whole lot of opportunities.”

  Tedley motioned to the doorway, and staff brought in a tray of champagne. When everyone had been served, Tedley raised his hand and began to speak his usual toast. After the first four words, they all joined in, rising in volume until everyone in the room was yelling.

  “…being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED!”

  “After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.”

  WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

  “When the Constitution gave us the right to bear arms, it also made us responsible for using them properly. It’s not fair of us as citizens to lean more heavily on one side of that equation than on the other.”

  JESSE VENTURA

  EPILOGUE TWO

  TWO WEEKS LATER

  JACK

  Seriously?” I said to my husband as we pulled into the parking lot.

  “Sam’s sleeping over at Taylor’s, I figured we could have a night out.”

  “I’m all for that. But Cowlick’s?”

  “They have pool tables. Or, if you want to, we can go back to our complimentary apartment at the Darling Center and binge Netflix and chill.”

  I was sick of the Darling Center, and TV. I wanted to be on the town.

  But this felt less like a fun night out on the town, and more like Phin trying to prove some point.

  Since Hurricane Harry totaled our house, and we didn’t have insurance to rebuild, we had to sell. Happily, real estate in Florida was worth a lot, even with a wrecked house on it, so we’d be able to start over somewhere else.

  Somewhere without tropical storms.

  I already had my leg braces on, set to spring assist, and managed to get out of our rental car by myself and make it to the front door with only a cane.

  Phin went for drinks. I found a free pool table.

  We played four games of nine ball, Phin beating me three to one. But I felt my mojo coming back as the beers kicked in, and I was ready to make my comeback.

  Then two guys came in and took the table next to us.

  Two familiar guys. One with a handlebar mustache. One wearing some denim bibs.

  “You planned this, didn’t you?” I asked Phin.

  He spread his hands out. “It’s just dumb luck. I swear.”

  But it wasn’t dumb luck that made Phin walk up to them.

  “Sorry, guys. This table is reserved.”

  The handlebar mustache guy puffed out his chest, protesting that there was no table reserves. Then he noticed me and grinned. “Oh, yeah. I remember you two. You bought us drinks last time.”

  He and his buddy guffawed.

  “And now you can buy us some drinks,” Phin said. “And then get out of here.”

  “Really? Is that what we’re going to do?”

  “That’s what you’re going to do.” Phin jabbed him in the chest with his finger. “If you want to keep your teeth.”

  I got a little chill up my spine. Dammit if I wasn’t enjoying this way too much.

  “You’re acting all tough in front of your cripple bitch, pal. How about we go and settle this out in the parking lot?”

  “Jill? You want to feed these guys their teeth out in the parking lot?”

  I’m not proud of myself, but I said, “Why not?”

  The four of us went outside, Phin being gracious enough to wait for me because I took a little longer.

  The mustache guy took off his jean jacket. “So how you want to do this?” he asked Phin. “One at a time?”

  “Two at once is fine,” Phin said.

  Mustache guy lost some of his cocky, but he blustered anyway. “You think you can take on both of us at once?”

  “Asshole, I know I can take on both of you at once. But this isn’t my fight. I’m just here to give emotional support to my wife.”

  I handed Phin my cane. Phin handed me his beer. I threw the liquid in mustache guy’s face. “You owe me for that one as well,” I told him.

  The bully called me a name that rhymed with punt—yet another word women needed to take back—and he moved to shove me. But I moved with him, grabbing his hand, getting him in a wristlock, and introducing his face to the pavement.

  His buddy in the bibs raised a fist and came at me, and I blocked, pivoted, and then rammed the heel of my hand into his nose.

  He bent over, gripping his face, and I grabbed his ears and bounced his chin off my knee brace.

  My balance, as Sam would say, was on fleek.

  Mustache managed to get up on his knees, and Phin made good on his promise and punted him in the teeth.

  And that’s when we saw the flashing red and blue lights.

  “Seriously?” I said to Phin. “You didn’t check for cops first?”

  His smile was so big and bright it could be seen from space. “Too busy watching my lady kick ass.”

  We spent the night in jail, courtesy of our fake names.

  Got out the next day in time to pick up Sam at Taylor’s.

  Best date night ever.

  “The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun.”

  P.G. WODEHOUSE

  “Guns made us free and have kept us free, one side says; the other side rejects guns as instruments of domination, lawlessness, and terrorism. The conflict rages on because both sides are right.”

  JAN E. DIZARD

  EPILOGUE THREE

  SOMEWHERE IN NEBRASKA

  ONE WEEK LATER

  The walnut balanced on an empty beer bottle, forty meters of prairie away.

  The Cowboy squinted at the nut, hand poised above the hip-holstered Ruger Bisley Vaquero.

  It took .455 seconds to draw, fire, and shoot the walnut off the bottle.

  The bottle remained untouched.

  Not the Cowboy’s fastest. But getting better every day.

  Heckle and Jeckle walked through the brush, toward the Cowboy. Heckle carried a laptop.

  The Cowboy waited.

  “We found them,” Heckle said.

  “Actually, our spider did,” Jeckle said.

  “Facial recognition software scanning police databases. She was arrested in Ft. Myers. Assault and battery charge reduced to disorderly conduct. Using the name Jill Johnson.”

  The Cowboy squinted at the mugshot on the screen.

  It was Lieutenant Jack Daniels. No mistaking it.

  “Her husband was arrested at the same time.” Heckle pressed a button and another mug shot appeared.

  The Cowboy’s stomach clenched.

  “Ft. Myers PD ran his prints, but he isn’t in the national database. But we cross-checked with Chicago. His name is Phineas Troutt.”

  “Where are they?” The Cowboy asked.

  “They had a house in Ft. Myers, but it sold yesterday. Cash. We don’t know where they went,” said Jeckle.

  “But we found someone who might know,” said Heckle.

  “We have to go to Illinois,” said Jeckle.

  The Cowboy holstered the Vaquero.

  “I’ve been waiting a long time to find these two. When’s the next flight?”

  “Four hours,” said Heckle.

  “We already booked three tickets,” said Jeckle.

  “Nice work, boys.”

  The Cowboy offered a rare smile.

  After more than a year of searching, revenge was finally within reach.<
br />
  And it was going to be beautiful.

  “In the myopic world of the liberals, guns are responsible for evil instead of the perpetrator of evil. But criminals are not bound by our laws. That’s what makes them criminals.”

  RICK PERRY

  “Enough with all the gun quotes. What happened to the good old days, when you could settle a playground disagreement with your fists?”

  HARRY McGLADE

  “Also, there wasn’t enough of me in this book.”

  HARRY McGLADE

  “Seriously, I better have a really big part in CHASER.”

  HARRY McGLADE

  “You will.”

  J.A. KONRATH

  “Promise?”

  HARRY McGLADE

  “I promise. SHOT GIRL was dark. I need to do a fun one next.”

  J.A. KONRATH

  “Hell yeah!”

  HARRY McGLADE

  EPILOGUE FOUR

  SOMEWHERE IN CALIFORNIA

  JACK

  Phin! Jack! It’s been too long!”

  Harry McGlade, wearing so much aftershave that TSA shouldn’t have allowed him inside of an airport, gave us a bear hug as we walked into baggage claim.

  Then he squatted down to Sam’s height and held up his prosthetic hand for a high five. She smacked it.

  “Hi, Uncle Harry. You smell like the stuff Mommy uses to clean the toilets.”

  “Good to see you too, sweetheart. Glad you could all come out to the coast and spend some time with me and Harry Jr.”

  “We needed the money,” I told him.

  “And the money is cray-cray, Jackie. You guys check any bags?”

  “All our stuff blew away,” Sam said.

  “Good. I hate waiting for bags.” He ruffled Sam’s hair and stood back up. “It’s about an hour drive to my hacienda. I got a limo.”

  “Where’s the Crimebago?” Phin asked.

  “That tank is a bitch to park at the airport. Limo is easier. Also, slight change of plans, Tom Mankowski is joining us tonight.”

  Warning bells went off in my head.

  “I’m happy to see Tom, but you’re the only one I’m helping, Harry. I have no interest in getting involved with Erinyes.”

  “Actually, Jackie, I don’t think it’s up to you.”

  Harry motioned me aside. I gave Phin a silent signal to distract Sam, and followed McGlade to a phone charging station. I did a quick check of the crowd, but the only one who looked suspicious was the guy I was talking to.

  “So what’s the ugly ass leg braces? I thought you were all healed.”

  “Did you pull me over here to insult my leg braces?”

  “Partly, yes. Christ, they’re hideous. How does Phin even get an erection with you wearing those. When I saw you hobble over my dick shrunk three sizes.”

  “You want to see what these leg braces feel like when I kick you in the balls?”

  “Strangely, yes. Maybe later. But I want to talk to you about Tom and Erinyes.”

  McGlade pulled a cell phone out of his inner suit jacket pocket. “You know Erinyes is sending Tom snuff vids.”

  “Yeah. He told me.”

  “Well, Tom’s also been monitoring a few darknet snuff sites. He was hoping that maybe Erinyes was just stealing footage, rather than creating it. But he found this. Brace yourself. It’s awful.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t want to see it, Harry.”

  McGlade stared at me, as serious as I’ve ever seen him. “You have to.”

  He pressed play. A video started, a close up of a woman’s bare breasts.

  Then a hot branding iron came into frame.

  “Harry, I can’t.”

  “Keep watching.”

  There was branding. There would have also been screaming, but thankfully McGlade had the sound off.

  “Why are you making me—”

  “It’s right here. Watch.”

  The camera tilted up, to show the woman’s face.

  My face. Wracked with pain.

  “Jesus,” I said. “She looks just like me. What the hell is this, Harry?”

  “Tom will explain it when he comes over. But for now, look at the bright side.”

  Another serial killer fixated on me? Another chance to put my family in danger? Another chance to be stalked by a psychopath? “This has no bright side.”

  Harry grinned, wide as a zebra’s ass. “Sure there is, Jackie. We’re getting the whole gang back together. I can already feel it. This is going to be the adventure of a lifetime…”

  AUTHOR AFTERWORD

  I’m not a fan of the author afterword. A book should stand on its own without the writer having to explain himself. So feel free to skip this. I would.

  Still here? Okay, then thank you for indulging me while I yap for a bit.

  My usual goal is to entertain, and I try to create books with fun characters and some laughs and some scary situations, and it is all firmly in the land of make-believe with larger-than-life heroes and super-evil villains and a few dumb jokes.

  I do escapism. I leave social commentary to better writers.

  SHOT GIRL is different. I wrote it with a purpose in mind.

  If you managed to make it through the whole book, you were force-fed a lot of information about firearms. I touched on gun safety, gun laws, active shooting situations, buying guns, shooting guns, and the infamous gun show loophole.

  But I didn’t offer any answers. Because there are no answers.

  I was purposely ambiguous when it came to Gaff’s motivation. I purposely didn’t take a side in the gun debate.

  I wrote the book to inform and arouse and provoke. I wrote it to stimulate conversation. With your family. Your friends. Your neighbors. In person, on forums, and even in the comments sections of book websites.

  As a nation, we need civil discourse about firearms. We need to listen to one another. Especially to the people we don’t agree with.

  Us vs. them isn’t going to solve anything. The only way we can get better is by coming up with solutions that everyone can live with.

  Live is the key word.

  People like Gaff exist. Active shooters are becoming an epidemic. The system failed to help these people get the mental health treatment they needed, and then the system failed to protect the innocent.

  As a country, we need to take care of each other. We need to respect each other. We need to work together to make things better.

  So let’s stop being enemies and talk.

  Joe Konrath

  Preview of CHASER

  by J.A. Konrath

  The Cowboy stared at the giant of a man on the other side of the glass, and marveled how tiny the phone looked in his huge hands.

  “She was living in Florida, living under a fake name. I’ve got two cyber guys trying to find her. I’m planning to kill her, and her husband, Phineas.”

  “Why do you want Phin dead?” His voice was so low it rumbled.

  “Personal reasons,” The Cowboy answered.

  “I know how to find him. But I need you to do something for me first.”

  “What?”

  Hugo Troutt placed his massive palm on the glass and said, “Get me the fuck out of here, and I’ll help you kill my brother and his bitch wife.”

  The Cowboy smiled. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

  CHASER

  Retired cop Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels and her ex-criminal husband Phineas Troutt have made a lot of enemies over the years. But none worse than The Cowboy, a gunslinging nutcase who wants to slaughter them both, and Hugo Troutt, who has been plotting revenge against his younger brother for over a decade.

  Separately, these baddies are formidable. Together, they are unstoppable.

  But Jack has even more hell to deal with. She and her former partner, private eye Harry McGlade, are in L.A. chasing an insane plastic surgeon who specializes in disfiguring his victims. And Jack’s colleague Tom Mankowski has problems of his own with a snuff film auteur named Erinyes.r />
  With four psychopaths on the prowl, Jack, Phin, Harry, and Tom will need to call on some old friends if they hope to get out of LaLa Land alive…

  This thirteenth Jack Daniels novel brings together villains from Konrath’s thrillers WHITE RUSSIAN, EVERYBODY DIES, and WEBCAM, along with heroes from SHOT OF TEQUILA, THE LIST, and FLEE, for the ultimate West Coast showdown.

  CHASER by J.A. Konrath

  The hunt is on. But who’s hunting whom?

  STOP A MURDER

  This is unlike any mystery or thriller book you’ve ever read before. You play the sleuth, and try to follow the clues and solve the puzzles to prevent a murder from happening.

  In this five-book series, you’ll be tasked with decoding the mind and motivations of a nefarious killer who is plotting to commit an unspeakable crime.

  Each book contains an epistolary collection of emails, texts, and letters, sent to bestselling author J.A. Konrath, by a serial killer. This psychopath is leaving detailed, cryptic hints about who will be murdered, why, when, where, and how.

  Some of the hints are easy to figure out. Others are much more devious.

  Do you like solving mysteries? Do you enjoy puzzles or escape-the-room games? Are you good at spotting clues?

  Only you can stop a murder.

  Are you smart enough?

  Are you brave enough?

  Let the games begin…

  #1 STOP A MURDER – HOW: Puzzles 1–12

  #2 STOP A MURDER – WHERE: Puzzles 13–24

  #3 STOP A MURDER – WHY: Puzzles 25–36

  #4 STOP A MURDER – WHO: Puzzles 37–48

  #5 STOP A MURDER – WHEN: Puzzles 49–60

  TIMECASTER

  FUNNY! SEXY! ACTION PACKED!

  Chicago, 2064: Mankind Can Rewind

  Talon Alalon is a timecaster—one of a select few peace officers who can operate a TEV, the Tachyon Emission Visualizer, which records events (most specifically, crimes) that have already happened.