Unexpected Good Guys

By Annie Reed

Quiet heroes. The ones who don't call attention to themselves.

 

The ones who make a difference. Who make life better for strangers they never met.

 

Or who avenge the innocents society can't or won't protect.

 

Spend time with a few of these unsung good guys in this latest edition of Annie Reed's Unexpected series.

 

"One of the best writers I've come across in years." –Kristine Kathryn Rusch, award-winning author and editor

 

"The appearance of a new Annie Reed story is a treat. Try one and you'll be hooked." –David H. Hendrickson, award-winning author of "Death in the Serengeti"

 

"Annie's writing is magic, seriously." –Robert J. McCarter, author of A Ghost's Memoir series

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thunder Valley Ink
• Release date: Feb 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393998440

Annie Reed

Award-winning author and editor Kristine Kathryn Rusch calls Annie Reed “one of the best writers I’ve come across in years.”Annie’s won recognition for her stellar writing across multiple genres. Her story “The Color of Guilt” originally published in Fiction River: Hidden in Crime, was selected as one of The Best Crime and Mystery Stories 2016. Her story “One Sun, No Waiting” was one of the first science fiction stories honored with a literary fellowship award by the Nevada Arts Foundation, and her novel PRETTY LITTLE HORSES was among the finalists in the Best First Private Eye Novel sponsored by St. Martin’s Press and the Private Eye Writers of America.A frequent contributor to the Fiction River anthologies and Pulphouse Fiction Magazine, Annie’s recent work includes the superhero origin novel FASTER, the near-future science fiction short novel IN DREAMS, and UNBROKEN FAMILIAR, a gritty urban fantasy mystery short novel. Annie’s also one of the founding members of the innovative Uncollected Anthology, a quarterly series of themed urban fantasy stories written by some of the best writers working today.Annie’s mystery novels include the Abby Maxon private investigator novels PRETTY LITTLE HORSES and PAPER BULLETS, the Jill Jordan mystery A DEATH IN CUMBERLAND, and the suspense novel SHADOW LIFE, written under the name Kris Sparks, as well as numerous other projects she can’t wait to get to. For more information about Annie, including news about upcoming bundles and publications, go to www.annie-reed.com.

Book preview

Quiet heroes. The ones who don’t call attention to themselves.

The ones who make a difference. Who make life better for strangers they never met.

Or who avenge the innocents society can’t or won’t protect.

Spend time with a few of these unsung good guys in this latest edition of Annie Reed’s Unexpected series.

One of the best writers I’ve come across in years.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Introduction

Killshot

For a Few Lattes More

Thief

Hunger in Blue

Equal Justice

One Last Good Thing

The Shape of a Name

Copyright Information

About the Author

Introduction

As I write this introduction, we’ve just gone through a contentious (to put it mildly) presidential election in the United States. A little more than half the country is pretty sure their guy won, while a little less than half the country believes the winner stole the election because that’s the only way their guy could have lost. Both sides believe their guy’s the good guy in this equation.

Good guys (and gals) are what this collection’s all about. Not the politicians you see on television and in the news who tell you how great they are and how bad their opponent is. These good guys are the quiet type. The ones who don’t hype themselves and their good deeds, but who manage to make the world better in one way or another.

Are they heroes? They wouldn’t think so. They’re just doing the right thing because it needs doing.

In a way, the stories in this collection are the flip side of the stories in Unexpected Criminals. Not exactly a companion collection, but a way to remind myself (especially these days when half the country also doesn’t believe the pandemic is real) that good people really do exist.

I’m in the process of compiling additional Unexpected collections. Since I write in a bunch of different genres, some will be fantasy, some will be science fiction, some will be mainstream (of the unexpected variety), and some will even be romance. When you’d done with the last story in this collection, keep scrolling to see a list of all the exciting titles my publisher will be releasing in this series. I hope you enjoy the stories in each of these collections as much as I enjoyed writing them.

—Annie Reed

November 23, 2020

Killshot

The gunshot snapped Burnett back to the here and now.

Instinct made him want to duck and cover. Ready his rifle and run for high ground.

But he was in Vegas, not Afghanistan. He’d left his rifle and his squad and parts of himself he could never get back thousands of miles away on the other side of the world. Random gunfire in the middle of the night here didn’t mean someone was trying to blow his brains out.

He hadn’t heard the whine of a bullet. The ping of a slug striking concrete.

The shot hadn’t been meant for him.

Just a slice of modern life in a country in love with its guns.

He breathed in the hot night air and held it for a beat. Did it again and again until he felt his heartrate slow down.

At least some of his old sniper skills were good for something in civilian life.

The unrelenting desert heat had driven him out of his low-rent motel room an hour ago in search of a breeze. The motel’s air conditioning had been out for the last week. Even at quarter to three in the morning, he’d felt like he was going to drown in bed in his own sweat.

You’d think the heat wouldn’t bother him after Afghanistan. But since he’d been back in the States, he’d gotten used to the amenities of civilian life.

Air conditioning.

Fresh food.

Not having to kill strangers on a daily basis.

The night clerk had looked up at him from a battered paperback when he’d walked past her window. She sat there behind bulletproof glass night after night waiting for late night check-ins.

Burnett had been a late-night check-in himself. No car, only a duffel full of stubborn dreams and a guitar he couldn’t quite make himself get rid of.

She’d knocked on the glass to get his attention.

Pretty late for a walk, she’d said through the window’s tinny speaker.

Cigarette smoke had pooled around her head like an angry thundercloud. A half-empty bottle of Mountain Dew sat on the counter next to her along with an ashtray full of lipstick-stained butts.

Gloria had her vices well covered.

She’d introduced herself during his second week at the motel. Pretty woman. Smooth skin darker than his own. Curves in all the right places. Hints at a life lived hard in the lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth.

After his third week at the motel, she’d given him her cell number.

He’d never called.

He didn’t want to make her life any harder.

Dangerous out there, she’d said. Man like you alone at night in this neighborhood, get yourself killed.

Man like him.

He knew what she meant. Black man in a bad neighborhood full of gangs and drugs and boarded-up businesses.

He’d seen worse.

He’d been through worse.

He thought about showing her his left hand.

He always shoved it in the pocket of his jeans. Kept it carefully out of sight. He’d had enough of people staring at it. Doctors poking at it. Giving him their sad diagnoses before suggesting rehab and retraining.

Gloria didn’t know dangerous. Burnett did.

Dangerous had blown away half his hand and along with it, everything he’d mapped out for himself when he got back to the States.

Smart man, John Lennon. Life had certainly happened to Burnett while he’d been busy making plans.

He’d been humming that tune to himself, walking on Sahara toward The Strip, when he’d heard the gunshot.

Not the boom of a shotgun or the distinctive crack of a rifle.

Handgun.

Weapon of choice of street thugs everywhere.

This particular thug was well hidden. Burnett hadn’t seen a muzzle flash. Hadn’t seen the point of impact of the bullet to determine trajectory.

All he had to go on was the sound. Even at night when the city sounds were muted, a single gunshot would bounce off buildings and echo down the nearly empty streets.

But even taking all that into account, the shot had sounded close.

He’d bet his life on it.

It couldn’t have come from his side of the street.

A rundown strip mall took up most of the block on his side. A tire store dominated one corner. Lights out and locked up for the night. Streamers of plastic pennants emblazoned with brand name logos had been strung between the light posts in front of the store. The pennants hung limp in the hot night air.

The store’s windows were intact. A metal security gate protected the plate glass front doors. The big bay doors were shut. Stacks of display tires had been chained to the building, and the air smelled faintly of hot rubber.

He supposed a sniper could hide inside the tires, if he was skinny enough. But there’d be no percentage in it.

No easy way to retreat if the job went sideways.

He dismissed the tire store.

Two of the remaining storefronts in the strip mall had been boarded up. None of the others showed signs of life. He counted all of two cars in the parking lot. Nobody moving around either of them.

The other side of the street was a different story.

Vegas was a 24/7 city. Even this far away from The Strip, even this late at night, cars kept passing him on Sahara. Most had music booming from open windows. Speaker-rattling bass notes that thrummed in Burnett’s chest and made the phantom fingers on his left hand itch to play the kind of riffs he used to.

But traffic wasn’t solid like during the day.

He couldn’t remember if there’d been a break in traffic when he’d heard the shot, but it was possible.

A break in the traffic would have let him hear a shot from the other side of the six-lane street.

He’d deliberately not paid attention to the other side of the street while he’d been walking. He’d been trying to break himself of the habit of scanning every building he passed like it held an enemy sniper or a kid with a bomb strapped to his chest.

The V.A. counsellors said a stare like that creeped the civilians out.

It certainly creeped out the guys who ended every job interview Burnett went to after five minutes.

Although with some of those guys, he’d done the stare on purpose.

A guy had to have some fun in life.

Now he looked at the buildings across Sahara like he had back in Afghanistan.

A second-hand furniture store spread out across most of the block. The front of the store butted against the sidewalk. Big plate glass windows crowded with beds and dressers and dining room sets that must not be worth stealing. None of the windows had bars covering the glass.

Parking for the store must have been in back. The casinos on The Strip had parking garages. Off-Strip businesses had acres of asphalt gridded with paint into neat rows of angled spaces most people ignored.

Lots of places inside the furniture store for a shooter to hide, but there’d be no reason for it. Unless the shop was a front for a racket selling drugs or laundering money, Burnett doubted they kept more than a couple hundred cash on the premises.

The furniture shop was bracketed on one side by a florist and on the other by a cramped, squat building covered in signs in English and Spanish advertising cigarettes and beer. Bars over small, frosted windows high up on the building’s walls.

A mom-and-pop liquor store.

The front door of the liquor store stood propped open.

The store’s air conditioning must be out too, but that open door was an open invitation to get robbed.

Especially, as Gloria said, in this neighborhood.

Burnett couldn’t see inside the store from where he stood. The angle was wrong.

But with the door open, he could have heard a shot fired inside.

The thing he didn’t hear was wail of approaching sirens.

No one had called the cops.

Burnett could have, except he didn’t have a cell.

Another one of his failings, according to