You know better than that, though,” Wyatt says. “I don’t miss. Hit him right where I wanted, high, in the meaty part. Right shoulder. Had to make it look like I simply missed you. He’s the only other person who knew what was supposed to happen, and I have to convince him that I did my best and we just got unlucky. He’s going to need some rehab, but he should be okay.”
“What did you shoot?”
“Like you said, what if I’d missed? Best rifle I’ve got for distance is the Remington. It’s what I’m comfortable with.”
The Remington means Wyatt shot a .30-06. Jessup says, “Could have used a .22. Would have done less damage.”
“Nah. Not enough bullet for the distance. Would have been worried about being sloppy. Plus, Brandon Rogers might be a rich kid, but he’s not an idiot. They tell him he got shot with a .22 and he’ll know it wasn’t a miss, that I did it on purpose. Nobody tries to go for a kill shot from two hundred yards with a .22. I’ll take a .22 from fifty yards, but not from two-twenty, and hell, I’m telling him I shot from four hundred yards. Jesus, Jessup, how the hell do you ever bag a deer? And what, you’re second-guessing me here? First you’re pissed I shot Brandon, now you want me to have used a different rifle?”
“But it wasn’t just Brandon, was it? What about the other people? One of the protesters got killed, a couple of them got shot. Was that you?”
“No.” Wyatt shakes his head. He looks unhappy, scared. In that moment he looks his age, seventeen, just like Jessup. But that’s almost old enough to go to war, Jessup thinks. At seventeen, rounding the corner to eighteen, Jessup’s birthday in January, Wyatt’s in March, they are almost the age to enlist—to be drafted in a different time—and go overseas to shoot and kill in the service of their country. “None of the protesters were me. I fired three shots. First one took Brandon, and it worked out perfect, because he took you down with him. Second into the rear window.” He reaches out but doesn’t touch Jessup’s neck. Lets his hand drop. “I’m sorry about that. I just wanted it to look good. Figured the broken window would make it look like the shooter was trying.”
Jessup doesn’t want to ask. Has to ask. Wyatt is staring at him, waiting for him to ask. “That’s two shots,” Jessup says.
“Good counting.”
“But you said you fired three shots. I remember three.”
Wyatt doesn’t blink. “Yeah.”
Jessup thinks of the man with his face torn open, lying by the gate, his AR-15 on the ground beside him, body armor doing nothing to stop a head shot. He can’t bring himself to ask explicitly, can only summon up the energy to say a single word: “Why?”
“Orders, man. Orders. It needed to look real,” Wyatt says. “Brandon wanted it to look like the radical Left was starting a war. A real war. He said there had to be casualties and I had to kill somebody else along with you. To start a fire, first you’ve got to set a spark. We sacrifice two men, and in return we get thousands. I could get away with missing you by a few inches, but I couldn’t pull that same trick twice. Not without Brandon figuring it out. Trust me, I only did this to protect you.”