Page 12 of Gunner

My mom had a heart attack when I was fourteen and passed away, which was the worst thing that I have ever experienced.Ever. She and my father loved me fiercely. She did what she could to protect me from the life, but at the same time, they never lied to me. I wasn’t sheltered like some kids who grow up in crime families. I knew what my father did down to the smallest details, but obviously most of that was kept from me until I was adult enough to deal with it.

I was also home schooled. My father didn’t want to take a chance on me being outside the house for extended periods of time. It couldn’t be risked that I’d become a target, or that I might say something, in my innocence and naivety. So, beingin a classroom for the first time doubly scared me when I was suddenly supposed to be a teacher. If my methods are slightly unconventional, it’s never been pointed out. Luckily with the age group I teach, it’s more about getting them settled in the education system and getting them excited to learn, rather than having to teach a subject like English or math.

After another ten minutes, I clap my hands to get everyone’s attention. “I love, love, love that there are so many amazing paintings. You are all so very talented and I am so proud. Let’s set the paintings at the back to dry, get cleaned up, and get ready for recess!”

There’s a huge cheer because of course recess is always going to be the highlight of any kid’s day.

“After that, we’ll have a story with puppets!”

Another cheer. Puppets or not, I don’t think there’s a single kid in my class who doesn’t love our reading circle time.

Within a surprisingly short amount of time, all the kids are decently clean, have shed their little paint aprons, and have laid out their artwork neatly. The bell rings for recess and it’s a mad dash outside.

I have five minutes where I can just sit and catch my breath before I have to start getting out puppets and getting the books ready.

I’m overheated and my feet are starting to ache from the pink platform wedges I’m wearing. There’s no teacher’s desk here, but there is a big office chair that I often sit in for reading. I sink down into it now and rest my feet on one of the bean bag chairs.

Instead of taking a breather, my asshole intrusive thoughts go straight back to my stalker. Once, I could pass it off as some creep or just some punk fucking around in my yard, but twice in just a few nights doesn’t feel like an accident.

And fuck, the guy could fight.

It doesn’t matter if he was twice my size, I was the one with the gun. I should have had him. He was just one man. Not seven.

After he leaped the fence without nearly taking his arm off the like the first time, I went inside, locked myself in, shut all the blinds, and sat with my gun facing the bedroom door where I’d barricaded myself in with a chair under the handle. I relived that night, five years ago, for a good hour, debating with myself whether whatever was happening counted as emergency enough that I needed to break my silence and call my father on the special number he’d given me.

When I’d calmed down, I realized two things.

Firstly, the sheet of cookies that I’d put in the oven and forgotten to set a timer for, were practically on fire. I’d been meaning to replace the smoke detector in the house for months and by the time I realized that shit was going down in the kitchen, the whole place was so black and smoky that I had to open all the windows in the house.

No one came through them and attempted to kidnap me.

No one tried to kill me.

Secondly, if the Rossis still cared where I was or if they were going to break their word to my father, then they would have done it. They wouldn’t send just one man to creep on me. A man who continuously made mistakes and gave himself away. They weren’t sloppy like that, and honestly, I’ve been so out ofsight and mind for so long, I’m sure that no one even gives a shit about me. Romeo Rossi can have whoever he wants. I was just a passing fancy.

I’m ninety-eight percent sure that the man in my backyard is someone else.

But who? And why?

The only image my mind keeps playing back is that man from the shoe store. The size was about right. The height was absolutely a match. The black clothing made the stranger in my yard look leaner than the biker bodyguard, but that could have been a trick of shadow and night.

It’s easy to let your thoughts run wild, so I try to stick to the facts.

Whoever was in my yard was in there a minimum of twice, though I’m willing to bet it was more than that. How many times, I have no idea.

He told me he was leaving and that he was sorry, and that husky tone was so different than the voice in the shoe store, but he could easily have moderated it. I’m no voice expert, but I did look up a few things about stalkers and obsession. I don’t really get it personally, but Hart is a small town. All it would take is one time and the guy could have grown obsessed. He could have followed me and found out where I lived. Not all stalkers are straight up crazy. Some are quite harmless. Some get their rocks off just from the act itself. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the guy wanted to harm me.

Right, that’s why he was dressed entirely in black and had a huge knife in his boot that he knew how to use. He was fast and deadly, and that meanstrained.

I put my hand in my hands and massage my aching temples. I haven’t slept much these past few nights. I went out and bought better cameras and installed them at all the windows and both doors, as well as facing out into the backyard and front yard. There’s now an alert that gets sent straight to my phone for any motion more violent than a tree branch swaying in the wind. I could set the range, so that meant that I wouldn’t get pinged every time a vehicle drove by on the street, or a person walked down the sidewalk. Even with the cameras, my obsessive reading, and my rationalizing that if someone wanted me dead, I already would be, I have to admit that I’m unnerved.

Not scared.

Maybe I should be, and I probably would be out of my mind wild with fear if I hadn’t grown up the way I did, with bleeding men walking to and fro in the house at all hours of the day and night, or armed bodyguards accompanying me everywhere I went.

Maybe it’s the fact that my father is the boogeyman, or he would be to a lot of people. And yet… he’s my father. He’s the man who loved me, was tender with me, who listened to me and taught me, who bandaged scrapes and read me stories and always listened.

So, no, I’m not afraid.

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