Page 56 of A Love Most Fatal

“Here.” Vanessa presses a few bullets into the magazine’s sleeve and hands it to me to do the same. It looked easy when she did it, but it hurts my fingers as I try to push metal bullets into their metal case. She loads a second magazine while I finish mine.

“These are .22s.” She holds up one of the little bullets. “They’re not the best, but they’re good to learn with. Could kill someone under the right circumstances.”

I gulp and pluck the bullet from her hand to add it to my now-full case.

“Great. Now put in a magazine and load the gun.”

She makes it sound so easy, and after a moment of messing with it, I guess it is. I have the clip in place and am working on pulling back the hammer when shots fire in the bay next to us making me jump. It’s just Mary shooting a much larger handgun than the one I’m holding, with what looks like a very casual amount of focus on the target in her lane. Her shots slice the center of her paper to bits, nonetheless. Makes it look rather easy.

“This is the safety.” Vanessa points to a little switch where my pointer finger can reach. I slide it down and then back up into place.

Vanessa turns away from me and messes with a couple of buttons on the stall’s wall and suddenly a tall sheet of paper drops down ahead of us. It’s a target with one big striped circle in the middle and four smaller ones at each corner.

“Shoot it,” she says and steps back.

“But I don’t?—”

“Just try,” she says.

I don’t know anything about holding a gun aside from what I’ve seen in video games and movies, but I raise the gun shakily in front of me and take a big breath. There’s nothing inherently scary about this thing. Other than the possibility of blowing up, or misfiring, or any number of possibilities my mind is readily supplying me with right now.

I don’t know where to hold it, but I lift my arms and try to look down the top of the barrel to the target. My eyes have a hard time focusing and I might be going cross eyed, but before I can overthink it more, I pull the trigger.

Nothing happens.

“The safety,” Vanessa says.

Right.

I flick the safety down again, return my arms to their position and pull the trigger before I can work myself up about it.

It’s startling the way my wrist jerks backwards with the recoil on this little gun, and I gasp when a hot piece of metal hits my arm. I almost think I’ve been shot, but when I look down, my skin is unmarred, and I see a little metal case drop to the ground beside me.

“Very natural,” Vanessa says. I hit the paper at least, but just barely. There’s a hole in the white space surrounding the targets, not actually within one. “Now, what did you learn?”

Vanessa is no teacher, but I recognize the pedagogy of the exercise.She’sthe natural.

I swallow and look down at the thing. “I have to tighten my wrist more.”

“Try that.”

I do, locking my wrist so that upon pulling the trigger, it doesn’t get jerked back as much. It works, marginally, and the bullet pierces the paper in the farthest ring of the big target. Not my intention, but at least it’s in a target.

I look back at Vanessa for more instruction and she nods. A couple of bays down, Mary and Leo are firing round after round of shots at their targets. I understand why we need the ear plugs; it sounds like the thunder.

“Hold it up again.”

I do as she says, holding the gun like I had the last two times and look out at the paper. I try not to jump when Vanessa comes up beside me, so close that her mouth is near my ear. Her hands come on my shoulders. “Relax these.”

I inch them away from my ears and can’t help but tighten my abs when her hand ghosts over the front of my shirt.

“Tighten here,” she says. “And stand up straight.”

I follow her directions, adjusting my stance and posture with every firm touch of her fingers on my body. She’s so close that I can feel a hot breath on the bare skin of my neck.

I clear my throat.

“Good,” she says. I’ve got goosebumps up my arms that I pray she cannot see.