No Ordinary Day by Tate, Harley (life changing books txt) 📗

shut up, Luke.” Donnie jerked his chin in John’s direction. “How ’bout you put that away and we talk about this like men.”

John glanced around him, pretending to look for something. “Men? I’m sorry, I only see one.”

Luke twisted his face into a question. “He don’t think we’re chicks, does he?”

Donnie fake smiled. “That’s funny.” He dropped the grin. “But I’m not. Now get out of here before you regret ever stopping.”

The woman in the car stared, frozen in fear and shock in the front seat. Her son, John presumed, chewed on his lower lip while Luke gripped his shoulder. This was going nowhere fast.

He lowered his head and took aim at Luke. “I’m going to count to three. If you don’t get your hands off the kid, I’ll shoot you. One, two—”

Luke lifted his hands in the air.

“That’s better.” He smiled at the boy. “Are you okay?”

After a moment, the kid bobbed his head up and down and snuffed back a load of snot.

“Do you know these men?”

He glanced at Donnie before shaking his head so hard his hair fell into his eyes.

John turned his attention to the woman in the car. “Do I kill them or just slow them down?”

Her mouth fell open, but no sound came out.

John exhaled, suddenly exhausted from the strain of the last few days and the drama playing out before him. “Your choice. Doesn’t matter to me.”

Luke fidgeted in place. “Yo, Donnie. We should go. There’ll be another car.”

“Shut up, Luke. He’s bluffing.”

“I don’t bluff. Ever. But I do grow impatient.” He lifted an eyebrow in the woman’s direction. “Last chance. You say nothing, I slow them down.”

She blinked. John took that as tacit approval. In one fluid motion, he shifted his aim and fired. The bullet sliced through Donnie’s lower thigh before burying itself in the dirt, blood spraying across the champagne paint job on the car.

Donnie crumpled to the ground, screaming as he clutched his leg. John turned to Luke. The man’s hands were back around the kid, clutching him like a shield. The boy began to cry, thick sobs that wracked his whole body.

John aimed at Luke’s head. “Run.”

Luke took off like a startled rabbit, hopping first one way and then another. Once he cleared the car, John aimed and fired. Luke fell forward as the bullet sailed through his calf muscle and out the other side. As he holstered his weapon, John strode forward. Grabbing Donnie by the hair, he wrenched the bleeding, whimpering man away from the car and dragged him to the side of the road.

The woman in the car scuttled back until she hit the passenger door, but John ignored her. He found Luke, half-crawling, half-dragging his bleeding leg away from the car. “Put some pressure on it. You’ll stop the bleeding. Raid a drugstore. Take some penicillin. You’ll be fine.”

“You shot me!” Luke wailed, face smeared in red clay dirt from his impact with the ground. “You f-ing shot me!”

“I gave you fair warning.” John turned to the boy.

The kid backed up, his butt bumping into the car as he stared in horror at John.

“I’m not going to hurt you.” John held up his hands. “Are you okay? Do you need medical attention?”

“Leave us alone!” The woman in the car finally found her voice. A high-pitched, whiny sound that had more in common with a cat than a canary. “You’re a monster!”

John didn’t disagree. “You’re safe now. They won’t hurt you anymore.” He nodded at the woman before turning back to the kid. “You don’t have to live like this. You can stand up for yourself. Make better choices.”

Without waiting for a reply, he turned back to the truck. Holly and Emma sat ramrod straight on the bench seat, staring at him like he’d turned blue and scaly. He tugged open the driver’s side door as Tank shoved his nose toward his face. John ignored the dog and slid onto the seat before shutting the door.

He cranked the engine. “Let’s get out of here.”

They drove in silence for the next hour, John reading the map while Emma and Holly stared out the windshield. As they gained in elevation, the truck slowed, barely making it over thirty miles an hour before the RPMs climbed dangerously high.

Off the interstate, they wove through small town after small town, each with a spit of a Main Street, a handful of closed up shops, and more than a few stares from front porches. John kept an eye on the fuel gauge. They would need another tank soon. The old truck guzzled the gallons faster than he’d anticipated.

As they left the remains of the small town behind, the road grew steeper and the view opened up. Blue-tinted mountains framed the sky and weeds gave way to rocky outcrops and gravel driveways.

Emma shifted beside him. “Back there with those men, was that all military training? What you did?”

John watched her from the corner of his eye. She still focused on the road. “Mostly.”

“Were they badly injured?”

“I aimed for through-and-throughs. With some antibiotics and a good bandage, they’ll both be fine.”

“What if you’d missed?”

“I don’t miss.”

Emma scooted slightly to the right. “I take it you could kill someone if you wanted to.”

“Guns are deadly weapons.”

She didn’t say any more, although John could tell she wanted to ask. It was the same question he’d been asked so many times when he first came back to the states. Sitting at a bar, obvious haircut, haunted expression. In line at the liquor store where his ID saved him a few dollars. The handful of dates he’d tried in the beginning.

Have you ever killed someone?

How do you answer when the question is so complicated? Yes, but I was ordered to. It was him or me. It was what the mission required.

What if the mission wasn’t something he believed in?

He’d never thought that mattered until now. John ran through his list, noting how Emma should already be the last name on it. When he pulled the trigger—when she