Page 17 of The Chain

“I’ll take it.”

Fred winces. Clearly he was expecting her to haggle him down but Rachel is so desperate she’s willing to pay the asking price. She sees him look out into the parking lot and note that her car is a beat-up orange Volvo 240. “Tell you what,” he says. “I’ll throw in a box of shells and a little lesson. Do you want me to show you how to use it?”

“Yes, please.”

Fred walks her to the indoor range.

“You ever fire a gun before?” he asks.

“No. I’ve held one. A rifle, in Guatemala. But I never fired it.”

“Guatemala?”

“Peace Corps. We were making wells. Me and Marty—my ex—were liberal arts majors, so of course they sent us to the jungle to work on an irrigation project. We had no clue. We had our baby girl with us. Kylie. Crazy, really, when you think about it. Marty said he saw a jaguar stalking the camp. No one really believed him. He hurt his arm when he fired the rifle.”

“Well, I’m going to teach you how to do it right,” Fred says and he gives her ear protectors and shows her how to load the weapon. “Tight against your shoulder. There will be a kick, it’s a twenty-gauge. No, no, much tighter. Brace it with your body. If there’s a gap, the weapon will drive itself into your collarbone. Remember Newton’s third law. Every force results in an equal and opposite force.”

Fred pushes a button and a paper target comes up on a roof runner and stops twenty-five feet away from them. There’s a claustrophobic smell in here of grease and gunpowder. The target is a scary-looking man also carrying a weapon; it’s not a terrified little kid.

“Pull the trigger, that’s it, go on, easy does it.”

She squeezes the trigger, there’s an enormous bang, and Fred is right about Newton’s third law. The barrel pounds into her shoulder. When she opens her eyes and looks at the paper target, she finds that it has been obliterated. “Twenty-five feet or closer and you should be OK. If they’re farther away and they’re running, let them run. You get my drift?”

“Let them run toward you so you can kill them or let them run away and call the police.”

He winks at her. “You catch on quick.”

She takes the shells and pays with her flood money. She thanks Fred and goes out to the car and puts the shotgun on the passenger seat next to her. If they’re monitoring her through her phone somehow, hopefully they will see that she’s serious and that she’s getting things done.

11

Thursday, 11:18 a.m.

The Hampton Mall is the perfect place to buy burner phones. She slides the car into a spot in the parking lot, opens up the trunk, and rummages around looking for Kylie’s Red Sox cap. Her own Yankees hat sometimes attracts attention; a Sox or a Pats cap never gets a second look. She finds the cap, puts it on, and pulls it low over her face.

Her phone rings and her stomach lurches. “Hello?” she says automatically without waiting to see who it is.

“Hi, Rachel, this is Jenny Montcrief, Kylie’s homeroom teacher.”

“Oh, Jenny, um, hi.”

“We were wondering where Kylie was today?”

“Yes, she’s sick. I meant to call the office.”

“You have to call before nine.”

“I will next time, I promise. I’m sorry. She won’t be in today, she’s not feeling well.”

“What’s the matter? Anything serious?”

“Just a cold. I hope. Oh and, um, vomiting.”

“Oh, dear. I’m sorry to hear that. Hopefully we’ll see her tomorrow. Rumor has it she’s cooking up a great presentation on King Tut.”

“Tomorrow, um, I don’t know. We’ll see. These things are unpredictable. Listen, I better go, I’m getting some medicine for her right now.”

“How long is she going to be out?”