THE BAD MAN free prologue
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Prologue: Certain conclusions
I withdrew the automatic and stared at it for a long time. There were several bright spots of silver worn through the blued metal surface, marks that veteran soldiers sometimes referred to as “badges.” My .45 had certainly come by these honestly, in and out of its shoulder holster a thousand times and more, as it performed what it was designed to do. I held it tightly in my right hand, turned the barrel this way and that, its gleaming lines almost hypnotic the way they caught the light from the street lamp near the car. I pulled back the slide to engage a round then lifted the weapon to my temple.
The muzzle felt cold against my skin, and I smelled the oil I’d rubbed on while cleaning it the night before. My thumb moved up, as if of its own volition, and cocked the hammer. The CLICK was loud in the close confines of the sedan, but I was not startled. In fact, I felt ambivalence, nothing more; not even relief that this would soon be over. I was empty, played out, done to death with all the whys and wherefores.
But I’d never shirked on an assignment, and I had no intention of doing so now. Papa Theo had given me a job and, although it meant damning myself to hell, I understood that I had no other choice. I would complete the task, or die trying.
After a couple of minutes, the piece began to feel heavy, like it had suddenly taken on the weight of my bones, blood, and sinews, not to mention the added gravity of my troubled soul. The nuns in school taught us that God forgives all transgressions so long as the sinner earnestly repents—from the heart, and with the utmost sincerity. I’d whispered more Our Fathers and Hail Marys than most priests, each time sensing at least some modicum of absolution for the foul deeds I’d committed. I’d killed for my country, and had returned home to find a job that required much the same: someone else in charge saying “Aim, and fire,” a trigger for hire either way.
I laughed to myself as I considered how very little any of this mattered. Few people care whether men like me live or die. But that fact had no bearing on what I’d been asked to do. I removed the gun from the side of my head, reset the hammer, and slid it back into the holster. God might turn the blind eye to me gunning down thugs who made their living on the suffering of others, and, as an enforcer in that shadowed realm, He might even laugh to Himself if I decided to eat my own bullet. I was, after all, one of the elements that made the machinery of that world run smoothly—one of those who helped grease the wheels, albeit with blood instead of oil. But after ten years of dealing out death, I came to realize that the Boss upstairs might have a limit to His level of understanding and patience. If so, how many was too many? And what might happen when I finally reached that tipping point?
I considered the very real possibility that I’d already surpassed that magic number—the one at which forgiveness was no longer an option—but the vast majority of those I’d killed had truly deserved to die. They were cheaters, con men, and brutal individuals without the capacity to acknowledge the pain they foisted onto others. In this way, I justified to myself why I did what I did. Of course none of that amounted to a tinker’s damn compared to what I was about to do: to shoot someone for whom I had the greatest respect, someone I cared about like a brother—Cain and Abel all over again. How could God forgive a thing like that?
And even if He could, I doubted I’d ever forgive myself.
After all, Samuel Sloane was my partner, and the closest thing I had to a friend. I’d been tasked with “putting him down”—the way the boss had put it (my earthly one that is)—as if Sammy were nothing more than a rabid dog. Perhaps that’s the manner in which Papa Theo saw him; it wasn’t for me to say. My concern was that I wanted out, and this was the only way it was going to happen. One last job and I’d be done for good with the business of bullets, and blood, and retribution.
THE BAD MAN is available in print and eBook versions through Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
http://www.amazon.com/BAD-MAN-G-Warlock-Vance-ebook/dp/B00ZVMKH1Y/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1435789846&sr=8-1&keywords=bad+man+vance
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-bad-man-g-warlock-vance/1122166540?ean=9780996479318
