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Devil looked confused for a moment. Then, he looked at Piper.
Then back at Pony. Then back at Piper.
“Oh… oh, shit,” Devil said, nodding slowly. “Oh, you know what? I have to… I can’t go. Now that I think about it, I have to do a thing. Of stuff. Today. Right now. You two should go, though. Really. I… I have to go over there for a while.”
With that, Devil wandered off, leaving behind the beer that Piper had poured for him.
Piper said, “He is an odd one.”
“You have no idea,” Pony said.
“We’re still on, though?” she said.
“Absolutely.”
“Cool,” Piper said. “I’ll meet you there in an hour.”
Pony decided that a tactical retreat was in order, before something else could come along and de-rail his chances to finally get Piper away from the clubhouse and alone with him. So he rode his Harley home, dug out his shooting gear bag for the range, and headed out.
Before he left, he looked over the street bike he’d tested the other night, the night he’d finally become patched in as a full brother of the MC. It had been a long time since he’d done any street racing on a bike like that, but truth be told, he’d missed it.
Tearing along at a speed too dangerous for most to stomach, mind totally focused on the road. It reminded him of the total concentration he’d needed on missions for the military. There was something addictive about it, compelling.
So it wouldn’t be the worst way to spend an evening. But, for right now, he had to grab his chance with Piper. Devil had been needling him for forever to make his move. And, as annoying as his MC brother could be, sometimes, he did have a point. It was time to move on from his reluctance to open up and let anybody in. He’d done it with the MC, and now, it was time to stop living like a monk and get back out there again.
And so he drove a little faster than he need to, all the way out to the shooting range.
It was an outdoor range, small, out in the middle of nowhere. Long wooden tables sat next to the gravel parking lot, and past that, a short distance away, were wooden stands with frames to hold paper targets. A twenty foot high berm of dirt was past that to keep the bullets from travelling on and hitting anything that wasn’t meant to be hit.
Piper was already there, standing by one of the tables, thumbing cartridges into a pistol magazine. She had a holster on her right hip, and a small pouch for extra magazines on her left. The way she stood and loaded her magazines, Pony could tell that she was no stranger to the shooting range.
“Looks like you beat me to it,” he said as he plunked his range bag down on the table.
“Slow poke,” Piper said, nodding toward the dirt berm. “I already set up some targets.”
“So organized,” Pony said. “The bar must be already falling apart, or maybe even on fire, with you here.”
“It’s worth the risk,” Piper said with a little wink, loading the magazine in her hands into her pistol.
Pony opened up his range bag and took out his own pistol and a few boxes of ammunition.
“Oh, look at that,” Piper said when she saw his pistol. “We’re gun twins.”
“Glock 19?”
“All day, every day,” she said.
She showed him her gun, and sure enough, it looked almost interchangeable with his. Pony’s might have had a little more wear on the finish, but then, he’d had it since his Army days and it had seen a lot of mileage since then.
Let’s see how she handles it, he thought as he put on his hearing protection.
It didn’t take long to find out. The first few shots told him everything he needed to know. She stood like a professional,stance just right to support herself and absorb the recoil of the shots. Her grip was textbook, and she didn’t flinch a bit as the pistol discharged in her hands.
The results were clear on the target downrange. A close group of holes, clustered near the bullseye. And then, when her gun ran dry, she dropped out the empty magazine and plucked a loaded one out of the pouch on her belt, slamming it into the gun in the blink of an eye to get back into shooting.
Pony had seen plenty of military men who couldn’t shoot like that, or reload with such practiced ease. He waited until she’d shot her gun empty before saying anything.
“You really know how to handle that thing,” he said.
