CHAPTER 2
His smile returned, thinner and uglier.
“Do it again,” he said.
Sophia’s eyes shifted to the target.
The wind had changed.
The shot would be harder now.
Dust rolled across the low ground.
The heat shimmer thickened.
The target camera flickered once.
“Come on,” Dylan said. “You heard me.”
Sophia looked toward the judges.
Harrison Cole said nothing.
He only watched.
Another judge checked the rules sheet.
“This is not part of the official sequence,” she said.
Dylan pointed at Sophia.
“She accepted the challenge.”
Sophia looked at the judge.
“It’s fine,” she said.
The judge hesitated.
The range officer leaned close.
“You don’t have to prove anything,” he said.
Sophia’s face softened for half a second.
“I know,” she said.
Then she returned to the rifle.
That answer unsettled people more than confidence.
It sounded like she was not proving herself.
It sounded like she was allowing them to catch up.
Dylan backed away, but not far.
He wanted to be close enough to intimidate her.
Sophia adjusted the rifle again.
Not much.
A tiny change in angle.
A fractional shift of shoulder pressure.
Her breathing slowed.
The crowd followed her silence.
Even the wind flags seemed louder.
Harrison Cole moved around Dylan, trying to see her forearm clearly.
The tattoo flashed again.
Three angled lines.
A broken circle.
A mark like a reticle.
Harrison swallowed.
“No,” he whispered.
The judge beside him frowned.
“What?”
Harrison did not answer.
Sophia fired.
BOOM.
This time the crowd did not cheer immediately.
Everyone stared at the monitor.
The target camera shook from vibration.
The screen sharpened.
The second bullet had passed through the first hole.
There was no new mark.
Only the same impossible center.
The announcer made a sound that was not a word.
Then the entire range exploded.
People rose from the grandstands.
VIP guests shouted.
The range officer ripped off his sunglasses.
The scoring judge leaned into the monitor.
Dylan stood frozen.
His face lost color in patches.
“That’s not possible,” he said.
Sophia lifted her head slowly.
The rifle remained steady under her hand.
Her eyes met his.
“You asked me to shoot,” she said.
Dylan’s jaw worked without sound.
The crowd’s roar faded into a strange wave of disbelief.
People were cheering, but also whispering.
They were replaying what they had seen.
The coffee.
The slap.
The insult.
The staff badge.
The calm woman behind the rifle.
Dylan looked around as if someone might rescue him.
No one did.
He stepped toward Sophia again, but his confidence had broken.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
Sophia stood.
She placed the rifle safely on the bench.
Her right forearm turned in the sunlight.
The tattoo faced the judges clearly now.
Harrison Cole saw the entire mark.
His coffee cup slipped from his hand.
It hit the ground without spilling much because it was nearly empty.
Nobody noticed except the judge beside him.
Harrison took one step forward.
His face looked as if twenty years had returned at once.
The crowd noise dulled around him.
The tattoo was not just geometric.
It was a symbol from a vanished shooter’s logbook.
A private mark.
A promise.
A memorial.
A thing the public had never been shown.
Harrison’s mouth opened.
He tried to speak, but old grief stopped him.
Sophia saw him.
For the first time, her expression changed.
Only slightly.
A flicker passed through her calm.
Recognition.
Pain.
Maybe warning.
Harrison stepped closer.
“Where did you get that mark?” he asked.
Sophia did not answer.
Dylan turned toward Harrison, desperate for control.
“What is this?” Dylan snapped. “Some kind of setup?”
Harrison ignored him.
His eyes stayed on Sophia.
“Please,” Harrison said. “Where did you get it?”
Sophia lowered her sleeve slightly, but not enough to hide the tattoo.
“My father,” she said.
The words moved through the people nearest them.
Harrison’s breath caught.
The second judge looked between them.
Dylan laughed once, brittle and forced.
“Her father?” he said. “Great. Everybody has a father.”
Harrison turned on him.
“Be quiet.”
The command cracked sharper than the rifle.
Dylan stared at the old judge.
Nobody spoke to him that way at events.
Not anymore.
Harrison faced Sophia again.
“What was his name?”
Sophia’s jaw tightened.
“Caleb Brooks.”
The name hit Harrison like a shot.
He took a step back.
The second judge placed a hand near his elbow.
“Harrison?”
Harrison shook his head slowly.
“No,” he whispered.
Sophia watched him carefully.
The crowd had gone quieter now.
The grandstand speakers hummed.
The target monitor still showed that single impossible hole.
Dylan looked confused.
Sponsors looked nervous.
Reporters looked hungry.
Harrison’s voice dropped.
“Caleb Brooks died in Wyoming.”
Sophia’s eyes did not move.
“That’s what people were told,” she said.
A murmur spread fast.
Harrison looked toward the target.
Then back to Sophia.
His face was no longer only shocked.
It carried guilt.
Old and heavy.
Dylan sensed the story escaping him.
He stepped between them.
“I don’t care who her father was,” he said.
Sophia looked at him.
For the first time, the crowd saw anger in her stillness.
Not loud anger.
Not shaking anger.
The kind that has survived long enough to become discipline.
“You should,” she said.
Dylan’s lips curled.
“Why?”
Sophia picked up the clean coffee cup she had carried from the tent.
She had placed it on the station bench before shooting.
Nobody had noticed.
Now she held it calmly.
“Because you wear his number,” she said.
Dylan’s hand went to the patch on his jacket.
The number was stitched beneath his sponsor logo.
Seventeen.
It was marketed as Dylan’s lucky number.
Fans wore it on hats.
Posters printed it beside his name.
Brands used it in commercials.
Harrison stared at the patch.
His face collapsed into understanding.
Dylan looked at him.
“What is she talking about?”
Harrison’s voice came out rough.
“Seventeen wasn’t yours.”
Dylan stepped back.
The cameras pushed closer.
The sponsor woman near the rope whispered, “Cut the livestream.”
A technician looked at her, terrified.
The stream kept running.
Harrison looked at Sophia.
“Caleb used seventeen during closed desert trials,” he said.
Sophia nodded once.
“He kept records,” she said.
Dylan’s eyes darted between them.
“Records of what?”
Sophia looked at the target monitor.
“Wind calls,” she said. “Angles. Load notes. Shot corrections.”
Harrison closed his eyes briefly.
“His notebook,” he said.
Sophia looked back at Dylan.
“My father’s notebook disappeared after he vanished.”
The crowd shifted.
Dylan’s face went hard.
“You better be careful.”
Sophia stepped closer.
The coffee cup remained in her hand.
“My father trained in silence,” she said. “He never wanted fame.”
Dylan tried to laugh.
May you like
It failed.
Sophia continued.
