Starting with June. Emilie Rose

a plain hand-painted sign came into view. Hunt and Bait Shop. He liked to hunt and fish. Maybe this wouldn’t be unbearable.

      June parked, climbed out of the patrol car and headed for the long, low cinder-block building without a word. He tracked after her. The sign in the window said the place wouldn’t open for another hour, but after a quick knock, she barged through the unlocked door.

      Sam followed a little more cautiously. Dozens of taxidermied dark eyes stared down at him from the walls. Deer, beavers, foxes, raccoon, bobcats, assorted fowl. There were a couple of pictures of a guy in ACUs tucked unobtrusively among them. A red steel door marked Live Fire Beyond This Point caught his attention.

      A shooting range? In Quincey? His day suddenly looked more interesting. Sam hadn’t fired a weapon in over six months—not by choice. He’d been warned after the surgery to avoid anything jarring like recoil for three months, but an hour before giving him the boot, his doctor had given the okay to resume normal activities.

      Normal. Ha. His life was anything but normal now.

      He itched to unload the semiauto in his holster. He’d come back tonight after work.

      “Tate?” June called out.

      A fifty-something buzz-cut-wearing man came out of the back office. The guy from the pictures—minus the uniform. A scar now marked the right side of his face and he walked with a mild limp.

      “June, I haven’t seen you in a coon’s age.” Then his gaze slid to Sam and he extended his hand across the glass display case containing an assortment of pistols, revolvers and a sweet Benchmade knife. “You must be the new deputy. I’m Tate Lowry, Master Sergeant, US Army, retired, but I won’t hold being a jarhead against you.” He delivered the rivalry insult with a smile.

      The guy knew who he was. Sam shook his hand. “Sam Rivers. Staff Sergeant, USMC. Former staff sergeant,” he corrected, and the words pierced him like an enemy’s bayonet. “And I won’t hold being a dogface grunt against you.”

      Lowry guffawed. “That’s the spirit.” Then he reached beneath the counter and set two boxes of .40-cal ammo on the surface. “Chief called an’ told me you two were coming. I don’t open to the public for an hour, so you have the place to yourself.”

      Shooting? That was the detail Roth had in mind for today? Thanks, buddy.

      “I’ve set targets on all four lanes,” Lowry continued, “and there are more stacked by the door. Have at it. If you need more ammo, you know where to find me.” The old guy winked at June.

      She grinned back, and her smile hit Sam like a sucker punch. “Thanks, Tate. I owe you a pecan pie.”

      “You owe me nothing, sweetheart, but I’ll take a pie off your hands anytime.” He turned back to Sam. “You need ear or eye protection?”

      Sam nodded, and Tate added clear-lens glasses and a set of earplugs to the ammo pile. Sam registered that he didn’t offer June either safety precaution.

      “Use of the shooting range is on the house for QPD. You’re welcome anytime. Rifle shooting is done out back. If you need to get in before or after my official hours, just give me a call and I’ll make it happen. I got nothing better to do.”

      “Thank you, sir. I appreciate it,” Sam said, eager to see the range.

      “You and I need to swap stories sometime. Not many people around here want to listen to an old fart talk about the good ol’ deployment days. Might be dumb, but I miss ’em.”

      “Copy that.”

      June grabbed a box of ammo and headed for the red door. Sam did the same. It would be good to know if the woman watching his back could hit anywhere close to her mark or if he’d need to take cover if she ever unholstered her weapon. Roth had said she’d graduated at the top of her class, but seeing was believing. The door closed behind them, and the familiar sulfur smell of gunpowder filled his nose.

      June stopped by the first lane. “If you have questions about the HK, let me know. Here’s the deal—one magazine per target, loser buys dinner. Highest number of winning sheets eats free. Just so you know, it’s going to be me, Rivers. I’ll be down there shellacking you.” She pointed to the far side of the room, then headed that way.

      Her cocky wager—not the sparkle in her eyes or the confident swing of her hips—grabbed his attention by the throat. He’d fired more makes of guns than there were weeks in a year. He took the closest lane. “I think I can figure out this weapon, and I’ll take that bet, Jones. I haven’t had a good steak in a while.”

      “You’ll be buying those steaks, Deputy.”

      Her vaunt made him laugh. “Do you know what I did for a living?”

      “I know.” She pulled ear and eye protection from her small bag and donned both before disappearing into her booth. The fact that she kept her own equipment in the car made him wonder if she needed that much practice. He couldn’t see her over the six-foot protective walls, but he could see her target downrange.

      He pulled his spare magazines from his belt and lined them up on the rubber-matted board. Anticipation and adrenaline—not her challenge—made his heart race as he emptied his police ammo, then refilled each clip with cheaper target rounds. He was almost done when the distinct crack-thump of June’s weapon pulled his gaze to the paper rectangle. She’d hit an inch left of center. Not bad. Lucky shot? Her second round drilled the target. Bull’s-eye. Before the paper stopped fluttering, a third round ruffled the edge of the same hole, then a fourth. He blinked and looked again.

      The blonde who wore sequined sandals and a ruffled bikini and cooled herself off with a squirt bottle was a sharpshooter?

      “No effin’ way,” he muttered.

      Roth would have warned him. Or would he? His buddy had a twisted sense of humor. Had he been messing with Sam’s head and enjoying a private joke? That had to be it. Oh yeah, today would be fun. He’d school June on how it was done. Nice to know she’d be a worthy opponent.

      She proved her skills further with eight more rounds. Then she ejected her magazine and backed out of the booth. Frowning down the aisle at him, she removed an earplug. “Need help loading?”

      He realized he’d stopped to watch her, and that was wrong, wrong, wrong. He was a professional, not a spectator. “No. Where’d you learn to shoot like that?”

      “There’s nothing to do in Quincey but fish and hunt. I used to hang out with my grandfather and two younger brothers. I’m a bit...competitive, or so they tell me.”

      “Not bad, Deputy. But not good enough to get a free meal out of me.” He stepped to the line. He’d never fired this weapon, had no idea if the sights were accurate, and it had been months since he’d discharged a pistol. But if there was one thing he knew, it was ballistics.

      He took a deep breath, then exhaled, slow and steady. His first shot went wide right, barely tearing the edge of the paper. He mentally adjusted for sights that were off and tried again. Low and outside. Damn. He fired a third and missed again.

      He was shooting all around the paper. Was it the gun or him? His mind spun, calculating distance, trajectory, velocity and a hundred other things. He was alive because he was a damned good shot.

       Was?

      The thought rocked him to the core. Had to be the HK.

      He tried to focus, to slow his respiratory and heart rates and still his unsteady hands. Damn it, he was shaking. He didn’t shake—not even when his life was on the line. He emptied the clip, replaced the target, then braced his elbows on the deck and emptied another magazine with the same bad results.

      His surgeon had warned that he might have some depth perception issues for a while due to the unequal pressure in his eyes. Was that the case here?

      “Take your time, Sam,” June said from behind him, and rested a hand on his shoulder.