Wrong Turn, Right Kill

Ray’s gun jammed right after he shot the wrong guy.

It was supposed to be simple. Walk up. Double-tap. Dump the body. No witnesses, no mistakes. But then came the click. That soft, dumb click. Ray stared at the gun like it had personally betrayed him.

The guy he shot—now bleeding out in the alley—had thin wrists, expensive shoes, and a nametag that read “Kyle.” That wasn’t the plan.

“Jesus Christ, Ray,” said Duke, crouching beside the body. “You killed the wrong guy.”

Ray shrugged. “He matched the description.”

“The description was ‘Melvin Deeks, middle-aged strip club accountant, balding, diabetic, Hawaiian shirt, fanny pack.’ This guy’s got a full head of hair and a vape pen.”

Ray looked at the nametag again. “Kyle Withers. Schoolteacher.”

Duke grabbed the wallet. “He’s a math teacher. Look—union card, library card, Sudoku app on his phone. This guy grades fractions for a living.”

“He was standing by the right door,” Ray said defensively.

Duke stood up, exhaled hard. “You shot a guy for loitering outside a strip club.”

“He looked nervous.”

“Everyone looks nervous outside a strip club, Ray. It’s a strip club. Nervous is the vibe.”

They were supposed to kill Melvin Deeks. He’d been skimming from the Paradise Lounge’s weekly cash runs—pocketing twenties like they were mints at a diner. Their employer, known only as “Gerry from Tampa,” wanted it clean. Quiet.

“He was wearing a dumb shirt,” Ray said. “I figured that was enough.”

“You figured wrong.” Duke waved a hand over Kyle’s body. “This guy probably just came to drink club soda and avoid his wife.”

Ray toed the corpse gently. “Well… now he’s avoided everything.”

They dragged Kyle behind the dumpster. His phone buzzed. Ray answered out of instinct.

“Hello?” a woman’s voice said. “Kyle?”

Ray froze. Duke snatched the phone, ended the call, wiped it clean, and tossed it in the nearest trash can.

“You stay here. I’ll go inside and find the real Melvin.”

“Can I come?”

“No. You've met your shooting quota for the day.”

Inside the Paradise Lounge, the carpet stuck to Duke’s shoes like it was trying to pull him down. Neon lights pulsed over half-empty tables. A dancer in butterfly wings half-heartedly spun around a pole. There were four customers: a bachelor party of two, an old man asleep near the stage, and a sweaty wreck in a Hawaiian shirt hunched over onion rings.

Bingo.

Duke slid into the booth opposite him. “Melvin Deeks?”

The man looked up, blinked twice, wiped his mouth. “Who’s asking?”

“Let’s take a walk.”

“What’s this about?”

Duke pulled out a State Tax Office badge. Fake. Looked real in the dark.

“Back office audit. You’ve been flagged.”

Melvin groaned and stood. “Man, I told them I was fixing my receipts—”

Duke jabbed a stun gun into his ribs. Melvin dropped like a sock full of pudding.

They stuffed Melvin in the back seat of their rust-red Impala and drove out of town.

“Sugar crash?” Ray asked, glancing at the unconscious body.

“Stun gun. But yeah, maybe both.”

“You wanna finish the job?”

“God, no. You already made it weird. Let’s do this by the book.”

They reached an abandoned logging site. Trees stripped bare. Earth like scabs. Ray parked by a rusted-out bulldozer.

Duke dragged Melvin out, stood him up.

“Say something,” he muttered. “Let’s make it personal.”

Melvin groaned, then slurred, “This isn’t the bathroom…”

“Good enough,” Duke said, and pulled the trigger. A clean shot. Back of the head. Melvin dropped.

Ray nodded. “Okay. We’re back on track.”

“Almost.”

Back at the car, they opened Kyle’s wallet.

“We’ll frame him for this,” Duke said. “Wrong guy becomes right patsy. Tragedy. Vigilante math teacher takes justice into his own hands.”

Ray brightened. “Like that movie where the janitor solves the murder?”

“No. And that janitor was a genius. Kyle was just in the wrong place with a guilty posture.”

They planted Kyle’s ID at the scene. Dropped a burner phone beside Melvin’s body. Stuck a fake suicide note in his pocket:

“He hurt those girls. I couldn’t live knowing I let him.”

Ray raised a brow. “What girls?”

“Doesn’t matter. Just spicy enough to make the story stick.”

As dawn clawed over the trees, they dusted the car for prints and dumped Kyle’s body behind the strip club. Ray stacked trash bags over him like it was a haunted lasagna.

“We done?” he asked.

“We’re done.”

“Waffle House?”

“God, yes.”

News broke by noon. Every station in a fifty-mile radius ran with it:

LOCAL TEACHER KILLS ACCOUNTANT IN VIGILANTE JUSTICE SUICIDE

Photos of Kyle in a staff polo flooded social media. Tributes poured in. Parents praised his courage. One woman claimed Kyle had once helped her son pass algebra with “tough love and Tic Tacs.”

Melvin? No one missed him.

The Paradise Lounge put up a sign: NO ACCOUNTANTS ALLOWED.

At Shari’s Diner, Ray and Duke sipped coffee and watched the TV mounted near the pie shelf.

A reporter stood in front of the crime scene. “—a quiet man, beloved by his students, whose final act has raised difficult questions—”

Ray whistled. “They bought it.”

Duke dipped a fry in ketchup. “They wanted to buy it. We just gave ’em the receipt.”

“I ever tell you I’m proud of you?”

“You have not.”

“Well… I’m not. But I’m proud of me.”

Duke grunted. “Your gun still jammed.”

Ray sipped his orange juice. “It was atmospheric.”

That night, Ray sat in the motel bathroom trimming nose hairs with a pocket knife when his burner buzzed.

Unknown number.

He answered.

A pause.

Then: “You idiots.”

Ray blinked. “Who is this?”

“You killed Kyle Withers. That was my nephew.”

Ray froze.

“I’m coming. Don’t pack. I hate chasing people.”

Click.

Ray stared at the phone. Then stared at himself in the mirror. His left nostril bled slightly.

“Duke?” he called.

“Yeah?”

“Did we make any enemies lately?”

Duke paused. “Define ‘lately.’”

Ray didn’t respond. He opened the door slowly, still holding the pocket knife like it might help.

“I think we’re gonna need another plan.”

But what they didn’t know—

Back at Kyle Withers’s condo, behind the spice rack, behind the bookshelf, behind a false panel—

—were eight tapes.

Names. Dates. Faces.

And Melvin Deeks on all of them.

Kyle Withers didn’t kill the wrong man.

He just didn’t get there in time.