The rifle recoiled into his shoulder like a firm but playful punch, and he did not have to watch as Ferris sank like a bag of water suddenly cut loose from above. The sniper knew that there was now a hole the size of a dime burrowed into the man's brain, the bullet killing him before he could even blink at its impact.
"Smoke check," he whispered.
Chapter 2
"I don't know why I always have to open my big mouth," Nick whispered to himself.
It wasn't because he didn't know better. He'd been in the newspaper business for a dozen years, had read the same old stuff a thousand times, let it get under his skin and then popped off to some senior editor and gotten his own ass in trouble again. It wasn't that he forgot the lessons, just that he was too foolish to heed them.
"Good morning, Nick," Deirdre Smith, the city editor, said as she slid past him to get into her own office door. She did not make eye contact. She knew better than to make eye contact. It was one of the lessons she never forgot. Instead she stowed her purse, tapped the spacer key on her computer, which was always booted up, and avoided him even though he filled up her doorway, standing there with the metro page in his fist, leaning into the frame. After tapping a few keys to see how many e-mails she had to answer and probably wishing to God he would just go away, she finally sat down in her chair, elbows on the desk, hands clasped under her chin. "How can I help you, Nick?"