I hold my breath, and my heart pounds. I feel something hard between my gloved fingers.

I’m holding my damn camera in my other hand, recording everything. To prove I found the casing here, I have to record it happening.

I think it’s too good to be true at first, but when I pull it up from the snow and in front of my eyes, I can’t deny it anymore. It’s real. It’s in my hands. It’s the damn shell casing. I found the needle in the haystack, and it only took me ten minutes.

It’s a 9mm casing, but I don’t know enough about guns to know if it’s a police issue or not. I know Rye and his brother had guns, but I never saw them shooting in their backyard. They had bigger guns anyway, that’s the kind of guys they were. Magnums and shotguns, not pistols.

This has to be Napier’s. It proves he fired his gun here, and he wasn’t supposed to be here.

I make sure the camera is still pointed at the casing. “It’s 3:00AM. I’m in the Vandermeer brothers’ backyard. I just found this shell casing beneath the snow. After the bikers opened fire on the Vandermeer’s, killing both, Detective Napier said he’d frame me. He forced me to hold the gun he used to kill the brothers, and I hit him with it and ran into the forest.”

I point the camera toward the forest. The moonlight is enough for the camera to at least make out some details.

“Napier came out of the house and fired two or three shots at me. He unloaded the gun he used to frame me before handing it to me, so he’d have shot at me with his service weapon. I just found one of those shell casings, which I expect his from police-issued service weapon. He fired two or three times, so I’m going to look for more…”

I sigh and start digging with one hand while holding the camera in the other. I pocket the first casing into my coat and zip it up so it’s secure.

I move out in a circle from where I found the first one, and just a minute or two later I find the second casing.

* * *

I only found two casings, but they’re both in a Ziploc bag in my jacket pocket now. He probably only took two shots at me from the brothers’ backyard.

I laugh. After digging around with my hands for twenty minutes, I found a snow shovel propped against the shed. I used it to smooth over the snow again so it wouldn’t look like anyone had been digging there.

I could have just used the damn shovel to dig in the first place, though it might have made the tiny shells harder to find.

I reach into my pocket as I drive and squeeze the shell casings. When I show this and the video to Angel, she’ll be ecstatic. She’ll see that I’ve got everything under control, and that she doesn’t need to stick her neck out for me.

Right as I turn out of the dirt road, a single bright headlight shines bright through the back windows of my truck. Then I hear the roar of a motorcycle engine.

Two more lights appear one after another, and the engines roar as two of the bikes race forward to flank me.

I hit the gas, but the truck groans and barely moves faster. One of the bikes rolls in front of me, and the biker to my side glares at me through the window.

It’s Marlo. I recognize his big beard and bushy eyebrows. I know he’s second in command. He wasn’t there that night, but he’s with the same gang who killed the brothers and framed me.

I could jerk the wheel and try to knock him off his bike, but whoever is behind me is certainly armed. I’m not about to try to outrun a shotgun in this rusted truck.

I roll the window down.

“What?” I snap.

“Pull over, asshole,” Marlo barks, his voice shouting over the purr of his engine.

“Why don’t you guys leave me be?” I ask. “You already framed me.”

“Pull the fuck over!” he shouts, pulling a revolver from a holster on his bike.

I slam on the brakes.

My tires squeal as I drop behind him. I feel the bike behind me slam into the truck. I look in the rearview mirror and see the biker swerving back and forth to steady himself for suddenly ramming my back bumper, but he doesn’t fall off.

I wasn’t trying to kill him, just piss him off.

Marlo backs up and finds my window again. He shoves the revolver right through the window. The cold metal of the barrel presses against my cheekbone.

“Nice one, fuckhead,” he says. “Now tell me what you were doing at the Vandermeers’.”

He cocks the hammer on the revolver to emphasize his question.

“Marlo!” a voice shouts. “I’m okay!”

“I didn’t ask!” Marlo shouts back.

I laugh.

“Shut up!” Marlo says, pushing the barrel harder against my face. “Answer my question.”

“I lost my good sunglasses back there,” I say. “Was just trying to find them.”

“It was night,” Marlo says. “Get out of the truck you lying sack of shit!”

He pulls the lock up and rips the door open. As he’s fumbling with the door handle, I swing the door open and leap out of the truck. I kick his bike before he can react.

He lowers the gun as he braces against the impact, focusing fully on keeping his bike from toppling over.

I grasp for his gun, and I rip it from his hand. I hold it out and point it right at him.

“Drop it,” a voice shouts

I look to my left and right and see two shotguns trained on me. Marlo just grins at me.

“Maybe I’ll shoot you,” I say. “I don’t got much to lose at this point.”

Don’t know about Angel. Please don’t know about Angel.

I ask myself why the fuck I decided to risk disarming Marlo and sticking his own gun in his face. on the surface it’s a stupid move that only an idiot would make. An idiot with nothing to lose.

Then it hits me. I’m trying to sell myself as a framed man on the run with nothing to his name. I don’t want any of these vicious assholes to suspect I’ve got someone like Angel to protect. Someone I care about. Someone they could harm.

I’m pointing the gun at Marlo and grinning like an idiot because I want them to think I’ve lost everything. That them killing me really wouldn’t be so bad.

“Shoot his leg maybe,” Marlo says. “Dying would be too easy for him.”

“Shoot my leg and I shoot your head,” I rasp.

He sighs. “Alright, let’s all put the guns down and have a nice talk.”

“I ain’t putting mine down!” one of the men with shotguns says. “Asshole tried to knock me off my bike!”

“You assholes framed me,” I spit toward him, not lowering the gun from Marlo’s face. “Trying to knock you off your dumbass bike isn’t exactly an eye for an eye.”

Something slams into the back of my head, and before I can even think of pulling the trigger, Marlo snatches the gun back from me.

I stumble forward in a daze, and my head rings and spins. The guy who I tried to knock off his bike grabs hold of me. He hooks his boot under my ankle and shoves me down onto the salted pavement.

“Get up,” he hisses, pointing the shotgun at me.

Marlo sighs. “Just pull him up and search him, and don’t let him pull any more tricky shit.”

The booted foot kicks me right in the head. In the same spot the other guy whacked me with the butt of his shotgun.

Before I can recover, I feel hands all over me. Pulling at my clothes, ripping my jacket off. I see one of them tearing at the jacket in his hands while the other’s hands dig into the pockets on my jeans. Then under my pants, then–

“Here,” the one with the jacket says. “Bag with bullet casings.”

“I thought Napier said he scrubbed the scene,” Marlo says.

The guy searching my pockets kicks me, this time in the ribs, and points his gun at me again. He gives me a look and raises an eyebrow, daring me to try anything.

I put up my palms.

“What is this?” Marlo says, snagging the bag with the casings and dangling it over my head.

“It’s not yours,” I say.

“No shit,” Marlo says. “I wasn’t there.”

“Then you’ve got nothing to worry about,” I say, getting up on my feet.

Marlo kicks me this time, and I just fall back and decide not to bother getting up again.

“It must be Napier’s,” one of the other bikers says.

Marlo shakes the bag more, as if I couldn’t already see the damn thing. “Tell me about these casings.”

* * *

By the time they drive off, I’ve lost my camera and the casings. Marlo even sends one of his goons back to the Vandermeer’s to search for any other casings that may be there.

I crawl back into my damn truck and drive back to the hotel empty-handed and defeated. At least Angel will be there.

I didn’t want to tell her what I was going to do. I feared she’d say it’s too dangerous for me to go back there. I feared she’d volunteer to go herself.

Now I have to tell her how close I came. And how I lost it all just as I had some real hope right in my hands.

But when I get to the hotel, Angel isn’t there.