Second Shot

“You’re not a fan of Kipling, Mr. Vaughan?” I said quietly. “That the female of the species is more deadly than the male?”

He laughed. “That has not been my experience,” he said flatly. ‘And trust me, Miss Fox, I’ve had plenty of experience. Women are too flighty, too easily distracted, and generally just not disciplined enough to make good troops under battlefield conditions.”

“Is that so?”

“That is so,” he said softly, eyes locked on mine. ‘And besides anything else-if you’ll excuse my language-they can’t shoot for shit.”

“I’d be careful what you say to Charlie,” Lucas broke in. “She happens to be ex-army herself.”

Vaughan eyed me for a moment, as if working out how much of that he believed, even though I knew he’d already worked out exactly what I was. He laughed again, a short exhalation of amusement, quickly past, that had my teeth grinding, nevertheless.

“Is she really?” he murmured. “Well, my comments still stand.”

“Perhaps, in that case, you might like to give her the opportunity to prove you wrong?” Lucas said, a little defiance creeping in now. “Not quite the Marine Corps against the Special Air Service, but how about the Women’s Royal Army Corps? We could even put a little money on it, make things interesting.”

I thought I caught the faintest trace of a flush across Vaughan’s cheekbones. “That’s hardly fair,” he said.

“I know,” I said gravely, “but I could give you a head start if you like.”

Simone’s laugh was quickly smothered, but it earned her a searing glance from Vaughan. Even Ella, picking up on her mother’s amusement, was smiling, and that seemed to irritate Vaughan all the more. He took a step forwards. Simone stopped laughing and I moved in front of her. Something of the glint disappeared from his eye.

“Very well,” he said. “I’m sure Lucas will find you something you can handle.” And he turned on his heel and stalked away.

Lucas watched him go and I saw him roll his shoulders like a cat with its fur up, dying to get its claws into something. He turned to me, speculation in his eyes. “What can you handle?” he said.

I shrugged. “A SIG P226 would be my preference,” I said, “but any 9mm automatic will probably do. I don’t have to beat him, do I? I just have to not disgrace myself.”

“Oh no,” Simone said, and the bitter note in her voice surprised me. “I think you have to beat him.”

The range itself ran along the back of the building, a long narrow tunnel of a room with a sand berm at the far end and pockmarked blockwork walls. Lucas switched on the lights and I heard the whirr of the extraction fans kicking in at the same time. It was cold back there, away from the heated interior of the store, and there was the faint smell of mildew in the air.

Simone was torn between wanting to watch, and wanting to keep Ella out of the way In the end Simone stayed just outside the range, behind the thick glass panel that separated it from the stockroom. I slipped out of my bulky jacket and gave that to her for safekeeping.

Lucas quickly gathered up targets and ear defenders for all of us — especially for Ella, even though the range was soundproofed inside. He unlocked one of the gun safes and pulled out a small canvas holster containing the familiar shape of the SIG. I slid the gun out and automatically dropped the magazine and racked back the slide to check the chamber was empty It seemed in reasonable condition, well-oiled and free-moving.

“So, are you any sort of a shot, Charlie?” he asked.

“I’m reasonable,” I said.

He nodded. “If you are, take his money,” he said quickly “I don’t get the opportunity.”

I would have asked him more about that, but Vaughan strode back in, an aluminium gun case in his hand. He set it down on the workbench under the window and opened it up.

Inside was a beautifully kept.45-caliber Heckler amp; Koch Mark 23, the civilian version of the SOCOM military pistol. An expensive piece, designed for covert work, to take out sentries. The end of the barrel was threaded to take a suppressor and the weapon had the option to prevent the slide coming back to eject the spent shell after each shot, to maintain the silence of the kill. The sight of that gun made me more wary of Vaughan than almost anything else about him.

He loaded it quickly, feeding in twelve rounds of Federal jacketed hollowpoints. I fed in the same number of plain old military ball ammo from the box Lucas had given me. I kept my face blank as I did so, concentrated on regulating my heart rate and breathing, slowing my systems down so, when I faced the target and it mattered, I’d be calm and relaxed.

Vaughan finished his task, palmed the magazine back into the pistol and pinched back the slide to chamber the first round. Lucas clipped two paper targets to the pulley system and ran them out to the twenty-yard mark, side by side. Plenty far enough with a gun I’d never fired before.

“So,” Vaughan said, raising an eyebrow in my direction, “are you prepared to put money on who’s the finer shot?”

“How much?”