Epilogue
One Month Later
The property was forty minutes east of Tampa, down a county road that lost its center line after the last gas station and didn't bother to apologize.
Live oaks pressed in from both sides, Spanish moss hanging low enough to brush the roof of the Range Rover, and the light came through the canopy in broken patterns that moved across Emily's legs like warm fingers.
"You're not going to tell me where we're going," she said.
"I told you. My range."
"You said you had property outside town where you built your own range. You didn't say it was in another zip code."
Jake's mouth curved. He was in jeans and a t-shirt, the backwards cap, Oakleys hanging from the collar. Saturday morning Jake. Her favorite version, though she was starting to realize every version was her favorite version.
"Patience."
"I'm a prosecutor. Patience is not a virtue I cultivate."
"I know. That's part of why we're here."
He turned off the county road onto a gravel track that wound through a stand of pines and opened into a clearing.
Emily sat up straighter. The range wasn't what she'd expected.
Not a commercial setup with lanes and partitions and fluorescent lighting.
This was built by hand, by a man who understood the fundamentals and cared about getting them right.
A covered firing line with a concrete pad.
Steel targets at various distances downrange, the closest maybe fifteen yards, the farthest out past where she could estimate.
A wooden bench with ammunition organized in neat rows.
Everything maintained, everything purposeful, everything Jake.
He parked and killed the engine.
"You built all of this," Emily said.
"Needed a project when I got out. The house was one. This was the other."
She climbed out. The morning air was already warm and heavy with pine and wet earth, the smell of Florida before the heat turned everything to static.
Jake went to the back of the Range Rover and opened a hard case she hadn't noticed.
Inside, nestled in foam, was a Glock 19 with a red dot optic mounted on the slide.
His carry gun. She'd seen it on the nightstand, in the safe, riding concealed at his appendix when they went out. She'd never touched it.
"That's yours," she said.
"It is."
"I assumed you'd have one smaller for me. A beginner gun."
Jake laughed, closed the case and looked at her with an expression she recognized. The patient, certain look he gave her when he was about to teach her something she didn't know she needed to learn.
"You don't have to learn to shoot on a small gun, Em. Small guns are harder to shoot. Less to hold onto, more felt recoil, shorter sight radius." He set the case on the bench. "You learn on the gun that teaches you the fundamentals. Then everything else is easier."
"Is there a metaphor happening here?"
"Always."
He opened the case again and cleared the weapon, checking the chamber with the same automatic precision she'd watched him use on everything. Movements that lived in his hands, not his head. Then he set it on the bench, slide locked back, muzzle pointed downrange.
"First rule," he said. "We don't touch it until you understand what we're building."
Emily crossed her arms. The morning sun was behind him, catching the edge of his cap, and she had the sudden, visceral memory of the first time she'd seen him in Ray's office, this same posture, this same authority, this same feeling in her stomach that she was about to be undone by a man who hadn't even started trying.
"I'm listening," she said.
"Shooting is five fundamentals. Five things, in order, every time. You get them right and the gun does exactly what you tell it to. You skip one and it doesn't matter how good the others are." He held up one hand, fingers spread. "Platform. Grip. Sights. Trigger. Follow through."
"That sounds like a closing argument."
"It sounds like everything." He stepped closer. Not touching her. Standing at the edge of her space, close enough that she could feel the heat of him in the morning air. "Ready?"
"Ready."
"Platform first." He moved behind her. "Face the target. Feet wider than your shoulders."
Emily turned downrange and widened her stance. She felt him step in close, him behind her, not quite touching, the proximity a suggestion her body was already responding to.
"Wider."
She adjusted. His foot nudged the inside of hers, widening her base another two inches.
"A platform has to be three things," he said.
His voice was near her ear, low, the register he used in the dark when it was late and they were tangled together and the world had contracted to the space between their bodies.
"Stable. Flexible. Mobile. You have to be grounded enough to absorb recoil, loose enough to move with it, and ready to transition if the situation changes. "
His hands came to her hips. Adjusted the angle. His thumbs pressed against the small of her back, correcting her posture, and Emily felt her breath change without her permission.
"You're tilting," he said.
"I'm distracted."
"By what?"
"You know by what."
His mouth was close enough to her ear that she could feel his breath. "Focus, Counselor. We're just getting started."
He shifted her weight forward, just slightly, until she was balanced on the balls of her feet with her center of gravity low and stable. His thumbs traced the line of her hip bones through the thin fabric of her shirt and Emily's pulse was doing things that had nothing to do with firearms training.
"Good," he said. "That's your platform. Everything builds from here."
He stepped to her side. Picked up the Glock. Checked it again, the automatic ritual, and placed it in her hands.
"Grip." His hands came over hers, wrapping around them, arranging her fingers on the frame.
"Dominant hand high on the backstrap. As high as you can get it.
Your support hand fills the space that's left.
" He pressed her palms together around the grip, his fingers guiding hers into position.
"Now squeeze. Not the trigger. The grip. "
Emily squeezed. The gun was heavier than she'd expected. Dense, purposeful weight.
"Harder."
She squeezed harder.
"Now here's the part nobody teaches." He adjusted the pressure. "Isometric tension. Your dominant hand pushes forward. Your support hand pulls back. Equal pressure, opposite directions."
Push and pull. Give and take. Emily felt the gun stabilize in her grip as the opposing forces locked it into place.
"Feel that?" His voice was low. The push-pull of the grip was undoing her in ways that transcended marksmanship. "That's what control feels like. Not squeezing harder. Not muscling through it. Two forces in balance. Neither one dominant. Working together."
She felt it. In the grip and in her chest and in the space between their bodies where the morning air was disappearing.
"That's us," she said.
He tightened he pressure over her grip. Then he released and moved behind her again.
"Sights." He reached around her, his arms along hers, his chest against her back. He tilted the gun up until it was level with the closest steel target. "Put the dot where you want the round to go. Not where you think it should go. Not where someone told you to aim. Where you want it."
His cheek was against hers. She could feel the stubble, the warmth of his skin, the rhythm of his breathing compared to the chaos of her own.
"Place the dot on the target. That's your sight picture." His voice had dropped to a register barely above a whisper. "Once you have it, you hold it. Don't chase it. Don't force it. Let it settle."
Emily stared through the optic. The red dot hovered over the steel target, drifting in small circles that matched her heartbeat.
She let it settle, he'd told her to, and the circles tightened, and the dot sharpened on center mass, and she understood that he'd just described the entire arc of their relationship in the language of the only profession he'd ever known.
He'd put his sights on her the day they met. He'd held the picture. He'd let it settle.
"I see it," she said.
"I know you do." His lips brushed the shell of her ear. Not a kiss. The ghost of one, the promise of contact that hadn't arrived yet, and Emily's arms were still but the rest of her was coming apart.
"Trigger," he said. "The most important fundamental."
His right hand slid down her arm to her hand. His index finger found hers on the trigger guard and guided it to the trigger itself. The contact was precise. His fingertip on hers, the lightest possible pressure, introducing her to the mechanism that would make everything real.
"You don't jerk the trigger. You don't slap it.
You don't rush it." His voice was in her ear, his body against her back, his finger on hers on the trigger, and Emily was vibrating at a frequency that had nothing to do with the Glock 19.
"You press. Slowly. Carefully. Precisely.
The most important thing in the world, treated like the most important thing in the world. "
"Jake."
"Any disturbance you cause moves the gun.
Moves the shot off target." His finger pressed hers, the smallest increment of pressure, taking up the slack in the trigger until she felt the resistance of the wall.
"So you press through with care. With patience.
With absolute attention to what's happening under your finger. "
Emily's breathing had gone shallow. Her whole body was focused on the single point of contact between his fingertip and hers, the trigger between them, the target downrange that she could barely see because every nerve she had was aimed at the man pressed against her back.
"When it breaks," he said, "let it surprise you."