Half Life (Russell's Attic Book 2) by SL Huang

of garbage. I made a face and attempted to take small sips of air through my mouth as I lifted a Steyr SSG 08 sniper rifle out of my gear bag, snapped open the stock, and screwed a high-end suppressor onto the barrel that would take my decibel contribution down almost to the same level as the horribly loud club music. Then I balanced the stock against my shoulder and the barrel on the lip of the dumpster and pulled out a large piece of dark burlap to throw over myself and the gun. It was full dark by this time; no one would notice the muzzle peeking out or the edge of the scope tented underneath. Best of all, when I settled my eye down behind the scope, my tiny convex mirror leapt larger than life in my vision—the mirror I had positioned to give me a perfect view of the entire inside of the bar.
    Of course, that didn’t help with the stifling heat under the burlap, or the foul smell—instead of growing accustomed to it, I only became more suffocated, the noxious air pressing thickly against me. Sweat soaked my neck and back and stuck my short hair to my scalp in damp curls. The awful club music gave me a headache within minutes, but even though it crowded out almost all other sound, I could still hear flies buzzing around my feet.
    About an hour after I had begun my vigil, I wiped the sweat out of my eyes for what felt like the twentieth time to watch three men—who all had dark Italian coloring, and who all wore coats despite the warm night—enter Grealy’s together. They conferred briefly by the door before one of them split off to the bar and the other two went to sit at a table near the front, next to the window. The man at the bar stayed there with his drink, completely ignoring the companions he’d come in with.
    Well, hell. They were definitely here to kill me.
    I’d intended to wait until eleven to start the party, but by a quarter till, a gunfight sounded a thousand times better than staying in my stifling, fetid sniper’s nest for another minute. I snaked a Bluetooth out of my gear bag and looped it onto my ear; I’d already synced the earpiece with one of the new burner phones I’d grabbed from storage.
    The man at the bar looked down at his phone as soon as it started ringing, but he took a long, deliberate drink before picking it up to answer it. “Hello,” I heard over the headset, at the same time my eye on the scope saw him mouth the word in the mirror.
    “It’s Cas Russell,” I said. I stifled a cough as I accidentally inhaled the foul air. “I’m running a few minutes late.” The words sounded far too facetious to my ears, but he probably wouldn’t know me well enough to tell.
    “No problem,” he said.
    “I’ve had some…business problems lately,” I said. “Are you alone? You understand why I ask.”
    “Yeah,” he said. “And yeah, it’s just me. Tegan says you’re the best.”
    I already knew he was there to ambush me, but the lying cemented it. It occurred to me that I’d have to make a point of reaching Tegan and making sure he hadn’t purposely sent me a murderous client.
    I exhaled gently and concentrated on the scope. The optics of my convex mirror blasted through my brain, incident rays and reflected rays and virtual images, all converging at the focus and then shooting back out into the bar in an instantaneous tableau of every person and movement and drink. I was about to shift the rifle slightly and fire blind, but mathematics let me see through walls.
    “Tegan’s right,” I said, “I am the best.” And I twitched my aim to pull the trigger in perfect time with the dance music’s next thump.
    The man’s liquor glass shattered.
    “Don’t move,” I said in the half second before he could react, as I swung the scope back to the reflection in my spy mirror and worked the bolt on the rifle in one smooth motion. “Don’t you fucking move or the next one is in your skull.”
    He didn’t move.
    “Now, let’s try this again. Are you alone?”
    He sat still as