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“I’ll need some ID,” the kid said, sounding bored.
“Oh, Dennis, I left my purse in the car,” Nadia said.
“That’s okay,” Rex said. “I’ve got my license.” And he did, in fact, have a fake driver’s license. It was Rex’s picture, but Dennis’s name. The kid gave the card a cursory look and jotted down the number which, if anyone checked, would come back as belonging to a deceased person. But he doubted anyone would check. No one ever did.
Rex told the kid they were there to do some target practice with a gun he was thinking of buying. The kid handed them some ear-protectors, assigned them a lane and pointed them in the direction of the indoor range.
The range was bigger than it looked from the outside. And despite the rather shabby exterior, the inside appeared to be state of the art. They found their lane. And while Rex opened the leather case he’d brought and looked at the huge .44 Magnum Ace had loaned him, Nadia covertly checked out the other three shooters.
“I don’t recognize any of them,” Nadia said.
But Rex did. One of them was a Payton police officer, a young patrolman not long out of the Academy who hung around Lyle Palmer and tried to earn brownie points. Andy Arquette, that was his name. Rex did his best to keep his back angled toward Andy, not wanting a confrontation.
Rex wondered why a cop would come here when the police had their own shooting range he could use for free.
Nadia gave a low whistle when she saw the gun. “A Ruger Super Blackhawk .44 Magnum. That is some fancy handgun. I love the blue steel.”
“Your granny must have been quite a knowledgeable collector.”
“Well, actually, Nana Tania was a spy.” Some people reacted strangely to that information, but Rex took it in stride, nodding appreciatively. “After she retired, she said she was glad to be out of the spy business, but she must have missed it some, because she had a closet full of guns. When I was little, we would take them out and play with them the way other little girls take out their Barbie collections.”
Rex just shook his head. “You’ll have to tell me more about your Nana sometime. So, can you shoot this baby?”
She demurred. “I’m really rusty—haven’t touched a firearm since Lily was born. You go ahead.”
He’d been afraid of that. But if they wanted this to look good, they would have to actually fire the gun. He took the wicked-looking blue-steel gun out of its foam nest and loaded one of the many full magazines Ace had included. It clicked into place with a satisfying snick.
A paper target was about fifteen yards down the lane. Rex and Nadia put on their ear protection. Nadia stood back, giving Rex plenty of room. He took a wide-legged stance, put both hands on the gun, stretched out his arms and took aim. But his hands were shaking, and perspiration had broken out on his upper lip and forehead despite the range’s cool temperature. For a few moments, he thought he wouldn’t be able to shoot at all. He thought his stomach would rebel. But somehow, he managed to squeeze off the first shot, then another and another.
That was when the panic started welling up inside his chest. It was the sound of the gunfire, he realized. In the four years he’d been a bounty hunter, he had never discharged his weapon. He’d drawn it and intimidated people with it, as he had Jethro Banner just a couple of days ago. But he hadn’t actually squeezed the trigger until just now.
He laid the gun down, pulled off the ear protection and stepped back.
“Let’s see how you did.” It was Andy Arquette, who’d approached while Rex was shooting. Andy pushed the button that would bring the paper target close for inspection. “Haven’t seen you around here before. Name’s Andy Arquette.”
It appeared that Andy didn’t recognize him, Rex thought. Good. “Dennis Blankenship.” The two men shook hands. “This is my wife, Freesia.” Hell, Nadia didn’t look like a Freesia. Ace had a damnable sense of humor.
She mustered a smile and a quick handshake.
The paper target arrived. Rex didn’t even want to look at it, because he’d practically shot at the thing with his eyes closed. But when he did look, he saw that three of his five shots had actually hit—one in the arm, one in the abdomen, one in the thigh.
“Ooh, that guy’s hurting,” Andy said charitably. He was a tall, skinny guy with straight black hair. Rex didn’t like the way he was looking at Nadia.
“I’ve never shot this gun before,” Rex said, feeling he needed to rationalize his lousy marksmanship.
“Why don’t you give it a try…Freesia,” Andy said. Something about his tone bothered Rex. Was there a slight challenge to the suggestion?
“It’s an awfully big gun for a lady,” Rex said, trying to give Nadia an out. She’d said she didn’t want to shoot.
But she surprised him. “I’ll give it a try.” With the push of a button she sent the target out to the same distance at which Rex had shot it. Then, after a short hesitation, she pushed the button again, sending it even farther.
“You sure?”
Wordlessly she put on her ear protection, and Rex followed suit. Rather than the wide-legged stance Rex had taken, she stepped one foot back and planted it in a wide lunge. Then she aimed, sighting down the barrel with one eye, her face a mask of total concentration.
She pulled the trigger, then kept on pulling it until the magazine was empty. Though the gun had a colossal kick, Nadia hardly seemed to notice it. Her unconventional posture seemed to work well for her.
She laid the gun down, pulled off the ear protection, then pushed the button to bring the target close once again.
Rex’s blood drained to his feet when he got a good look at the target. Every one of Nadia’s shots had hit the paper man in the head.
“Damn.” Andy barely breathed the word. “Freesia, you’re not a member here, are you?”
“No, just a guest.”
“We could sure use you on our coed team. Lemme show you around—maybe y’all will want to join.”
“Sure, we’d love to look around,” Nadia said. That was why they’d come, after all—to nose around, find out if anyone had seen Peter recently.
Rex packed up the Magnum.
“You can check that into a locker if you don’t want to carry it around,” Andy said. “The lockers are free.”
“That’s all right, I’ll keep it,” Rex replied.
Andy showed them around the building. They’d already seen most of it, except for a small lounge area, which was currently empty. “Members are encouraged to socialize here—but only after they’re done shooting for the day. The owners are very strict about alcohol use.”
They went through a set of double glass doors to the outdoor range. Two men in camouflage with an arsenal of hunting rifles stood around, discussing the merits of their guns, but otherwise it was quiet.
“There’s a trap range on the other side of that earth barricade, and also a forty-yard tin-can range.”
They walked a little farther until they reached a small metal shed near a gate. Andy led them toward it and opened the door. “We keep reflective vests stored in here for the members’ convenience. We recommend you wear them. The wilderness area is over four hundred acres, and you never know who might be out here with a gun. You don’t want to be mistaken for a wild pig.”
They donned the neon orange vests and walked into the wilderness as Andy explained about the bountiful dove, quail, ducks and pheasants the members bagged. “Rabbit and squirrel are fair game year round,” he added with a grin that set Rex’s teeth on edge. “Good eatin’.”
They tromped farther out. Rex kept looking for an opening, a way he could casually ask about Peter, but he didn’t trust Andy, who seemed far too friendly, so he had to proceed with caution.
Andy pointed out the crumbling old mansion. “Game likes to hide in there,” Andy said. “One time during a javelina hunt, I cornered something in there with red eyes, and I thought I had me a pig. It turned out to be a possum.”
“They make a good stew,” Rex said, trying to get into the spirit of the conversation, though hunting animals had never appealed to him. He found it much more sporting to hunt something with an equivalent level of intelligence to his.
“So, who referred you to the Payton Gun Club?” Andy asked conversationally.
“Ace McCullough,” Rex answered. “He’s been a member a long time.”
“I’ve heard of him, of course,” Andy said. “He’s kind of a legend. Never met him, though.”
“I know another guy who’s a member here,” Rex said. “Peter Danilov?”
“Oh, yeah, sure, I know Peter. He’s out here a lot.”
Was there just the tiniest hesitation when Andy answered? “You know, I tried to get hold of that guy recently, and the number I had for him was no good. I thought maybe he’d moved away. Has he been around lately?”
“Yeah, I saw him a coupla weeks ago,” Andy said. “When I see him again, I’ll tell him to get in touch with you.”
“And that friend of his, Vlad—ah, hell, I can’t remember his last name.”
“I know who you’re talking about. I couldn’t tell you his last name, either—all those Russian names sound alike to me,” he added in a good-ol’-boy twang that didn’t fool Rex.
Andy made a show of checking his watch. “Oh, hell, I gotta go. Y’all just take your time, have a good look around. Freesia, we’d love to have you on our team. You too, Dennis,” he added as an afterthought.
Yeah, right. Maybe Rex would join the club after all. With some practice he could at least learn to shoot a paper man with some degree of accuracy, even if he couldn’t shoot a real one.
“So,” Nadia said as they scuffed their way along a faint path that wove through an open field of tall prairie grasses, “Peter’s been here recently. If we had Vlad’s last name…”
“We might be able to weasel it out of the front desk guy,” Rex said, just as something whizzed by his left ear.
His reaction was instinctual and instantaneous. He threw Nadia onto the ground and fell on top of her. The distant report of a high-caliber rifle reached his ears before he’d finished falling.
Chapter Four
“Crawl,” Rex ordered, easing his weight from her so she could push up to hands and knees. He positioned himself next to her, between her and the old house, which was where the bullet had come from. Somehow he dragged the gun case along with him, grateful he’d obeyed his instincts and not let Andy talk him into stowing the gun in a locker.
“We need cover,” he said. “We need to make those trees.”
Nadia didn’t question him. She crawled, and she did it quickly. Rex hoped the tall prairie grass would conceal their movements, but if their marksman was any good, he would see the grasses rippling in their wake.
If he’d been the sniper, he’d have fired into the grass. But no more shots came.
Then Rex realized why. The gunman had been shooting at Rex. He couldn’t risk shooting at grass because he might hit Nadia—and Peter needed Nadia.
They were thirty yards from the nearest trees. But Nadia was agile and covered the distance quickly. They plunged into the woods several yards before stopping to catch their breath.
“Is there a very stupid hunter out there?” Nadia asked in a hoarse whisper. “Or was someone shooting at us on purpose?”
“With us in these orange vests?” Rex whispered back. “I doubt it was an accident. Anyway, bird hunters use shotguns, not rifles.” As Rex spoke, he pulled the Magnum from its case and loaded it with a fresh magazine. “Maybe I should give this to you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Shooting at a target is a lot different than defending against a live shooter.”
She didn’t know the half of it. If she had any idea of his history, she’d yank the gun out of his hand so fast…
“Someone must have been watching for me to show up,” Nadia said. “That kid at the front desk, do you think?”
“My guess is Andy Arquette.”
“He did seem a little…insincere,” Nadia agreed.
“Did Peter have any contacts in law enforcement?”
“He used to get a speeding ticket at least once a week, and he never had to pay them,” she said.
That was all Rex needed to know. “I’m willing to bet Peter’s power base is right here. We guessed right.”
“For all the good it will do us if we don’t get out alive.”
“We’ll get out. But we need to move—as quickly and quietly as possible. And we need to get rid of these damn vests.” The neon orange, designed to prevent hunting accidents, could have the opposite effect in their case. They shed the vests.
They couldn’t get out the way they came in. That path involved too much open prairie, and Rex wanted to avoid the old mansion, which afforded their shooter an excellent bird’s-eye view.
Rex knew approximately where they were on the property, based on a map he’d seen near the front desk. He also knew the only way they were getting out of this place alive was over the fence—unless they killed the person hunting them, and Rex didn’t want to think about that. He’d had more than his fill of killing.
They cut through the woods, which was thick with undergrowth. It offered good cover but made for slow going. Tree branches and mesquite scrub scratched them as they blazed a path.
At one point they stopped to listen, as they’d been doing every few minutes. Before, they’d heard nothing. Now, Rex discerned two sounds that concerned him. One was a barking dog. It was a good bet some of the hunters who hung out here had tracking dogs. The other sound was unmistakably running water. Rex had seen a stream or river on the map, but he couldn’t remember now precisely where it had run. They would probably have to cross it to get to the perimeter fence.
“Dogs,” Nadia whispered.
“Let’s keep moving.”
Rather than avoiding the water, Rex headed for it. If they waded or swam in the steam, the dogs might lose their scent. Of course, they might freeze to death. It was maybe fifty degrees out, not terribly cold, but the water in streams around these parts came from mountain springs way up in Colorado and would turn them blue in no time.
When they reached the stream, it turned out to be a very shallow, fast-running creek. They scrambled down the limestone bank as the dogs’ baying—definitely more than one dog—grew louder.
Rex grabbed Nadia’s hand. “Let’s run along the creek. Maybe the dogs won’t be able to follow our scent. At least it might slow them.”
“Do you have the slightest idea where we are?” Nadia asked. “Because I don’t.”
“I know exactly where we are.” It was an exaggeration, but he needed Nadia to be optimistic and confident. He couldn’t afford for her to fall apart in despair.
They splashed along the stream for maybe a quarter mile, until the water got deeper and they couldn’t move quickly enough. They climbed out on the opposite bank, using protruding rocks and roots and small bushes to pull themselves up. Then they started running again, shoes squishing with water.
“I can still hear the dogs,” Nadia said, panting slightly. He was amazed at her stamina and wondered what she did to stay in shape.
“We can’t be far from the fence now.” And they weren’t. He saw it looming ahead, and his heart sank. He’d been hoping to discover a chain-link fence with some sort of baffling behind it to prevent stray bullets from escaping the gun club’s grounds. What he saw was a sheer sheet-metal wall, ten feet high and extending as far as he could see in both directions. With razor wire at the top.
Nadia stopped and stared at the fence. “Bozhe moj, we’ll never get over that.”
“It seems excessive for a hunting club,” Rex observed, wondering why the Payton Gun Club needed this degree of fortification. It called to mind some crazy cult, preparing to barricade itself inside a fortified compound with lots of weaponry and await the revolution. But there was no time to ponder the gun club’s motives. The dogs were getting closer—Rex could see them now. The foray into the creek hadn’t fooled them—they were probably tracking their prey on the wind anyway.
Rex looked up and down the fence line until he spotted something promising. “How good are you at climbing trees?”
NADIA WAS ACTUALLY VERY GOOD at climbing trees, or she had been when she was twelve. She’d been something of a tomboy as a child. Her American grandfather in Michigan had owned an orchard, and she’d spent many a fall day climbing high into the branches to snag apples the pickers had missed. When she saw what Rex had in mind, she didn’t hesitate. She kicked off her athletic shoes and socks and climbed barefoot, gripping the old pecan tree’s trunk with her feet like a monkey, using the barest of handholds. The skill came back to her without effort. She even remembered not to look down.
Rex was right behind her—and the dogs right behind Rex. No sooner had he cleared the ground than two enormous black-and-tan hound dogs leaped through the underbrush toward them. Moments later they were at the bottom of the tree trunk, baying loudly. Fortunately their human counterpart—the one with the gun—was far behind.
Nadia headed for one high branch in particular that reached out almost over the perimeter fence. She could walk out onto it a short distance, holding on to a branch above her for balance, but soon she lost her handhold and she had to sit on her branch and scoot. Unfortunately, the branch bent lower and lower with her weight. By the time she reached the wall, she was below the top. This wasn’t going to work.
But Rex had the solution. He had grabbed on to the sturdier branch above and was working his way toward her, hand over hand, as if he were on playground monkey bars. “Grab on to my leg!”
