Chapter Two
Path
Rosalie
A plethora of guns lay in display cabinets
before me, lined up on their sides, white tags attached to them.
A little old man with not a lot of hair (in fact, there were
about three strands wafting over his shiny dome) was on the opposite side of
the case, just down, eyeing me as I assessed my options.
I could imagine what I looked like. What with it being just
a couple days after Tack, Hop, Tyra, and Lanie came to call, I was still
bruised and stitched up with a taped nose, angry welts across my neck, and
moving gingerly.
He probably thought I was a woman with revenge on my mind.
I wasn’t.
I was a woman with protection on my mind.
Chaos said they were going to cover me but they’d said that
before and no protection was infallible (as I’d learned the hard way).
This time, I wasn’t going to take any chances.
The little old guy didn’t approach me, which I thought was
weird. He worked there and I was a customer. I had questions. I mean, I could
pick a gun that fit in any one of my purses (or at least most of my purses—I
was equal opportunity with purses, and wallets, seeing as if the purse was
smaller, the wallet would also have to be) but I also needed one I could
handle.
Further, I needed to learn how to handle it.
According to the Yelp listing, Zip’s Gun Emporium was the
place for all your gun and ammo needs, offering admittedly crotchety (and there
were a fair few reviews that shared this information), but nevertheless expert
gun and ammo advice.
The listing also shared it had a firing range.
And whoever Zip was, he taught classes.
He did it grumpily, but he was reportedly good at it.
But there weren’t any notices up anywhere about these
classes. The only things on the walls were shotguns, rifles, and more handguns,
as well as the odd mostly-naked-chick poster mingled with mostly-naked-chick
calendars.
I needed a gun and to sign up for a class.
So I needed to talk to somebody.
“You takin’ this?” I heard asked.
I looked in the direction this came from, which was toward
the old guy, who I saw was not speaking to me, just as I heard, “Yup.”
That was when I turned even further, which was right before
I froze.
Snapper was moving toward me.
He was doing it also doing a full body scan, up, down, back
up again, down, then back up, gaze lingering on my throat, then on my face, and
finally he made it to me, stopped and looked into my eyes.
It was a man-bun day as well as about six days past grooming
his beard.
And I knew it was six days because I felt it hit my lower
belly that those six days since I was hurt were six days he spent worrying
about me and not bothering with what he considered was unnecessary personal
grooming.
“Hey,” his baritone came at me.
“Hey,” I said quietly.
“How you doin’?” he asked.
“Good,” I answered.
His teeth came out and hit dead center in his full lower lip
in a way I instantly became mesmerized.
They let that lip go to whisper, “Rosie.”
I lifted my gaze to his.
“What you doin’ in a gun shop,
honey?” he asked.
I thought that was a stupid question and was surprised by it
because Snap was not a stupid guy.
“I think that’s kinda obvious,” I
pointed out since he was looking right at me and the swelling might be gone but
the rest was still visible.
“How ’bout we go get some coffee,” he suggested.
I shook my head. “I need to buy a gun today so I can get
started on the waiting period thingie.”
His mouth moved in a way I’d never seen before and he didn’t
respond immediately. I would understand why when he did and it was tentative.
“Colorado doesn’t have a waiting period.”
He didn’t want me to know that.
He didn’t want me owning a gun.
He still told me that.
So Snapper.
“Snapper—” I began.
He got closer.
I shut up because, first, he got closer, and second, because
when he did, I could smell him, leather and soap and outdoors and all of that
together on Snapper smelled beautiful, and last, once he got closer, he just was
closer.
“Come have coffee with me,” he urged.
“I need a gun,” I whispered.
“You don’t need a gun, Rosie.”
“I need a gun, Snapper.”
“You don’t know how to handle a gun,” he pointed out.
“I’m gonna take lessons,” I
shared.
He looked in my eyes then said, “Zip,” without breaking my
gaze.
The little old man showed across the case at our sides.
“You got the binder?” Snapper asked, again not looking away
from me.
“Boy, you’re gonna blow a sale for
me,” the little old guy, apparently the Zip of Zip’s Gun Emporium, said by way
of answer.
That was when Snapper turned his head, just his head, his
body didn’t move from facing me.
“Chaos buy exclusive from Zip’s?” he asked.
“You came by coupla days ago,
warned me about her,” Zip said and that was when I looked to him just in time
to catch him jerking his bald head my way. “I heard you and agreed to give you
the heads up, she showed. Now I see her, and if she wants it, I’m sellin’ this girlie a gun.”
Okay, I couldn’t handle the explanation of why Snapper was
there and that was the fact that it was apparent he’d made the rounds of gun
shops in order to stop me from doing something he thought might be foolhardy.
And since I couldn’t handle that, I had to focus on
something else.
“Thank you,” I said to Zip.
“I can impose my own waiting period and I’m doin’ that,” Zip said to me. “You can’t have a gun until
your ass is in my range and I’m feelin’ good you can
handle yourself with it.”
“Works for me,” I replied.
“Rosie,” Snapper said low.
I looked to him. “I’m getting a gun, Snap.”
He turned again to Zip.
“You wanna lose Chaos business?”
he threatened.
Zip didn’t blink. “What I want is a world where this shit,”
he jabbed a finger my way, “doesn’t walk in my doors. That miracle happens,
I’ll close those doors. That miracle ain’t gonna happen. So you boys take your business elsewhere,” he
shrugged, “that’d suck balls. But this girlie feels safer with a firearm in her
purse, I’ll get over it.”
Sadly, I wasn’t the first beat-to-hell woman who’d walked
through his doors looking for protection.
Or a means to get revenge.
Surprisingly, Zip was the kind of man who cared about it.
“That’s sweet,” I noted.
“Shee-it,” he muttered. “I ain’t sweet.”
“But it was sweet, what you just said,” I disagreed.
“See,” he started, “I wanna arm
you so whatever motherfucker did that shit to your face…and your throat…you got
the means to drill holes in him. That ain’t sweet.”
Okay, maybe it wasn’t sweet.
“It was eight mothereffers who did
this,” I shared.
His eyes got big.
Then they got mad.
Then they got mean.
After that, they snapped to Snapper.
“This the girl Bounty worked over?” he asked.
“You heard,” Snap remarked.
“All over the street,” Zip declared. “Always been useless
assholes. Now I’m more glad you Chaos boys carved those dipshits up.”
“She’s got Chaos protection,” Snapper stated.
“Yeah, I get that, you’re here,” Zip returned.
“So she doesn’t need a gun,” Snapper concluded.
“She yours?” Zip asked.
“Yes,” Snapper said.
“No,” I said at the same time.
Zip looked between Snap and me, an expression of resignation
slid over his features, and he mumbled, “Christ, not another one of these.”
I didn’t know what that meant but I quickly carried on in
hopes of ensuring a sale for ole Zip, “I have a mom. We’re close. She could
become a Bounty target if they can’t get to me. So she probably needs a gun
too. And lessons.”
This was a lie, considering Mom already had a gun. She
actually had four. They were Dad’s. She also knew how to use them. She wasn’t a
fan of firearms, as such. It wasn’t like it was a hobby. She was just a fan of
the second amendment, because she’d been my father’s woman for nearly forty
years and he was a big fan of firearms as well as, obviously, the second
amendment.
Maybe I should have just asked for one of Dad’s.
Then again, if I’d asked, it would make her worried about my
state of mind.
So I hadn’t asked.
The fact that she could, indeed, be on Bounty radar was
something I needed to chat with her about.
It was clear I didn’t know Beck and his brothers as well as
I thought I did.
Now I knew anything was possible.
It was also clear I should have probably gone out shooting
with my dad one of the times he’d mentioned it. But this was part of my mom not
being a fan, as such. She said Dad could teach me to shoot when I was old
enough and when I was old enough I got more interested in shopping, movies, and
boys with bikes (not in that order) and I forgot to ask my dad to teach me to
shoot.
“Chaos covering her mother?” Zip asked Snapper, taking me
out of my thoughts.
“Just get the binder, Zip,” Snap ordered on a sigh.
Zip shot a squinty-eyed look at Snap before he grumbled
unintelligibly and moved away.
“I’m not sure I want to look at whatever this binder is,” I
decreed and Snap stopped watching Zip move and looked to me.
“You definitely don’t wanna look
at Zip’s binder,” he confirmed.
I decided to change topics.
“This house you all moved me into, is it one of yours?” I
asked.
“Yup,” he answered without delay, no beating around the bush
for Snapper.
“Did you evict someone for me?” I asked.
“Yup,” he answered, again without delay.
Holy crap.
He actually had.
“Like, in a day?” I queried, my voice higher, my eyebrows
searching for my hairline.
“Gave them two days,” he told me.
“That’s…well, that’s crazy.”
“Had another property open. Bigger, nicer, moved them into
that. Same rent. So I didn’t evict them, exactly. And they had no complaints.”
Bigger property, same rent as the smaller one.
And for the time being, I was rent free.
He was going to bleed money for me.
Oh God.
“Snap, you didn’t have to do that.”
“You’re wrong.”
“I can stay with Mom until—”
“Rosie, it’s done.”
I closed my mouth.
Zip showed with the binder.
Snap’s leather creaked as he reached out, took it from Zip’s
fingers, dropped it to the case and opened it at random.