The night air is getting slightly nippy. We’re in that transition time of the year when the days can have you in t-shirts and your evenings in coats. It’s a good night for what I want to do.

I know I can’t trust that the fear of using Joe is going to stop everyone who opposes me, especially the cops who might be still be looking for a way to take me down. It’s always a balancing act with them. They do, technically, have the law on their side.

I thought it over obsessively, and I was tempted to take Viktor out the same way I took out Jacob. I mean, killing two men with knives in their own homes is pretty damn iconic. It’d send a message, kinda like my signature, with the kills.

But this needs something different, so I decided on this course of action. It’s not common in urban gang fights, mainly because it’s so damn difficult. Compared to the number of idiots who just want to do drive-bys and spray rounds all over the street, sniping is a relatively long-lost art.

Thankfully, I’ve learned that art. Part of it was Dad, who would get me and Marcus out of the city when he could. He’d take us up to the mountains and out into the green hills, where we’d have to fend for ourselves. This was before Mom left, so it was sort of a male bonding time for us.

I’m teaming with Marcus and borrowing a tactic used by others. Our vehicle is nondescript, a blue Tahoe that looks like just about any of a thousand others around the city. If anyone got close enough to look through the tinted windows, they’d wonder why the back seats are folded down. But nobody’s going to get that close.

While Joe was scoping out his targets, Marcus has had everyone looking for Viktor. Finally, a call from one of our cops at the airport reported that he’s been holing up at a private ‘airline’ that runs charter flights out of the city. Smart move, really. People don’t like causing shit around the airport. It gets the Feds involved.

But he has to leave the airport eventually, and we’ve been ready and waiting to get the call that he’s on the move. I know his destination because I know where he keeps his liquid funds, in the safe at a strip club a half-mile from the airport that was one of Jacob’s lesser-known ‘investments’. The Blue Room isn’t the most famous club in town, but that’s because it doesn’t advertise like its brethren. It mostly serves as a business front to launder money, but the ‘one-night shows’ of some of the most famous names in the porn industry are the stuff of legend, and the normal girls who work there are some of the freakiest around. But the girls won’t be Viktor’s reason for going there. He’s gonna do a grab-and-go, get his cash and hustle back to the airport to get his ass out of town. He’s such a pussy, stirring up shit but unwilling to finish it. “You know, I visited here once,” Marcus says as we wait in the corner of the parking lot next to a few of the workers’ cars. “Did I ever tell you about that?”

“You know, you haven’t,” I reply as I edge myself into the backseat area before turning around. “If you had, I would have kicked your ass. When was that?”

“Three days after my eighteenth birthday,” Marcus says, checking the mirrors and the small video screen in the dash while I uncase my rifle. “Downtown Bootsy and Frankie Dawlish brought me, said they’d make sure I was inducted into manhood properly while you were kept busy. They lent me a suit and all the trimmings to make sure that I looked the part and didn’t catch the attention of management.”

I suppress a growl. Those assholes should know better. “Well, you can tell me about it another time. It’s go time.”

I make my final preparation, removing a piece of glass from the rear window that’ll be totally replaced by tomorrow. To the outside, it looks like just a broken window. We’ve taped a piece of clear plastic over the hole. I slide behind my rifle. It’s a modified Remington 700P. I chose it for a reason, though, because it’s the same type of weapon used by the city’s SWAT snipers. Instant courtroom reasonable doubt.

We know Viktor’s in there. One of our crew watched him go in an hour ago. What kind of asshole on the run takes an hour strip club break as he’s getting his go-funds? This guy, apparently. I hope he enjoys that BJ because it’ll be his last. Now it’s just a waiting game.

I sit, using the firing blocks we’ve set up to keep the rifle at just the right height. With no flash or sound suppressor, it’s going to be loud in the Tahoe when I fire, but it’ll be safer this way.

My spine is starting to ache as the minutes drag by. Sitting cross-legged with half my ass on the folded down seat isn’t recommended by any chiropractor. Just as I do some light twists to make sure I’m not going to be too tight, Marcus speaks up. “Door.”

I raise the rifle, looking through the scope as the front door to The Blue Room opens and three men emerge. Two of them are obviously bodyguards, typical thuggish-looking meatheads who get by more on their sheer bulk and intimidation than real skills.

In the middle, slightly behind them, is Viktor. It’s a sign both of his arrogance and of his bodyguards’ limited skills that I have a sightline on him at all. Totally unprofessional.

It’s mistakes like this that show why you could never be the King, I think as I push the safety off and take the final breath before I fire. I let it half out, waiting as everything comes into place. When it does, I stroke the sensitive trigger, and a single hollow-point round flies. I lose my view of Viktor in the blur of recoil through my scope, but when I can see again, both bodyguards look panicked and Viktor’s down.

Message sent.

“Let’s go.”