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Then, finally, I did laugh.
chapter 6
I felt betrayed, and I couldn’t even say by whom. Not by Rick—he’d seemed as much a victim of the evening as anyone. Then again, some of it was him; he must have talked about me to Mercedes. Gave away pieces of my history that put me in danger. I wanted to be angry at Arturo, but he’d probably saved my hide back there. Carl and Meg—of course, I’d felt betrayed by them a long time ago.
Mercedes Cook. Now, there was a character. She was up to something. She’d set that little game in motion. Put the pieces into play to see what would happen.
Really, I had no one to blame but myself for walking into the trap.
“Kitty, can you come here a minute?” Ben called to me from the kitchen, leaning over the counter that overlooked the living room. I left the desk and computer to sit on the bar stool, where he indicated.
We stayed like that for a long minute, looking across the counter at one another. Now what? What had I done wrong?
I was about to say something when he put a gun on the counter between us. It made a clunking noise, a sound of finality. It was chillingly black.
I stared at it. Guns were Cormac’s thing. Having the gun here, without Cormac, was just . . . wrong.
“What’s this?” My voice seemed small.
“Nine-millimeter Glock semiautomatic, weapon of choice of law enforcement officers everywhere. Compact, light, has some kick because of that, but it’s worth the trade. It can still do a fair bit of damage.”
Dread fell like a weight over me.
He continued. “We’re not strong enough to take on Carl and Meg hand-to-hand. We need other advantages.”
Like hell. “Ben, no, I’ve never touched a gun in my life—”
“That’s why I’m taking you to a range where you can practice.”
“No. No no no. It’s cheating. We’re supposed to use claws and teeth. Survival of the fittest—”
“Law of the jungle crap?” he said. “You don’t think they’d cheat given half a chance?”
As a matter of fact, they had cheated. T. J. had agreed to walk away when Carl killed him. I just didn’t want to have to use a gun.
“Do it for me,” he said. “It’ll make me feel better. If you run into that guy alone, I want to know that you can drop him where he stands.”
I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it had come to this.
When I got my voice back I said, “Is this one of Cormac’s?” For a minute it felt like the bounty hunter was with us in spirit.
Ben shook his head. “Did you think he was the only one with a concealed weapons permit?” His smile turned sly.
Well. You learn something new every day. Even about the guy you’re sleeping with.
The shooting range was in a low concrete building north of town, in the suburbs. It might have been any business, and I’d have probably overlooked the unobtrusive sign, black print on white, announcing GUNS, AMMO, RANGE. SEVEN DAYS A WEEK.
Inside, the place smelled like Cormac. Rather, Cormac smelled like a gun shop, if I had ever known what a gun shop smelled like. Gun oil, metal, burned powder. That said something about Cormac.
Ben picked up a couple boxes of bullets, headsets for ear protection, and safety glasses from the guy at the counter. Boy, there were a lot of guns locked up behind the glass case under that counter. They all looked dark and angry.
At the back of the shop, past the double metal doors, came the sound of gunfire. Two guns, I thought, firing slightly out of synch. One was faster than the other.
His hand on my back, Ben steered me toward that door.
The back room was straight out of a police drama—various booths opened into a long hallway. Targets hung on lines in the back. The people in the two occupied booths ignored us.
Ben was all business and got straight to work.
