Kindle Notes & Highlights
The haiku was his calling card. He’d usually type it on a sheet of pink or yellow paper and place it in the victim’s hand.
Jessie Steen. Thirty-one years old. Guitar and vocals.
To be effective, you just had to hit your mark cleanly. You had to do the small things right.
Florence “Flo” Bella. Thirty-one years old. Bass, backing vocals.
He knew that Flo’s mother had been killed in a car accident, but not that the accident had been caused by a drunk driver who, because of his connections, subsequently ducked all charges.
Black, strong, and beautiful—she made him look good.
Brea Steen. Thirty-four years old. Drums.
Jessie was straight. Brea identified as pansexual, attracted to personality with no emphasis on gender.
For their other engagements—the vigilante gigs—they were known as the Bang-Bang Sisters.
The Trace—an underground network of gray-hat hackers and cybersecurity experts—had
As much as the drone helped the sisters plan their approach and exit, they chiefly used it to gauge conflict scenarios.
Two-thirds of the cargo area was loaded with their musical equipment. The remaining space housed weaponry and ammunition: knives, daggers, nunchakus, various explosives, AR-15s, semiautomatic pistols, concealed-carry handguns, a Savage 10FP sniper rifle. Something for every occasion, all of it disguised in customized Fender and Gibson guitar cases.
Brea was the oldest, so had naturally assumed the leader’s role. She booked their music gigs (keeping their cover intact), managed the finances, and called the shots on contracts.
It didn’t matter how many lowlifes and criminals were in that house, they had one target. Everything else had to be nonlethal.
Flo had thought that popping a bullet between his eyes would alleviate her grief, and it had, for a while, but the nation was filled with Johnny Rudds—as evidenced by the Trace’s extensive shit list—and for every Johnny Rudd there was an Esther Bella, a beautiful life destroyed.
It didn’t matter how many times they’d done this—how many drug dealers, rapists, and killers they’d taken out—Brea always felt a wave of nervous energy.
The scrawny high dude was in no position to help anyone, including himself. He stood on the sofa, pointing at the rats zipping this way and that across the floor, shrieking, “What the fuck, man? What the fuuuuck?”
Lmao he prob not sure if he's tripping
The sisters made their noise onstage. When it came to killing, they favored silence.
Chief Hyatt answered a few more questions. The sisters thought his tone was surprisingly upbeat, considering he’d been yanked from his bed in the small hours of the morning and now had a double homicide on his hands. In fact, he looked like a man with a great weight removed from his shoulders.
The bounty would then be paid, always in cryptocurrency, which the sisters would convert to US dollars and deposit into a bank account they’d opened under the bogus name of Jane Morrison.
They were not sisters during this time, they were individuals. Then, when it was time to go to work, they put on their rock garb and the typhoon came together again.
Only two were biological sisters, but the bond shared by all three went beyond that, as deep and firmly rooted as the tree at the edge of the lot.
“There’s always someone better out there, someone smarter and stronger. Of all the lessons I’ll teach you, the most important by far, and the one that will keep you alive, is that you have to know when to back down.”
They’d been friends with Flo since they’d met at a battle of the bands in 2004, but the Johnny Rudd job made them sisters. Less than a month later, a friend of Brea’s—a former government cryptanalyst—gave them an in at the Trace, and they were soon granted access to the anonymous server.
Their stepfather, Bryan, had been diagnosed with ALS two years ago. In a matter of months, he’d gone from being one of the top names in the music industry to not being able to brush his own teeth or chew food.
“What we do, Jess . . . it makes a difference. For every depraved piece of shit we take out, we make the world a little safer.”
The tattoos were complemented by the scars that Brea had picked up over the years, mainly knife wounds. Some were self-inflicted.
“Some people say that moving from city to city, state to state, will broaden your horizons. I don’t doubt that to be true, and you’d know better than me, but there’s something to be said for staying in the same place your whole life.”
“I am this town,” Chance said.
Someone thinks quite a lot of himself, eh?
You’re an elite asshole, but not an elite athlete.
“Word of advice: let him at your throat. It’ll be over quicker.”
On it were the photographs of three young women, one Black, two white. “Shit,” Chance said. Anger crackled behind his rib cage. He clenched his fists. “A buncha gals.” Burl said, “They call themselves the Bang-Bang Sisters.”
He breathed his purified oxygen and brought the knife down again. Soon, his wings unfurled.
Confined spaces. Crowded places. Cars, buses, trains: these were all triggers. Antidepressants took the edge off but weren’t enough by themselves. Medical-grade oxygen, which the wren had discovered by accident, allowed him to function.
His therapist (one of the many he’d had in the course of his thirty-eight years) explained that his agoraphobia stemmed from his PTSD, which in turn stemmed from the car crash that had killed his parents.
“You need to take control, find something that elevates you.” “Like . . . a hobby?” “More like a passion. Something you can’t live without. And the gratification—the feeling—this brings . . . let that define you.”
not him picking a murder hobby
It wasn’t the killing that defined him, but the heights it lifted him to.
Mitchell Spahn, a thirty-eight-year-old web designer from Galesburg, Illinois,
The differences between their musician and vigilante personas never failed to resonate with Jessie.
“I don’t blame you, though. She’s your sister. You’ll do whatever it takes to protect her.” “She’s your sister, too.” “It’s different. You and Brea are blood. It’s an unbreakable bond.”
This was true of everyone in their lives: friends, family members, ex-partners. Nobody knew they were the Bang-Bang Sisters. Even the Trace didn’t know their real names.
“Do you think you’ll ever tell Imani what we do?” “No,” Flo replied without hesitation. “There are some things she doesn’t need to know.” “I get it,” Jessie said. “But you’re so close, and there’s this whole side to you that she knows nothing about.” “And it’s going to stay that way.” Flo’s voice was stony again.
She’d logged in to the Trace and brought up the contract page—the modern equivalent of a wanted: dead or alive poster, or in this case, wanted: dead. very dead. nothing but dead will do.
This was where her mother had been killed. In any other place, Flo could remember the best of her. Here, though, in Reedsville, those sweet memories were eclipsed by the sound of breaking glass and bone.
A length of two-by-four, a steel chain, a tranquilizer gun. Nothing lethal, but Brea had surmised from her brief conversation with Mr. Mustache that this was a grab job. Whoever had set them up wanted them alive. Knowing this didn’t make her feel any better.
With artful quickness, Flo reached inside Golf Club’s pants, pulled the trigger on her semiauto, and blew both balls down the inside of his leg.
Well dang
Of the ten men who either had been lying in wait or had shown up in pickup trucks, only three could function without too much pain: Mr. Mustache, Mr. Chain, and Crew Cut. They took care of the sisters. They bound their wrists, ankles, and mouths with duct tape and carried them out to a waiting SUV. Jessie woke up while she was being moved and struggled viciously.
she found herself looking into Flo’s eyes. The last thing she noticed before fading away was the cold and accusatory anger in them.
“You think Brea is still alive?” Jessie asked, her voice barely audible through the solid wall. Flo sighed and repressed the urge to respond that she didn’t care either way, which wasn’t true, or not quite true. Brea had cajoled them into taking the wren contract, but whoever had set them up would likely have gotten to them anyway, somewhere down the line, so maybe this wasn’t entirely her fault.
Every so often the door opened and someone appeared with food and drink, usually fruit and water. Brea’s was always served in a dog bowl. They’d stopped beating her, at least.
