I reach under my blazer and fumble at the grip, clumsily yank it free. “That’s harder to do smoothly than I thought it’d be.”
“Exactly.” He moves beside me, a paw covering my hand over the weapon and pushing it down toward the floor. “Finger off the trigger, darlin’. Unless you’re planning on shooting me.”
I realize I have my finger inside the trigger guard. I hastily remove it and slide it along the outside of the guard. “Oh. Shit. I know better—sorry.”
He removes his hand. “This is a Sig, so it does have a safety. Make sure it’s on.” I do so, and he steps away. “Now. Holster, and practice drawing. Keep practicing until it’s smooth and natural. Safety on, trigger off the finger.” He turns back to me. “In fact, unload it. Eject the mag and the round.”
I obey, cautiously, and he thumbs the round back into the magazine, then sets the magazine on the nearby shelf.
“Now, practice drawing while I get my shit sorted.”
I holster the pistol, let my blazer drop back into place, and then practice drawing it; I manage to be smoother about it, but it still feels slow and clumsy. I keep practicing while Duke shrugs out of his windbreaker; he’s wearing Dickie’s khakis over combat boots, and a black T-shirt under a maroon windbreaker, a thin, light jacket meant simply to conceal his shoulder holster than as weather protection, which we clearly don’t need in Portugal in the summer. His holster is a fancy modular system, allowing him to fasten the subcompact machine gun to the holster opposite the pistol already there. His knife is on one of the shoulder straps, a second pistol up near his pectoral. A third, this one looking tiny in his massive paw, he Velcros around his left ankle, the cuff of his pants concealing it. With the windbreaker back on, you wouldn’t even know he’s carrying three pistols and a machine gun, plus a giant combat knife. He zips the windbreaker halfway up and then shoves the sleeves up around his elbow.
I eye him. “When was the last time you left home unarmed?”
He glances at me. “Like, without a gun? Or without a weapon of any kind?”
I shrug, holstering and redrawing again—this time it feels fairly quick and smooth. “Either—both.”
“Last time I didn’t have a gun at all was…shit, I don’t even know. When I was seventeen, I think. Before I joined the Navy.” He muses. “Even in my dress uniform, I was strapped one way or another.”
“What about your wedding?” I ask.
He snickers. “Nope. I was carrying. Two, actually. One under my tux jacket, and an ankle piece.”
“At your own wedding?” I say with a laugh.
He shrugs. “Sure. It was a year or so after Cain was finally dead, but we weren’t sure there weren’t any other enemies out there wanting our blood. So yeah, I was armed at my wedding. I wasn’t about to let some shit go down the day I made that woman my bride. Hell no. Anybody wanted to step up and make trouble for me onmywedding day was gonna have a bad fuckin’ time.”
“And every day since?”
“Just doesn’t feel right. I feel naked without a gun. I’ve been a combat operative of one kind or another since I was eighteen, Rin. It’s all I know. Carrying a weapon is just second nature. Shit, I keep a piece in my damn bathroom at home—behind the toilet. Just in case, you know?”
“I guess that makes sense.” I hold out my hands. “I think I’m ready if you are.”
He gestures at me. “Let me see.”
I draw, holding it in both hands the way Sasha taught me when I was sixteen, one hand over the other, aiming it downward. Replace it. “How’s that?”
“Maybe we can get you a few minutes somewhere to practice popping off a few rounds. For now, though, pretty good.” He hands me the magazine, and I tap it into the handle, pull the slide, and holster it, making sure the safety is still on, first. “Now, a few things to keep in mind: do not draw that unless I tell you to. Do not fire it unless I tell you to. Don’t even take off the safety without my direct instructions. The only exceptions to this rule is if your life is directly and immediately in danger, as in someone is either aiming a gun at you, shooting at you, or in some way putting your life in peril. If that circumstance arises, you protect yourself at all costs. You don’t hesitate. You draw, aim for center mass, and fire. If you have to discharge your weapon in protection of your life, you shoot to kill. As I said, center mass, and you fire three times. Don’t bother with headshots, or grouping, just hit them anywhere between throat and groin. Three times, quickly.”
“Why three times? Won’t once incapacitate them?”
“Sure. But you’re not after incapacitation. You don’t have the reflexes or training I do—I can one-shot-kill someone without thinking from fifty yards, one-handed. Or I can knee-cap them so I can interrogate them. And I can make that decision in a split second. You’ve never taken gunfire, never faced someone actively seeking to end your life—it’s chaotic, at best. Intentions fall away, and you’re left with training. Which you don’t have.” He taps his chest, between his pecs. “So, if you have to shoot, you shoot right here, three times. Don’t justblamblamblam, though. Shoot, recenter, shoot, recenter, shoot. Got it?”
I nod, swallowing hard. This suddenly feels very different from how I imagined it would. “Do you think I’ll have to?”
He snags a pair of magazines for my handgun and gives them to me, and I slide them into the designated pockets of the holster, on the opposite side of my torso from the gun itself. “Yes, frankly, I do.”
He pulls his phone out, scrolls through his contacts, muttering to himself. “Where are you, Yates? Ah, there you are.” He taps the entry and puts the phone to his ear while it rings. “Yates, it’s Duke Silver. Yes, really. Dead? Why would I be dead? No, listen man, I’m in Lisbon and I need a ride to Malta, off the books. Am Iarmed? Bitch, have youmetme?”
I cackle, and he frowns at me to be quiet.
“Fifty grand? Are you out of your goddamn hillbilly-ass mind? It’s not even that far…of course I can afford it, y’ugly mouth-breathing yokel. It’s the point of the matter—I know you can do better than that. A trade, you say? Well, how’s about this: I run a C-Q-C training academy in Colorado—I can give you and two others a full run-through, on me, if you can get me and my plus-one to Malta ASAP, off-book, no questions, no records.” He listens, nods. “Deal. Tell me where to be and when…yeah, the number I gave you and told you to never call or text under any circumstances. Good deal, thanks, Yates.” He stares at his phone after hanging up, and a message chimes through; he consults a map on his phone, and then gestures at me. “All right, girlie, let’s get to gettin’.”
“I’m your plus-one, huh?” I say, following him back down the stairs.
He keys a code into the keypad, repeats it, and then turns away. “Fancy-ass system Cuddy’s got, there. Some sort of nonrepeating, auto-generating passcode, so every time a passcode is used, it generates a new one and sends it to Cuddy in some encrypted packet. Have to look into that.” He crosses the street, rounds a corner, and we’re at a more major intersection, where he edges to the curb and hails a cab. Once we’re seated, he answers me. “Just means I’m bringing someone with me and that person’s identity is not up for discussion.” He eyes me. “And trust me, you don’t want someone like Yates knowing who you are.”
