The sudden crack always made him flinch ever so slightly. And when he flinched, it sometimes made the gun shift from his original aim. The trick, he was told, was to not anticipate the gun going off but to squeeze the trigger and let it surprise you. That way, you won’t jerk the gun trying to control it. Instead, the bullet would be out of the barrel headed down range at 2,200 feet per second before his reaction to the noise could alter his aim.
This time, his flinching didn’t alter the bullet’s trajectory. It reached the target and embedded itself just as he completed the blink-portion of his flinch. As his eyes opened, he saw the bullet exit the skull of Tommy Borowitz, along with a good chunk of brain matter and blood. The knife Tommy was holding to his wife’s throat gently slid from his fingers as the rest of his body went limp. In another half-second, the lifeless body would come to a halt at Sarah’s feet just as she would either let out an ear-piercing scream or faint – it could go either way.