Firefly Shooting

Kentucky country shooting. Alex Rider is picked to work on a case with a girl who frightens his socks off. My first fanfic, please be nice.

Prologue

It is half-past one in the morning, but the air is warm. It is summer, and summer nights in Kentucky are always warm. The fireflies are buzzing.

Mila Anders is not asleep. She is sat by the window of the small house she has shared with her sister and brother since their parents died. In her hand is a pistol.

She watches from the window, but she does not watch the door to the room. She does not see the man who has been in the house for two days, hiding in the wine-cellar, since he snuck in when Lacey Jayne Anders had the door open for the milkman.

But the man sees her. He sees her and speaks from the shadows to her.

'You're up late, Mila.'

Mila turns, cocking the pistol with a practised flick, and training it on the dark shape by the door.

'How did you get in?' she spits.

'Through the door. The way everyone gets in.'

She snarls like a wildcat.

'Tell me, Mila,' he says, slowly and easily, coming out from the shadows with the point of his gun aiming for her head. 'Why did you become a spy? Was it because your parents were spies? Or was it because there was no money to support your younger siblings? Of course, the spying business pays well … with blood and death.'

'I have never been a murderer.'

Mila is frightened, but she doesn't show it. She keeps her pistol hand steady.

'No, you haven't, have you?' For the first time, the man seems angry. All the smooth, chilling calm of his killer training has vanished. His dark eyebrows knot together. 'You just betray people, and let others finish them off. Isn't that right?'

She whimpers. He knows. How could he know?

'And now you've betrayed your younger sister.'

'She'll thank me in the end,' Mila says, not believing her own words. 'She will. There's no money.'

'You never told her,' the man says, lightly, accusingly.

'There's no money,' Mila repeats, half in a dream.

'You never will,' the man says.

'There's none …'

A second later, Mila Anders is dead. But the shot is silent. Her body will not be found until Lacey Jayne comes down in the morning to open the shutters of her bloodstained study.