Starting with June

“My mother only has an opinion if Dad gives her one. She never thinks for herself. Can we talk about something more pleasant? Like your wedding? Are we going to have ugly bridesmaids’ dresses?”

Madison laughed. “That’s between you and Piper. Y’all get to pick them out. I don’t even care what color you choose as long as you’re both there—wherever ‘there’ is.”

“Have you and Adam considered a destination wedding? Savannah, Charleston and the Outer Banks are close by. Or you could go to the mountains.”

“That’s a good idea. One I’ll run by Adam and research. But I need a promise from you. Promise me you’ll be at the wedding wherever it is. It’s scary as hell to be doing this when I swore I’d never tie myself to a man again.”

Especially with her dead husband’s identical twin, June thought. She didn’t know the whole story of Madison’s first marriage, but she knew it had gone from heaven to hell at some point. “Do you have doubts?”

“Not a one. I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life. That’s the scariest part. He’s either perfect for me, or I’m completely besotted and blind.”

“I don’t think it’s the latter. I’ll be there no matter where, no matter when and no matter how ugly my dress is.”

That was one promise she’d have no trouble keeping.

* * *

FOR THE FIRST time ever, June dreaded going into work. She sat in her truck outside the station trying to rally her enthusiasm for the day ahead.

Yesterday had been tough with Mr. No Personality—correction, Mr. Unpleasant Personality—riding shotgun and wearing a perpetual scowl. She’d never met a more rigid, disagreeable, impatient, judgmental man...except maybe her father. But at least her father knew how to turn on the charm for his flock. He just didn’t waste it on her.

But after her conversation with Madison, June had decided to give Sam the benefit of the doubt and a second chance at being a decent human being. She climbed from the cab, shifted her duty belt at her waist, then marched from the parking lot into the station. As usual, she was early and the other deputies’ desks were empty. The only light came from the chief’s domain.

“Jones, my office,” Roth called out.

She stopped in front of the chief’s desk. “Yes, sir? Have you rethought my request to reassign Sam?”

“Not a chance. I had calls from each of those boys’ fathers last night. They both think you went overboard with the punishments.”

She hadn’t even clocked in and her day had begun to circle the drain. “But, Chief, this was their second offense, and after all the vandalism we had with those other teens a few months back—”

He held up one finger to stop her defense. “I disagreed with them. And I told them as much. You turned what could have been a bad and expensive experience into a learning opportunity—not just for these boys, but also for their peers.”

Surprised and relieved, she sighed. She and Roth didn’t have enough of a track record for her to know how he thought. “Thanks for the backup, sir.”

“I also told them if they’d take the time to parent their sons, Quincey PD officers wouldn’t have to.”

She winced. “That, uh, might not have been a good idea.”

“I’m not going to pander to egos. My predecessor was too nice and too lenient. No one will ever accuse me of that.

“Jones, I want you to take Rivers to the shooting range first thing this morning. Introduce him to Tate Lowry and empty a couple of boxes. Sam needs to get a weapon in his hands again and become familiar with the HK. Lowry’s expecting you. The department will cover the cost of the rounds.”

Sounded like fun—even with the bad company. “Yes, sir. Is that all?”

“No. Don’t shoot my new deputy.” He said it with a straight face, but humor sparkled in his eyes.

“I’ll do my best to resist the temptation, Chief, but I make no promises, because he is a pain in the butt,” she responded equally deadpan. The office had changed since Roth took over. Piper’s dad had been a good boss, but more things got done with the new chief always pushing for improvement.

“Let me give you a piece of advice in dealing with Sam. His eye is still healing and his vision isn’t what it once was. The doctors said it would take up to a year for it to stabilize. He’s on shaky ground now—not sure if he’ll end up with a permanent visual impairment. He’s a man of actions, not words. Let your accuracy do the talking this morning. And show no mercy. Give him all you’ve got. Understood?”

She bit her lip. As much as she disliked Sam, she wasn’t comfortable with kicking the man while he was down. “That seems a bit...cruel given his injury, sir. Are you sure that’s the best way to handle this?”

“I’m sure. Sam thrives on adversity. He thinks his clearest when under extreme pressure. That skill saved our asses on more than one occasion. The sniper motto is Death Before Capture. There were a couple of times I was certain there was no way out of our predicament, and I was contemplating eating my own bullet rather than surrendering. But each time, Sam’s ingenuity got us out of trouble.

“Trust me, Jones, he’ll take this as a challenge, and improving his skills will give him something to focus on besides being cut from the corps.”

She wasn’t convinced, but an order was an order. “If you say so, sir. I’ll do my best to wipe the floor with him.”

Roth laughed. “That’s exactly what he needs.”

The exterior door opened, then closed. Silence followed. No sound of clunky footsteps heralded Morris or Aycock. Instead, June looked up and saw Sam standing in the chief’s doorway. Without the sunglasses. The impact of his icy blue eyes on hers winded her like a bad tackle in a family-reunion football game.

“Repeating your request to dump me?” he growled.

Be nice, June. It won’t kill you. But it might come close.

She stretched her mouth into a smile so wide it nearly cracked her cheeks. “Good morning, Rivers. On the contrary, I’m getting our assignment. Clock in. I’ll be waiting in the cruiser. The chief is sending us on an expedition.”

She headed for the door and paused for Sam to step out of the way.

“Hold it, Jones.” The chief’s voice stopped her inches from her new partner.

So much for a quick escape. She pivoted to face the boss. The subtle aroma of man filled her nostrils. Sam. Not cologne. Her mouth dried. She was too close, but she refused to give away her unsettled reaction by backtracking. “Yes, sir?”

“The idea you submitted for modernizing our records and converting our paper files to digital is a good one. When the equipment I’ve requisitioned comes in, you and Sam will be in charge of that operation. Copy that?”

She wouldn’t be passing Deputy Rivers off to someone else anytime soon. Not good news. “Yes, Chief.”

“That’s all.”

She turned and looked at Sam. His cold gaze drilled hers, but he stubbornly held his ground, blocking half the doorway. Was he trying to intimidate her? If so, he was wasting his time. She’d endured far worse from her brothers and her fellow officers in Raleigh who’d been determined to run off the female country bumpkin—especially once she’d shown them up on the range.

She brushed past him, being extremely careful not to bump him, but at the last second the duty pack on her belt snagged on him, jolting her pulse into a wild rhythm. Ignoring it, she headed for the break room. She needed coffee and distance before closeting herself in the car with him.

Treat him like a brother, Madison had said. But neither Michael nor Rhett had ever had this disconcerting effect on her. On second thought, maybe she didn’t need the caffeine after all. Her pulse was pounding like a woodpecker against her eardrums, and she was already jumpy. If she wanted to be able to hit the target, she needed to steady her nerves.

Calm. Cool. Whoop his butt.

Yes, he was an ex-sniper. But that meant he was used to long-range rifles. Thanks to her grandfather, she was an expert with handguns. And as Roth had said, Sam had visual issues, too.

Time for some humble pie, Deputy Sam.

* * *

SAM HAD NEVER minded silence. Before now. He was used to solitude and didn’t need entertaining. He definitely did not need or miss June’s chatter or stopping every five yards to meet Quincey’s people.

Recon was his thing. The scenery—fields, woods, farms—was self-explanatory. He saw what he needed to see and made a mental map of the region. He didn’t need her to identify the plants that provided cover or the hollows where someone could hide, or for her to tell him stories about the odd characters who lived up each dirt driveway the way she had yesterday. Quiet suited him fine.

But he was flying blind with no intel to their destination and he didn’t like it. June was edgy. He could feel tension rolling off her like heat off an airstrip. The uneasy feeling of being on the verge of walking into an ambush grew stronger by the minute.

Another mile passed without June taking her foot off the gas except to allow a gaggle of geese to cross the road. On the outskirts of town she hit the turn signal. Sam muffled a groan. He should have known the reprieve wouldn’t last. After the kid fiasco yesterday she’d taken him to dozens of backwoods holes-in-the-wall to meet the citizens who operated Quincey’s mom-and-pop businesses. Was this yet another one?

Then she turned the car into the gravel lot and 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. He hadn’t even noticed her moving to the back of his lane. Her palm burned through his uniform. The concern in her tone ratcheted up his tension. He stood, reeled in the tattered target and replaced it, then ejected the magazine and popped in the next one.

Compensate. Figure out what’s going wrong and fix it.

Her scent drifted across the booth, disrupting his focus. Mind games? Blondie was playing with him—a man who’d been trained to block out biting insects, snakes and other vermin and even bodily functions to get his shot. Hell, he could lie in wait for hours or days, if necessary.

He’d better concentrate if he didn’t want to spend a meal looking into smug green eyes.

Come on, Rivers. You’re better than this.

He shook off her hand and fixed his gaze on the intersecting lines, very conscious of the woman watching him. He exhaled, ignoring her as best he could, squeezed the trigger repeatedly until his magazine was empty. His anxiety level rose with each shot.

He looked at the Swiss cheese of his target—pitiful—then at June. For a moment he thought he saw sympathy in her green eyes, and his spine turned to steel.

Then she shrugged. “Sixty-one more rounds to go. I like my steak medium rare with a baked potato drowning in butter on the side.”

He had to keep his head in the game. “You think you’re gonna beat me.”

“Of course. I know this weapon as well as I know my own face. You, on the other hand, are still learning your HK’s quirks and you’re out of practice.”

Her cockiness would have been cute if anxiety hadn’t been chewing a hole in his stomach. “My sights are off.”

She offered him her weapon, grip first. “Use mine.”

In other words, put up or shut up, Marine. What choice did he have? He exchanged guns with her. “Are you going to yap all day or shoot?”

Her eyebrows arched above the clear lenses. Then she about-faced. She took lane three. He moved to lane two, beside her.

He heard the telltale sound of her popping in a magazine and loading one in the chamber. He’d do better with her weapon. The sights were on target. Her accuracy proved that.

But he didn’t improve. Four magazines later he admitted it wasn’t the weapon. It was him.

He was a sniper, a sharpshooter, without a single bull’s-eye. If he couldn’t hit his target, where did that leave him?

Unemployable and without marketable skills.

Was the blind spot in his peripheral vision not enough of a curse? Was his visual impairment permanent? It had been five damned months since his final surgery. He was counting on healing and proving the doctors wrong.

Movement downrange caught his attention. June reeled in yet another target with a gaping hole in the center. Each perfect sheet had ratcheted up his tension until he was almost ready to burst out of his skin. His targets looked as if he’d used buckshot. A new recruit who’d never touched a weapon before boot camp would have had better results.

Desperation filled him, forcing out oxygen. He had to improve his scores. Again and again he reached for the box, until there were no rounds left. He’d wasted one hundred rounds and hadn’t scored a single winning sheet. He’d improved his score by shooting with his injured eye closed, but he was still nowhere near his previous proficiency.

“Nothing more we can do. Give it time,” the doctors had said.

Sometimes life sucked.

And then it got worse.

He removed the glasses and wiped his face, then backed out of the booth, facing one cold, hard fact. He was no longer a Marine. He was no longer a sharpshooter.

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