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She left it unzipped until she got down the stairs and met Marshall. She zipped it up and put on her hat before pulling on her gloves.
“You look like a little kid,” Marshall joked.
“Ha, ha, ha,” she said right back. “Let’s go,” she told him.
They made their way to the SUV and got in. Marshall had already put the sniper rifle in the back seat.
“We’re going to head a couple of passes over and see if you can’t hit some targets in the snow.”
She nodded and held on for the ride. It really was beautiful country and Ava took it all in as they passed over a mountain pass and headed toward the spot Marshall had picked out.
It took them thirty minutes to climb over the mountain to get to the pass. Once they were there, Marshall parked the SUV and got out. Ava followed him. He pulled out the sniper rifle and handed it to her.
“You’re going to have to carry your own gear. I’ll show you how to break it down and build it back later today. But for right now, let’s set up here and see what you can do,” he said. “First objective is to find a nice flat surface to lie on. Now you want it to overlook the target area. So go ahead and find you a nice patch to work with.”
Ava found a piece of ground that seemed flat and looked out over the mountain pass they’d just come up. “Here,” she told him.
He shook his head. “No. You’re out in the wide open. Even in a ghillie suit they’d see you. Let’s go over in the tree cover over there.”
She followed him and found another flat patch of land between two towering pines. “This good?” she asked.
He nodded. “Perfect. Now let’s get down and see what we can see.”
He’d brought an ocular with him. “Look through your scope and find a target,” he told her.
Ava did as he directed and she located a tree with a split in the middle. “Split tree, about three hundred meters below us.”
“Fire away,” he said once he located the tree she was talking about. “Oh, wait, here’s your earmuffs.”
Ava took off her right glove and put on the protective ear muffs he pulled from his jacket pocket. She was wearing her earbuds, and the noise of the rifle would jolt her. She was lying in the snow and dirt and wondered how long it would take her to feel the cold.
She narrowed her gaze in the scope to the middle of the split tree. “Fire in the hole,” she said and made her shot.
“Damn,” Marsh mouthed. “You hit it! Let’s go for something farther away and smaller.” It took him a second to find her another target. “There, go thirty meters to your right and six hundred meters away. A scrub brush with a pinecone in it. See if you can hit the pinecone.”
It became a game to her then—Marshall would point out a target and she would hit it. Turned out she was pretty good.
Marshall reached over and pulled her earmuffs off. “I’ve got to get you back. Cap will kill me if you get sick.”
Ava couldn’t feel her nose anymore, but the rest of her was warm and toasty. “A few more?”
Marshall nodded and put her earmuffs back on, and they spent the next thirty minutes shooting more targets.
“How far away will this thing shoot?”
“In the hands of a trained sniper, probably two-thousand yards. For you? We won’t go anything above a thousand yards. So it’s important you keep your eye on the rangefinder,” Marshall told her. “Now let’s get back to the cabin.”
She nodded then and stood, shaking off the snow and dirt. “That was invigorating,” she said with a chuckle.
“Listen,” Marshall said in a solemn voice. “Shooting targets is much different from killing people. You obviously can shoot them—you’ve got the goods as far as that goes—but the question is, when you’re put in that position to actually take a life…will you?”
“If they’re coming after me or any of mine, the answer is yes, yes I will.”
Marshall gave her a hard look. “You say that now, but we’ll see, minx. We’ll see.”
They rode back to the cabin talking shop. Marshall told her about different caliber rifles and promised to take her hunting once things had settled. By the time they made it back to the cabin, they were both in a much better space with each other.
Cap was waiting on them.
