This is bad. This is very bad.
Three cars were parked outside the house. One of them was Mimsy's. None of them was Michael's. Gary typically knew which mornings would include murder, this was not one of them. He should have never trusted Michael. Why hadn't they let him threaten Michael with everything they had. Why had he listened to the others? He had the bait, but listened to those with less experience than him. This was his fault. But looking at it optimistically, at least he'd caught the meeting on time. Had he arrived an hour later, the visitors may have gone, and he'd never have known the meeting had taken place.
He rolled past Mimsy’s house, made a left, and pulled down the street to the rear of the residence. He slowly rolled down the road scanning each of the cars parked on the curb, making sure none had individuals on surveillance. He pulled two more streets away and parked on the curb. No cameras were present.
Gary grabbed his soft rifle case and walked back to the house directly behind Mimsy's. There were no cars out front, but he could see movement through the living room window, had to be a stay at home spouse. He walked right up to the front door and knocked. He heard movement and sighed; he didn't like killing innocent people. The door unlocked, and a small woman appeared behind a screen. She had short black hair with bangs cut in a perfectly straight line half an inch above her eyebrows.
"Hi, I’m with the city's inspection unit." Gary tried to sound dull and unenthused by his fictitious job. "I'm here for the annual inspections."
"I wasn't expecting you." She looked him up and down. She did a poor job of hiding the disgust she felt. "We rent the house, I can get the paperwork and send it to you." She wasn't about to let this filthy man into her house.
"There is no paperwork until I do the…" Gary's voice trickled off as the lady shook her head.
"You'll have to call and let us.."
In a quick burst, Gary pulled the screen open and pushed through the doorway, grabbing the lady by the waist. She screamed as she stumbled backward, tripping over her own feet. Gary slammed the door behind himself as the lady scrambled on her knees. She let out another scream as she tried to crawl away from the intruder.
Gary was surprised at how fast the tiny lady scooted down the hallway. He pulled a small blade from his waistband and turned down the hall just in time to see her heel slip into a bedroom. She slammed the door a second too late, allowing him to wedge a foot in the frame, causing it to bounce back open.
The lady let out a sob as she cowered to the back corner of the room where a crib was tucked against a wall. She tripped over one of the many unpacked boxes and fell against the cradle, then quickly turned to look at her sleeping baby.
The lady turned back to Gary, wiping away tear. "Please take what you want! We have money in the next room by the bed."
Gary was impressed that she was able to coherently think through the situation. He'd broken into many homes and rarely were people in the same position as this woman ready to do anything other than cry and utter nonsense. Gary scanned the room. Unpacked moving boxes were scattered about. "Do you have a phone?" Gary asked.
"It's on the counter in the family room." Her voice was shaking.
"Good." He said calmly.He pulled the slung case from his shoulder and laid it on the ground. "Stay there." He demanded as he unzipped the case. He pulled out two small zip ties and approached the woman.
"I'm not going to hurt you." He said in nearly a whisper. He gently patted her down to ensure she was telling the truth about the phone. He grabbed her right wrist and tied it to a beam. He reached for her left hand but withdrew as she slapped his hand away. He took a step back and looked from her to the crib.
"No, no!" she screamed. She held out her left arm in submission.
Gary grabbed it and tied it to a far post leaving her sitting on the ground with both arms spread wide above her head.
"I'm not going to harm you." He said again. "I don't have anything to cover your mouth, which means I should kill you, but I'm not going to, so you need to promise me you will stay quiet." He paused again, "Or I will have to kill you." He stated it again just to let the options lay clear.
She nodded. Gary backed out of the room. Had there not been a child, she'd be dead, but he wasn't a monster. Or maybe he was getting soft. He shrugged it off and made his way to the living room.
Much to his delight, the sliding glass door leading to the back yard was covered with long vertical blinds that could be parted by twisting a hanging plastic rod. He turned the shades, cracking them open just enough for him to see out. He pulled the detached upper receiver from his bag and held the scope to his eye. The wood fence in the backyard was just a bit too high. All he could see was the top third of Mimsy's sliding glass door. It was a pleasant surprise that the blinds on Mimsy’s glass door were open, but he needed to get higher to see into the actual living room.
Gary pulled the scope from his eye and turned to search the room he was in. The couch was too low, but the dining room table might do. He placed a chair on top of the table, climbed up, and sat. He held the scope up to his eye. He had to move back and forth across the room multiple times to adjust the angle of the shades and finally got it just right where the slit matched his positioning.
He scanned Mimsy's living room. There were four men which made sense with the two cars out front. He doubted there were more, The Company usually sent in pairs. Two men were sitting, two were standing. One of the standing men was pacing back and forth. There was no sign of Mimsy, but she wasn't a first priority target anyways. She'd be the last to be shot. First would be the man pacing. Then he'd have mere seconds to hit the individuals sitting. The second standing man would be hard because at the sound of the first shot, the man’s training would lead him to instinctively drop to the floor. It'd be apparent where the shots came from, so it'd probably end in a shoot out. Gary was confident he'd win.
Gary climbed off the table and pulled the lower receiver from the bag and snapped the pins connecting the two halves of the weapon.
He climbed back up onto the chair. The four were still in their places as he pulled the weapon to his shoulder. He lifted his right knee to his chest and planted his left foot flat on the table for support. He leaned forward and rested the back of his left forearm on his right knee, allowing the handguard to sit in his left hand completely stable. He pushed the buttstock into his right shoulder pocket.
Gary took a deep breath and exhaled slowly as he looked down the scope. The chevron marking his shot lowered as his breath left. He let the pacing man turn one more time. Gary slowly began to control the trigger, pulling it ever so slightly, keeping the weapon from bouncing. Gary's air was gone as the man stepped into the danger-space. The trigger finally clicked, releasing the hammer sending the bullet through the crack in the blinds across the backyard, through Mimsy's window into the side of the man's skull. Gary controlled the recoil forcing the rifle back into his shoulder instead of bouncing the barrel up. This allowed him to keep the scope in Mimsy's house, bouncing the aim from the pacing man to the first seated man where he smoothly transitioned to his second shot. He controlled the recoil to the second seated individual. The glass shattered as the third shot landed. The three shots took a total of seven seconds to break the skin of each target. As expected, the fourth individual had dropped to the ground out of view.
Gary sat still on the chair, readjusting his aim. His ears were ringing. The full impact of the noise had been concealed to the tiny living room. The exploding glass seemed to cause a sharp twanging ring in his ear. As his hearing came to, he could hear the baby wailing in the other room.
He ignored the cries and peered back down the scope keeping both eyes open. His right eye looked down the scope and focused just above where the man had dropped from view. The left eye stared at the room as a whole, unfocused, but capable of detecting movement if the man were to appear elsewhere.
It happened in a split second. An inch of the man's skull broke the plane of view. He must've crouched to a knee. Gary turned and let out a quick exhale as he pulled the trigger. It was a wreckless shot but somehow landed. The four men were dead in four shots. For a day that had been going poorly, he could look to this as a small glimmer of hope.
As he climbed off the table, he noticed the woman's phone was on the counter. The screen was lit and showed it was in the middle of a two minute phone call with emergency services. He picked up the phone and saw it was connected to a Bluetooth speaker, which he must not of seen in the room. He quickly switched it back to the phone's speaker system.
"Just stay calm." A female operator said on the line. "Could you give me a description of him for me?"
"Unbelievably handsome," Gary said into the phone before ending the call. He threw the phone on the ground and smashed it with his heel. Was there enough time to clean up the mess? His prints were everywhere. If they got a print it’d only be a matter of time before his face would be on the local news.
Focus. You've got one job. You can't control any of that. Maybe if there was time at the end.
He was tempted to kill the woman in the room but knew time was more valuable. He needed to kill Mimsy. He pulled up the shades and sprinted across the backyard. Once through the living room, he hurried to the front of her house. Mimsy's car was still there.
"Dorothy!" Gary yelled. "What'd they tell you, Dorothy?" he yelled again as he slowly made his way from room to room. “I just want to talk Dorothy!” She was gone.
He made his way to the kitchen. On the counter, he found three notes written by Michael to Mimsy. After a quick read, it was evident that Michael planned on returning to the house today. He shoved the letters into his pocket.
What to do what to do? He heard the sounds of sirens coming in the distance. He turned and sprinted through Mimsy’s shattered glass door and hopped the fence to her neighbor’s backyard.
Have to get creative.