Monroe Tanner had been diagnosed with lung cancer, and he was dying. His life, up until the diagnosis, had been fairly meaningless and, in his eyes, utterly wasted.

Monroe had spent many years operating inside the marble confines of courthouse justice. He had prosecuted criminals with fire and vengeance worthy of God himself. He had also plea-bargained monsters down to lesser sentences in the vain hopes of catching the Machiavellian demons who pulled the puppet strings above them. He lost sight of the truth and began treating the legal system as a game instead of an instrument of justice. Monroe knew he was a pale mockery of the idealistic young man who prosecuted his first case with wild hopes of changing the world. His wife had noticed the hole inside him that was slowly eating him alive before she left.

Now, sitting on a roof that overlooked the home one of the most depraved puppet masters to ever slip between Monroe’s fingers, he knew he could balance the scales again.

He loaded the assault rifle.