Chapter 3: Brass, Breath, and a Friend's Advice
The sun hung high and unforgiving, a white disc hammered into a cloudless sky that seemed to press down on the range like a lid. Riley settled her cheek against the stock of her M4, the polymer warm from the morning heat, and lined up her sights on the paper target fifty yards downrange.
She exhaled. Squeezed.
The shot cracked through the air, sharp and final, and the hole appeared—just left of center, nicking the edge of the black.
"Left again," muttered Corporal Vasquez from the lane beside her. "You're gonna have to aim right of the target just to hit the paper."
"Shut up, Vasquez."
"Just saying, Gunny. Your shooting's usually tighter than my abuela's purse strings."
Riley ignored him as she fired again. Same result. Tight group, three inches left of where it should be. She could feel the drift in her grip, the subtle pull of her trigger finger, the way her body kept leaning into a correction it didn't need.
Behind her, Lance Corporal Chen and Private First Class Nowak were trading insults over a box of ammo, their voices carrying on the dry wind.
"I'm telling you, he was full-on snoring," Chen said, his voice cracking with laughter. "Head back, mouth open, drool on his blouse. Master Sergeant walked right up to him and just stood there for a full minute."
"No way."
"Swear to God. And then he just—" Chen mimed a gentle tap on the shoulder. "—wakes him up real soft, like. Says, 'Son, you got somewhere better to be?' And Corporal Mitchell jumps up and salutes so fast he nearly breaks his own nose."
Nowak doubled over, wheezing. "What'd the Master Sergeant do?"
"Made him run laps around the armory for an hour. In full gear. In July."
"That's brutal."
"That's Mitchell."
Riley heard herself laugh along with them, the sound hollow in her own ears. She fired again. Left. Again. Left. The pattern was so consistent it was almost funny, if it weren't so goddamn annoying.
She knew why.
She'd known since the traffic stop, since the moment Kenzie's face had materialized in the blue wash of her own patrol lights. The image had lodged itself behind her eyes like a splinter, surfacing at odd moments—during PT, during chow, during the mindless hours of paperwork she'd been grinding through at the S-3 shop. Kenzie's mouth in the bar bathroom, hungry and anonymous. Kenzie's hand trembling on her license, the shame flooding her face like a tide. Kenzie at sixteen, kneeling on a futon in a basement that smelled like vanilla, asking can I kiss you like it was the most terrifying question in the world.
Riley had said yes.
She'd said yes, and it had ruined everything.
"Line cold!" barked the range safety officer, his voice cutting through her spiral. "Cease fire, cease fire. Step back from the line and clear your weapons."
Riley ejected her magazine, racked the bolt, and checked the chamber. The routine was automatic, ingrained in her bones after seven years of service. She set the rifle on the bench and stepped back, rolling her shoulders to work out the tension.
"You're shooting like shit," Vasquez said, falling into step beside her as they walked toward the ammo crates.
"Thanks for the update."
"I'm serious. You sick or something?"
"I'm fine."
"You don't look fine. You look like you've been chewing on glass."
Riley shot him a look. Vasquez raised his hands in surrender and veered off toward the water cooler, muttering something about gunnery sergeants and their moods.
She was reaching for a fresh magazine when a shadow fell across the crate beside her.
"You got a minute, Gunny?"
Riley looked up. Sergeant First Class Dana Reyes stood with her arms crossed, her scarred eyebrow arched in that way she had—half question, half command. She was forty-two, a veteran of two combat deployments and a dozen years of stateside service, and she had a reputation for seeing through bullshit the way a knife sees through butter.
Riley straightened. "What's up?"
"Not here." Dana jerked her head toward the far end of the range, past the berms where the noise faded to a dull rumble. "Walk with me."
They fell into step together, boots crunching over gravel, the sun burning the backs of their necks. Dana didn't speak until they were well out of earshot, standing in the thin shade of a supply shed that hadn't been painted since the Reagan administration.
"You want to tell me what's going on?" Dana asked.
"Nothing's going on."
"You've been off all week. Your shooting's drifted, you're quiet in formation, and you've got that look."
"What look?"
"The one that says you're carrying something you shouldn't be carrying alone."
Riley laughed, but it came out flat. "You sound like a fortune cookie."
"And you sound like a Marine who's about to make a bad decision." Dana leaned against the shed, folding her arms. "I've known you three months, Riley. In that time, I've seen you drink half your body weight in cheap whiskey, flirt your way through two bars, and still show up to PT at 0500 looking like you slept eight hours. You're tough. You're smart. You don't rattle easy."
"I'm not rattled."
"You're a terrible liar."
Riley stared at her. Dana stared back, unblinking, the scar through her eyebrow catching the light like a pale seam of quartz.
"I ran into someone," Riley said finally. The words came out rough, scraped raw. "Someone from home."
"Old friend?"
"Something like that."
Dana waited. She had that quality—the ability to sit in silence without it feeling like pressure, just space. Space for the truth to fill.
Riley kicked at a loose rock. "We were kids together. Best friends. And then one night—" She stopped, jaw tightening. "One night she kissed me. And the next morning she acted like it never happened. Ignored me for a year. Let everyone in school call me names. Let me eat lunch alone."
Dana's expression didn't change. "That's rough."
"Yeah."
"And now?"
"Now she's a cop. Pulled me over the other night for running a stop sign I didn't see." Riley's mouth twisted. "Except before that, we hooked up. In a bar. Two nights before. She didn't know who I was. I didn't know who she was. Just two strangers in a bathroom."
Dana let out a low whistle. "That's a hell of a coincidence."
"Small town."
"Small world."
Riley nodded, throat tight. She could feel the rest of it pressing against her teeth, demanding release. She hadn't told anyone about the bathroom—not the details, not the way Kenzie's hands had felt on her hips, not the way she'd tasted like tequila and something sweeter underneath. She hadn't told anyone about the traffic stop, either. About the way Kenzie had said her name like it was a prayer and a curse all at once.
"She looked at me like I was a ghost," Riley said quietly. "Like she'd been haunted by me for nine years and I just showed up on her doorstep."
"Maybe she has."
"Good."
"Do you mean that?"
Riley opened her mouth. Closed it. The sun beat down on the gravel, the distant crack of rifle fire popping like fireworks somewhere behind them.
"No," she admitted. "I don't know."
Dana pushed off the shed and stood in front of her, close enough that Riley could see the faint lines at the corners of her eyes, the silver threading through her dark hair.
"Let me tell you something," Dana said. "I've been in the Corps for twenty years. I've seen Marines carry a lot of things—guilt, fear, grief, rage. And I've seen what happens when they try to carry it alone. It doesn't go away. It just gets heavier. It eats at you until you can't shoot straight, can't sleep, can't breathe without feeling like you're drowning."
"I'm not drowning."
"You're treading water in full gear, Gunny. And you're about to go under."
Riley's hands curled into fists at her sides. "What am I supposed to do?"
"Talk to her."
"I already did. I called her out on everything. Right there on the side of the road."
"That's not talking. That's firing a shot." Dana's voice was calm, steady, the voice of someone who'd been through worse and come out the other side. "You told her what she did to you. You didn't tell her how it made you feel. And you didn't ask her what she's been carrying."
"She made her choice. She chose to walk away."
"Did she?"
Riley blinked. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"People don't walk away from the people they love for no reason." Dana's eyes were steady on hers. "Sometimes they walk away because they're scared. Sometimes because they've been taught that what they feel is wrong. Sometimes because they don't know how to stay."
The words hit Riley like a punch to the sternum.
"I don't know what she's been through," Dana continued. "Neither do you. But I know this: you're standing at a crossroads. You can keep carrying this thing around until it kills you, or you can find her and talk. Really talk. Not yell, not accuse, not twist the knife. Just talk. Ask her why. Listen to the answer."
"What if I don't like the answer?"
"Then at least you'll know. And you can stop wondering."
Riley was quiet for a long moment. The wind picked up, carrying the smell of gunpowder and hot concrete, and somewhere in the distance, a drill instructor was screaming at a group of recruits.
"I don't know if I can do it," she said finally.
"You can." Dana's voice was firm. "You're a Marine. We don't quit. We adapt, we overcome."
"This isn't a battlefield."
"No," Dana agreed. "It's harder. Because on a battlefield, you know who the enemy is. Here, the enemy's inside you."
Riley let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.
"I'll think about it."
"Don't think. Do." Dana clapped her on the shoulder, firm and warm. "You've got forty-eight hours of Liberty. Use it. Find her. Talk to her."
"And if it goes badly?"
"Then it goes badly." Dana shrugged. "But at least you'll have tried. That's more than most people ever do."
She turned and walked back toward the range, leaving Riley standing alone in the shade of the shed.
The sun was starting to dip toward the horizon, painting the sky in shades of orange and pink. Riley pulled out her phone, staring at the blank screen.
It took her ten minutes to make the call.
She dialed the non-emergency line for the Westbrook Police Department, her heart hammering in her chest.
"Westbrook PD, how can I help you?"
"Hey, yeah—I need to leave a message for Officer Kipling."
"One moment."
The line clicked. A generic voicemail greeting filled her ear.
Riley swallowed. "Kenzie. It's Riley. I—" She paused, gripping the phone tight. "We need to talk. Not like the other night. Just talk. Meet me at the diner on Main. Tomorrow. Noon."
She hung up before she could change her mind.
The range safety officer called the line hot again.
Riley walked back to her lane, picked up her rifle, and settled into position. She exhaled, squeezed the trigger.
The shot rang out, sharp and clean.
Dead center.