Page 123 of End Game

A quick inspection revealed that the bullet had entered and exited his shoulder. Rather than the intense, gut-clenching pain he expected, the gunshot wound burned, deep and radiant.

“How bad is the damage?” Kayla asked, her breathing rapid but steady. Her attention shifted from one corner of the house to the other, constantly scanning the area for more armed men.

He reached behind his shoulder, fingering the coin-sized hole. “It’s a clean exit.”

“Mom, grab a couple kitchen towels to staunch the bleeding.”

Jillian didn’t balk at receiving orders from her daughter. She simply jumped to her slippered feet and ran inside.

“Can you walk?” Kayla asked, glancing at him for the first time.

“We’ll soon find out.” Ash climbed to his knees, then his feet. A surge of lightheadedness hit him at the same time Jillian reemerged.

But she wasn’t alone.

Ash and Kayla swung their weapons toward the new threat. Out from behind Jillian, rose another guard. The guy was massive. His shoulder width nearly twice that of his captive’s. Even with the light behind him, Ash could feel the heat of the man’s gaze.

An older woman shouldered past Jillian and her guard and glided across the stone patio toward Ash and Kayla’s location.

“Stop,” Ash commanded.

The woman took two more steps to establish dominance of the situation, then clasped her hands before her.

He forced himself to keep his eyes forward, to not check Kayla’s reaction to this reality that would no doubt eclipse her worst fears.

“You too, Aunt Elsie?” Kayla asked, horror dripped from every word.

“Too?” Elsie produced a slow, satisfied smile. “Me, my dearest Kayla. Me.”

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As if a celestial being reached out of the sky, cracked open Kayla’s skull, and used their little pinky to whisk her brain, Kayla could only conjure one word. “You?”

Elsie Hinshaw tossed a disgusted look over her shoulder at Jillian. “Some people don’t have the mettle to do what needs to be done.”

“Murder is never the answer,” Jillian said. “It’s not the Service way.”

“The Service way is like pitting a slingshot up against an armored tank.” Elsie, sweet Elsie, the woman who’d taught Kayla how to play Zelda and intervened when a pair of older girls attempted to steal her new bracelet, curled her fingers into fists, and her features contorted into anger. “No more losing ground because our tactics weren’t tough enough. We will become the tank that mows over the rock slinger.”

“What happened to you?” Kayla asked, unable to keep the strain of shock out of her voice. “You’ve become the very thing we’ve been fighting to suppress.”

“Diplomacy and fair play would take us another lifetime to accomplish all we desire. We need results now.” Elsie eyed Ash with hatred. “Or men like him will pull the world into another war and, before you know it, they’ll chase women out of the boardrooms and back into the kitchens.”

Kayla’s arm trembled with the effort to hold up her gun. “You’re wrong. Men like Asher Blackwell are honorable, compassionate, valorous, and strong. The exact type of man our leaders need at their sides.”

“Why? So they can watch for our weaknesses, then use them against us? Or sabotage us in order to take over our positions?” Elsie shook her head as if disappointed. “What happened to the young initiate who wanted women to rule the world?”

Kayla recalled the bold statement she’d made to her mom and aunties over booze and cards not long after she’d taken her oath to uphold Service’s tenets.

Watch out boys. It’s our time.

“Not rule the world,” an older, wiser Kayla clarified. “Guide it with people who’ll do the right thing even if it’s the harder option. Men just so happen to have been bloody awful at it for the past three millennia.”

“Exactly why we need to take more drastic measures now. In case you hadn’t heard, we have only a handful of years left to reverse a million greedy decisions before this world becomes uninhabitable. I’m not going to let a few doctrines that four idealistic twenty-somethings devised stop me from protecting my grandchildren’s future.”

“You killed your friend to avert the climate crisis?” Ash inserted, skepticism dripping from his words.

Kayla had never known Elsie to be a proponent for the environment, so her explanation fell flat. From a big-picture view, though, Kayla could empathize with the woman’s logic.

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