Page 85 of The Bodyguard

I took off sprinting that way, and vaulted the fence, and, as I did, I heard another shot.

What was going on? Who was shooting? Had the corgi-breeding stalker found us? Gone ballistic? Tracked Jack down in a random ravine in the middle of five hundred acres of nowhere? As I charged across the field, stumbling over anthills and thistle bushes, I made mental lists of possibilities for what I was about to find—and a whole set of contingency plans for how to handle each one.

Why, oh, why hadn’t Glenn authorized a firearm for me?

“You won’t need it,” he’d promised.

Too late now.

Whatever I’d find in that ravine, I’d just have to think fast and figure something out.

God willing.

But what I found there wasn’t a mad corgi breeder. Or a blood-soaked Jack Stapleton.

It was sweet, kindly, Doc Stapleton, resident patriarch. With a lever-action rifle. Shooting at bottles.

By the time I crested the ravine and saw him, I was close enough for him to hear me. He turned as I descended. I slowed from a sprint to a stop, and then bent over, hands on my knees, panting like crazy and waiting for my lungs to stop burning.

When I finally looked up, Doc was staring at me like he couldn’t fathom what I was doing there.

“I heard the shots,” I said, gasping. “I thought—” Then I shifted. “You scared me.”

Doc made a pffft noise and then said, “City slicker.”

Fine. We could go with that.

I stood up, still panting, and walked closer. Lined up on rocks against a bend in the ravine were glass bottles—maybe twenty. Green ones, brown ones, clear ones. Below the rocks, on the ground underneath, was a veritable lake of shattered glass.

“Gunshots,” Doc went on, as I took in the sight, “mean a whole different thing in the country.”

As far as he knew. But I nodded. “Target practice.”

Doc held out his gun to me. “Care to take a shot?”

I looked at it. The answer was no, of course. No, I wasn’t going to stand around shooting bottles when I was just on my way to quit my job. No, I wasn’t going to spend one more minute on this loony-bin ranch than I had to. Or blow my cover at the last minute by putting my skills on display.

No. Just, no.

And yet, I did need a minute to catch my breath.

And it might actually feel good to shoot something right now.

And that’s when Doc said, “You don’t have to hit anything,” in a tone like I was hesitating because I didn’t know how to shoot.

I was still resisting that little challenge when he added:

“This rifle’s a little tough for ladies to handle, anyway.”

I mean, Come on.

I could spare five minutes. Right?

I held my hands out for the rifle, and I let him hand it to me. Then I let him give me a lesson.

I didn’t lie to him, exactly. I just stayed pleasantly mute while he walked me through the most basic of basic introductions to the gun in my hands: “This is the stock,” he said, “and this is the barrel. This is the trigger. You pull this lever to reload between shots.” Then he pointed at the muzzle. “This is where the bullets come out. Be sure to point that at the ground until you’re ready to make some trouble.”

This is where the bullets come out?The urge to show him up rose in my body like water filling a glass.