The trigger broke.
The rifle kicked against my shoulder and the world inside the scope jumped white.
For half a second I saw nothing.
Then the image settled.
The prisoner with the shotgun spun sideways and collapsed against the porch rail. The weapon dropped from his hands and struck the mud below. Vance threw himself in the opposite direction before the second fugitive understood what had happened.
I had no second round.
That fact became the entire world.
The second man lunged toward the shotgun.
“Move!” I screamed from the ledge, even though I knew Vance probably couldn’t hear me clearly at two hundred yards.
He moved anyway.
Years of instruction, repetition, and survival took over. Vance kicked the fallen weapon farther from the porch, rolled behind the truck, and grabbed the radio he had left on the hood. The second fugitive froze between the cabin and the tree line, suddenly aware that the invisible shooter who had fired once might still have another round.
I did nothing to correct that assumption.
I kept the empty rifle against my shoulder.
The fugitive backed toward the woods.
Vance shouted into the radio.
The man ran.
Only then did my body understand that the shot was over.
My right eye flooded with pain.
The sight picture doubled again. My stomach rolled. I pulled my face away from the stock and pressed my forehead into the wet dirt.
Seattle came back in fragments.
Glass breaking.
A teller screaming.
The old half-second.
Then the new sound cut through it.
Vance’s voice over the training frequency.
“Candidate, hold position. Do not move.”
I laughed once, breathless and ugly.
For fourteen days he had shouted at me to move faster.
Now the first order that mattered was to stay exactly where I was.
I obeyed.
