Page 1 of Gunner

Chapter 1

Gunner

The dark-haired woman with the red and white polka dot dress has no idea that I’m standing just outside her window watching her.

With an array of food spread out in her tiny kitchen, the dishes sprawled out leisurely on her countertops and overflowing onto the round wood oak table, she looks like an advertisement for a nineteen fifties cooking magazine.

She’s a kindergarten teacher, not a chef, but she does this because she’s lonely and this gives her joy. On Sundays, she cooks and bakes long into the night.

I’ve missed most of it, given that full dark comes so much later in May, but at the moment, I’m treated to the sight of her bending over, her perfect curves and the lush swell of her tight ass and shapely hips accentuated by the dress.

She removes a steaming glass pan of lasagna from the stainless-steel stove, the thin glass window can’t block out smells of rich meat and the sharp tomato sauce that she’s made from scratch. My mouth waters, and despite a virtual lifetime of training to tune out my physical needs, my stomach cramps with hunger.

The scene is so domestic, that one would never know that it’s all a front, that this woman isn’t a qualified teacher. Her paperwork is fake. So is her name, her age, her country of birth, and whatever backstory she tells people.

Her wooden shingled house is painted green and consists of two bedrooms, one small kitchen, a tiny living room, and an unfinished basement. The front yard is three times the size of the house, bordered by a tall wooden fence with a broken gate. The backyard is miniscule, all the lot space allocated to the front. Two flower gardens trace the house, bisected by concrete stairs that lead to the front white wood door. A steel door opens off the back of the house, into what passes for a yard, it’s a weed-filled space with a clothesline strung from two metal posts that sags so low when in use, the clothes almost brush the ground.

Even in the transitional parts of Hart, there are adequate streetlights. They paint the yard in gold, but I’ve long since learned exactly where to stand so I don’t cast a shadow. Tall trees border the yard on either side, the thick trunks taking over her neighbor’s yards, but overhanging her house.

A festering rage rises in my chest as I stand amongst those branches. Hart might be the last place anyone would think to look for her, but couldn’t her asshole of a father at least ensure she has her property secured? No. They gave her a yard that anyone could hide out in.

Case in point.

Me.

For months.

Alright, years.

I promised myself after I tracked her here across the ocean, that it would be just once. I’d see her safe and that would be it. The trouble with one is that it always turns into two, two to three, three to nineteen hundred and ninety-two days.

Her bobbed hair bounces as she pours herself the smallest amount of red wine into the bottom of a bubble shaped glass. She swirls it, raises it to her lips, and though I can’t hear it, I imagine her small sigh of contentment. She always buys good wine. She was raised with everything, but it never spoiled her. She gave up all the fineries of her old life. All her miseries too. Family. Friends. Everyone and everything.

The wine is the one small pleasure from home that she still allows herself.

When she eats dinner, it’s always at the table by the window. She doesn’t compromise even though she’s alone. She doesn’t eat on her couch or in the reclining chair. She would never take a plate into the back bedroom and devour it in bed. Sometimes, she lights a candle in a jar, nurses a quarter glass of wine, and just sits at the table long after she’s done eating. She doesn’t distract herself with a book. Doesn’t do lesson plans there. She never uses her cellphone during dinner.

I’d give just about anything to know her thoughts. Not to read her mind like a creep, but to sit down and have a conversation with her in the language she hasn’t spoken in nearly six years. I want her to tell me how she feels about all of it, or just the simple shit, like how her day was. Her face is the opposite of mine. She has so many emotions on display, I could never pick out just one.

If she feels like a prisoner of her circumstances, she never shows it. She’s lucky to be alive, while others are not.

She knows this.

In the shadows, I raise one black gloved hand. The hood of my black sweater is drawn tightly around my face and the black balaclava covers my face, wicking away my every breath.

I hold my hand in the air, framing her lovely, oval shaped face. She has eyes so brown they’re almost black. She chooses her makeup and wears it quite heavily in order to disguise her natural olive skin tone. She doesn’t ever look out of place and it’s never too much. Never enough to make anyone wonder. Never enough to stand out, though by her natural beauty and her radiant kindness, she does that even without trying.

She spreads light wherever she goes.

I could never stand in that light. My home is the shadows.

She portions the lasagna while it’s still steaming hot, spooning it into glass containers so she has meals ready for those days when she doesn’t have time to cook. She’ll transfer some in the freezer later, when their contents are cold. Probably a few in the fridge.

My mouth waters, surprising me again. I’ve learned to block out the basic bodily functions. I was hungry all the time when I was younger, before I found the only kind of family I’d ever be fit for. Lucky for me, I found I have a knack for crime of many varieties. A natural born villain, if you will.

Far luckier, I’m also very good at pulling important men out of burning vehicles.

I didn’t know I had a talent for kidnapping until I stole this woman.

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