Chapter 4 - The Question Miller Finally Asked
Montgomery pointed at me, panic burning through the edges of his authority. “Arrest her now!”
No one moved fast enough for him.
Colonel Miller stepped forward again, dust clinging to his uniform, face pale beneath the sun. Twenty minutes earlier, he had called me a box-counter. Now he was looking at the fallen pistol, my cuffed hands, and Montgomery’s terrified rage with the expression of a man realizing rank was not the same as truth.
“General,” Miller said slowly, “why did you say she should be dead?”
That question changed the airfield.
The MPs looked at Montgomery. Brooks did too. Behind them, the shooters and federal agents who had come for the testing event stood frozen, their earlier disbelief replaced by something sharper. Nobody cared about the target anymore. The impossible shot had become background. The real distance was nineteen years, and the bullet had finally reached it.
Montgomery’s face hardened. “Colonel, you are dangerously close to insubordination.”
Miller swallowed. He was not brave by nature. I could see that. He was a rules man, a rank man, a man who had believed whatever version of competence arrived with official signatures. But even a rules man knows when a sentence does not belong in the present unless it escaped from a crime.
“Then put it in writing,” Miller said.
Brooks raised one hand before the MPs could shift. His voice cut across the concrete, calm and final.
“Stand down. Nobody touches her.”
The MPs stopped.
Montgomery turned on him. “Brooks, you have no idea what she is.”
Brooks looked at me once, then back at Montgomery. “I have a better idea than I did five minutes ago.”
I lifted my cuffed hands slightly, the metal cold against my skin. “Korengal didn’t kill me. Your file will.”
Montgomery’s face drained of color.
May you like
That was the second mistake.
Reacting before he remembered the cameras.
