You understand what I’m saying?” Wyatt asks. “If I wouldn’t have taken the shot, somebody else would have, and we wouldn’t be here right now having this conversation.” He takes a step forward, grabs Jessup’s elbow. “He wanted a head shot. Wanted something brutal and bloody that would play on television until the end of time.”
Jessup is shivering, but he’s sure he’s not cold. “But . . . why? Why the hell would he want me dead?”
Wyatt closes his eyes. His laugh this time is sad. “Oh, damn, Jessup. You don’t understand a thing. He doesn’t want you dead.”
“Then why—”
“Man, come on. This isn’t about you. Brandon couldn’t care any less about you. This has absolutely nothing to do with you, Jessup. This is about him. His master plan. He wanted me to wait until you were standing right next to him and then have me shoot you. He’s the face of everything and you’re nobody, so everybody assumes that the shot just missed Brandon. Everything on video and he immediately calls it an assassination attempt; the radical Left trying to stop Brandon Rogers from speaking. You’re dead but he’s the one they pay attention to, because he’s making the most noise. It immediately makes him the most important voice in the movement, makes him famous. Takes him from the fringes, man. Puts him in the center of everything.”
Jessup is sure that he’s supposed to say something, have some reaction to this, but he feels like the blood has drained out of him. What he wants more than anything right now is a bench, a chair, somewhere to sit. He’s surprised not by Brandon’s calculations—he’s never trusted Brandon—but at how lucky he is that Brandon believed Wyatt’s commitment to the cause meant he would be willing to sacrifice his best friend.
“You okay?” Wyatt says.
“No.”
“You going to pass out, man? You look like crap.”
Jessup bends over, puts his hands on his knees. Sucks air deep into his lungs, breathing like he’s just finished wind sprints, has that same feeling of wanting to puke. “Yeah. Give me a minute.”
Wyatt does.
Jessup stands there, staring at the ground beneath his feet, catching his breath. Finally, he can stand up straight again.
“So you shot Brandon instead?”
“Well, like I said, gust of wind. With all the cops and the SWAT fellows, I had to take that shot from four hundred yards—”
“You said two hundred and twenty.”
“Four hundred,” Wyatt says forcefully. “As far as Brandon knows, it was four hundred yards and the wind kicked up at just the wrong time, and man, I am so sorry about your shoulder.”
“What if you’d missed for real? What if you’d killed him?”
Wyatt shakes his head. “Better him than you, brother.”