Page 58 of Ready or Not

“All right.” Ranger claps. “Let’s make this quick. Very confused restaurant goers could leave the building at any moment.”

“My life used to be so boring,” Vale mutters.

My jaw falls as I blink at her in utter confusion.

“Mine has been recently as well.” Ranger chuckles. “But things are looking up.”

Garza snorts. “Ouch, shit, laughing hurts.”

I’m a little concerned that Vale might be in shock.

“Holt and Bishop are probably going to be blowing up your phones in a second or two. I’m pretty sure they know we’re okay, but they’re still worried… Or maybe they just want to know what happened. It’s hard to tell this far away.” She waddles toward the victim Ranger shot.

I know from experience that it’s going to be a grizzly sight.

I expected her to be terrified with everything that just happened, but she seems to be holding it together as well as anyone could expect.

Garza follows her over to the corpse.

Shouldn’t he be stopping her?

Should I?

Good God… Am I the one in shock?

My chest feels tight when I recall how I forced her to the ground to take cover. My entire goal was to keep her and the baby safe, but I’m not sure that level of forceful action was justified.

What am I thinking?

Of course, it was.

It’s better to have a couple of scratches on her knees than a bullet wound.

It still isn’t lessening my guilt.

Vale wraps her dress around her thighs and bends down. “Yuck, I don’t think identifying him will be possible.” She points, and Garza grabs her arm. “I was just going to ask if that white stuff is his skull.”

Ranger chuckles, jogging off toward where Garza took out the first shooter.

“Look but don’t touch,” Garza says.

“I saw a body once when I was fourteen. I was carrying out the trash and he was dead as could be, hanging out of the dumpster for our apartment building,” Vale says. “It was not as gross as this.”

“Come on, let’s get you into the truck.” Garza guides her away.

I refocus my attention on getting the man with no hand into Ranger’s vehicle. I’m still baffled that she seems to be okay. Perhaps she’ll have a delayed reaction.

Either way, my wife just keeps surprising me, and I find it wildly arousing.

Vale is able to identify two of the three men as part of Landis’s team. The one I recognized and the one Ranger took out. Although, her identifications come from their driver’s license photos, which we pulled from their wallets before Ranger headed off.

I do call in several of the guys from the compound to casually clean up the parking lot. Luckily, the restaurant wasn’t packed. We only had to look inconspicuous for a handful of restaurant goers, which didn’t include my family. I’m unsure if a taxi picked them up out front, or possibly they stayed in the restaurant for a nightcap.

Someone had damage to their car, but there was nothing we could do to magically repair it.

Garza removed the mirror completely and left a note apologizing for “running into it,” along with several hundred dollars tucked under the windshield wiper blade.

We have a very heated conversation with Bishop and Holt. I believe they were in the process of leaving Boston. However, they know Vale is safe and will be completing their job before heading back.