Second Shot

He pursed his lips. “Shall we say a straight hundred?”

I nodded shortly and pulled my ear defenders into place. The loudest thing in my world was suddenly the sound of my own blood beating inside my head.

I half-expected Vaughan to insist I went first, but he shifted into a stance, legs braced and the Mark 23 held out in front of him in a double-handed grip, and commenced firing without ceremony. The first round out of the big.45 made me flinch, even though I’d been expecting it. The others were just background noise.

The targets were reduced-size B27S, a black head and torso silhouette on a white background, with a series of rings numbered 7 to 9 as the size decreased closer to the body’s center. The last two rings were unnumbered apart from an X dead center.

Vaughan took his time, finished firing and lowered his gun, letting out a long breath. A lazy trail of smoke wafted up towards the extraction system. He’d put all twelve inside the two inner circles, just breaking the line to the 9 ring with the first two. They were low and left, which told me he was jerking the trigger just a little until he settled. He turned to me with challenge in his face. I returned his look without emotion, then picked up the SIG.

I’d already made up my mind to do whatever Vaughan hadn’t. He’d fired slow so I knew I had to fire fast. I waited to see where the first cold shot landed, and as soon as I realized the gun hadn’t been abused, that it was accurate, I put the next seven rounds straight into the center of the target with hardly a pause, obliterating the center X.

Four left.

I deliberately shifted my aim. Two high in the 8 ring, exactly where the target’s heart would be.

The last two rounds I placed outside the numbered circles altogether. They went into the head. Not dead center, but slightly low and within ten mil of each other. Through the mouth, if the target had had one. Killing shots.

As the twelfth shot fired, the working parts slid back and locked on an empty magazine. I put the SIG down on the bench and pulled off my ear defenders. The blurred sounds of the outside world sharpened instantly

I turned and found Vaughan watching me as the door opened and Lucas came in, together with Simone and Ella, who’d taken charge of my jacket. Rosalind had also joined them, and she didn’t look happy to find us here.

“Looks like you win, Mr. Vaughan,” I said as Lucas winched the targets back in.

Vaughan studied the targets for a moment. Despite the cold there was a trickle of sweat at his temple and he was slightly pale. I reached into my back pocket and pulled out my wallet, started to count out the dollar bills inside, but he waved them away.

“You have a talent, Miss Fox,” he said, recovering his poise. “What a shame to waste it.”

At that moment the mobile phone in my jacket pocket started making the horrible tweedling noise that indicated I had a new text message. Ella dropped the coat on the floor and dived for the appropriate pocket. Before I could stop her she’d seized the phone and, like any four-year-old worth her salt in this technological age, she’d pressed the button.

“Ella,” I said quickly, “can I see that, please?”

Ella ducked under my reaching arm and darted away, giggling. She avoided Simone, and in the end it was Rosalind who managed to pluck the phone from the child’s grasp. Rosalind moved to hand it over and then, as the screen caught her eye, she stilled.

“What is it?” Simone asked, crowding round to look. “Are you getting dirty pictures from your boyfriend, Charlie?” Even Vaughan craned his neck at that.

I reached over and snatched the phone, but by that time it seemed that everyone except me had seen what the message contained. When I looked at it myself, I cursed silently and wished that they hadn’t.

On the screen was a small, grainy digitized image, obviously scanned in from an old color photograph. It showed a man in his forties, wearing Army uniform and smiling into the camera.

“But who is that?” Simone asked, but I saw the rising fear in her eyes and knew she didn’t really need an answer.

I scrolled down. Underneath the picture Sean had sent was a line of text. It said: Greg Lucas?

Eleven

Simone waited until we were on our own outside before she ripped into me. I suppose I should be thankful for that, at least. She got all of three strides past the outer doorway, then whirled to face me, shoulders hunched like a boxer about to strike.

“What the hell’s going on, Charlie?”

“I’m doing my job,” I said, keeping my voice quiet.

“Oh yeah? Your job is to keep us safe,” she said, stabbing a finger in my direction. “Not to go digging around and upsetting my father by making it obvious that you don’t trust him.”

I sighed. “It’s not a question of that,” I said, even though I knew it probably was. I dragged out my phone again, flipped it open. “Look at the picture, Simone. No, look at it! Can you honestly say you can see the resemblance?”