THIRTEEN
Then, one day the following spring and over a half a year after starting, after thousands upon thousands of rounds fired, as she stood there in the woods, her gun in hand, her gun feeling like an extension of herself, Angela blinked as an unexpected feeling washed through her.
It was as if a doorway had opened in the darkness and she suddenly saw everything beyond in a new light.
She had come upon those mental doorways before. With each one she passed through she would discover that she understood the world in a new light. Things became clear to her. She had always thought of those doorways as simply part of growing up and learning new things, making connections she’d never made before, and maybe they were.
But this doorway was distinctly different, and decidedly more significant.
In that moment of insight, Angela was no longer aiming at a steel target. That was what she had been doing up until then—trying to hit a steel triangle as it wobbled and zigzagged.
Throughout her practice, she had often thought of the steel triangle as the bad guy. But it was always her conscious mind imposing that thought on the target. It was her imagining it.
This was similar, but at the same time somehow profoundly different.
This was a visceral desire to kill those bad guys.
It gave her goose bumps.
She thought about Frankie and the kind of men who abducted and murdered women. In that moment of clarity, it was no longer a target. It had become a man coming for her, coming to hurt her, coming to end her life.
A kind of primal fear welled up from inside. She could taste it in her mouth. This had morphed into life and death.
This wasn’t about shooting at a target anymore. This was a savage coming for her. This was about killing him before he could kill her.
Some mysterious piece of a cosmic puzzle that had been looking for where it fit in her life finally snapped into place.
She no longer felt frantic about trying to follow the triangle. Instead, she felt a sense of calm come over her.
The random movements of the steel triangle didn’t exist independently. They couldn’t. A killer all alone didn’t bob and weave. He became connected to his victim. She became a part of that connection.
She no longer chased the target. Instead, it pulled her through that connection.
It was no longer a metal triangle. It was the area between two eyes and the tip of the nose of a killer coming for her. It was the portal into his skull, a gateway for her bullet, the pathway to her salvation.
Her one chance to live.
That understanding gave her a sense of purpose and inner calm. At the same time, in that calm she held on to a core of rage at a killer, letting that fire burn deep within her.
It all came together in a heady rush. It gave her goose bumps and took her breath. The frustration was gone. It felt as if she had passed through a hidden doorway into a new kind of connection with the target.
She was able to lock on to the target so solidly, so reliably, that no matter which way it jumped, the gun went with it. The bullet found it.
She heard the salvation of ping, ping, ping with every round fired.
Angela couldn’t hear the birds anymore, the wind in the trees. The steel triangle wasn’t wobbling every which way anymore. It was instead moving with her in slow motion.
Time seemed somehow suspended.
Time was hers.
The target was hers.
Whether she was shooting fast or slow, every round pinged the steel triangle. Sometimes she fired with a slow rhythm, sometimes she fired as fast as she could pull the trigger.
Each time the gun emptied and she dropped the magazine, she slammed home a new one, racked the slide, and in a flash she was back on target. When that magazine was empty, the next one went in and was emptied in a heartbeat. From months of practice she could reload with a new magazine so fast that there was hardly any pause between one magazine and the next one feeding bullets into the chamber as she fired.
What mattered, what was important, was the connection she felt with that small area where the bullet had to go. The bullet went where she sent it, where she saw it going before she even pulled the trigger.
It all seemed to fall into place so unexpectedly, so profoundly, that she had to stop for a moment as tears rolled down her cheeks. It was almost like magic.
She felt that she had just mastered—not a skill, but her life in a new way. She had a new kind of vision. A new sense. All her senses keyed in to this singular purpose.
Angela knew it was somehow connected to what her grandmother had told her about her being different. She didn’t know how, but she knew there was a connection.
This is what her grandparents had seen in her. She now saw it in herself.
When she realized that she had used up all the ammunition for the day, she stood in the ringing silence for a long moment. She finally looked up at her grandfather. He was standing back, watching her with a strange, penetrating look.
He finally smiled and nodded. In that moment, in that look, they shared a silent understanding.
“This is the next step”—her grandfather snapped his fingers as fast as he could—“to fire this fast and hit that moving target every time.”
Angela had been immensely pleased with what she had just achieved. Now she was stunned at the impossible.
“Grandpa, I can’t think that fast.”
He smiled knowingly. “That’s the part you need to learn next—to do it without thinking. Thinking slows you down. Once you learn not to think, your subconscious will take over and do it. Like riding a bicycle without thinking of how to balance. Your subconscious can fire and hit the target as fast as I can snap my fingers.”
Angela nodded. “If you say I can do it, then I will.”
He put a hand on her shoulder. “How about some dinner.”
She pulled off her hearing protectors and looked around. It was nearly dark. She had been able to hit the target every time even as the light had faded and was almost gone.
The cabin smelled wonderful. Her grandmother was in the kitchen, and Angela saw that she was making Angela’s favorite meal: Italian bread torn up into chunks, soaked in scrambled eggs with basil, oregano, and some other spices, then fried up in olive oil in an iron skillet.
“How did she do?” her grandmother asked as she turned the bread and eggs with a spatula as they cooked.
“She’s got it.”
“Like you?” Gabriella asked without looking up as she stirred the sizzling dinner.
“Like me,” he said at last.
Angela didn’t know for sure what she had, but her grandmother lifted an eyebrow at the skillet.
Angela sat at the table spread with a white tablecloth with red strawberries on it, her head still spinning from what she had done. It didn’t seem real, and at the same time it felt more real than anything else in the world. It felt as if a whole new world had opened up for her.
As her grandmother leaned in and put a heaping pile of bread soaked in eggs on Angela’s plate, she looked up at Vito.
“In that case,” her grandmother said, “then maybe it’s time you showed her the basement?”
What? The basement?
The basement door was always locked. She had never, ever, been down in the basement. It wasn’t even talked about. She had absolutely no idea what was down there. She had always been curious about it, but now she felt an unexpected sense of apprehension about going down there.
Angela looked between her grandmother and grandfather as they shared a long look. In that moment, they looked like, to them, they were the only two people in the world.
Her grandfather nodded slightly. “I think you’re right.”
Angela was still looking between them. “What’s in the basement?”