Page 1 of Live for Me

CHAPTER ONE

memphis

Recoil, he called it.

The rearward thrust that was generated and felt by the shooter when a bullet was discharged from a gun.

Recoil.

Really, what he said was, “Fix your feet, angel. It’s going to kick like a bitch.”

And I had to ask for clarification. Just like I’d demanded a better explanation for whymagazinewas the correct word when everyone in the movies referred to it as aclip. I couldn’t begin to guess why I thought the terminology mattered so much; like he was going to test me on it later tonight. He didn’t care if I learned the words. He wouldn’t care if I memorized their meanings. He was about thirty seconds from asking if I was comfortable aiming at the target that sat in the middle of the field in front of us and firing the weapon that I held. That was his concern; not my comprehension of the vocabulary involved.

Utah tasked himself with teaching Indy and I how to defend ourselves once it was clear that Jersey hadn’t planned to come back anytime soon. That started with this alarming introduction to the proper handling of a firearm.

Nowas the unequivocal response to his question.

I was not ready to fire the gun. I would not reach the point where I was ready to fire it at any moment today, even if we stood out here for the remaining nine hours of sunlight. My experience with firearms was virtually nonexistent. Jersey shoved one into my hands the night that he swapped places with me in captivity in Tennessee. But just because I’d held it didn’t at all mean that I knew what I was doing with it. I’d looked into the barrel of one a handful of times when I was a child. I’d watched Jersey use them more times than I could count through various cameras. I’d even seen Trista use one. None of that made me comfortable with guns, though.

While I could appreciate what Utah intended to do for us with these lessons, I still had no desire to become comfortable with them.

“You ready?”

I shook my head and looked down at the gun in my hand. “No.”

“Want to watch me again?”

“It’s not that I don’t understand. It’s that I don’twantto do this.”

“You didn’t start out with violent video games like the rest of us who ended up working in backhanded web deals for messed up organizations?” Indy asked as he laughed. “This was the dream I thought we were all working toward back then.”

I shook my head again. “I used to read.”

“Nerd,” Indy snorted.

That one made me smile. Even the nerds had a hierarchy. Somehow the ones who played first person shooter games online with other nerds made them just a hint cooler than the nerds who preferred books.

I was in the category of nerd that the other nerds could callnerdand get away with it.

“Why don’t you want to do this?” Utah asked on a sigh, like his patience was wearing thin. I imagined I had annoyed him with all my questions and demands for explanations today. He still answered all those queries with a level of calm I simply was not used to experiencing from the men who held the Executioner positions. But seven thousand questions later, he was probably a little perturbed. I hadn’t known the man long, but the only time I ever saw him come anything close to rattled was when Jersey was still in the house with us. They had a special way of bringing out the worst in one another simply by being too close to each other.

“Learning to fire one is pointless. I won’t use it on somebody else,” I finally admitted when I realized Utah was still waiting for my answer.

“It’s not pointless if there’s a chance it’ll save your life.”

“Nobody knows we’re here. I’m not in danger of someone taking my life.”

His shoulders sagged when he sighed that time. He came to stand in front of me and took the gun from my hand. I watched in silence while his hands moved quickly to check themagazineand then the chamber before I looked back up to his face. Hands that size didn’t seem like they should have been able to move with that level of speedandaccuracy. Though most of the things I’d learned about Utah up to this point further proved that everything about him made absolutely no sense from a logical standpoint.

“If you’re ever in a position where you need to know how to defend yourself with a gun, it’ll be because I’m not there to do it for you,” he said while grabbing my wrist to turn my palm up so he could place the grip of the gun back in it. “That means I also won’t be there to make you use it on someone, but I’m going to show you how, so you at least have the choice.”

“But you’realwaysaround.”

He smirked. “I’ll be going to New Jersey next week, smarty pants.”

“Then Kyle is always around. He knows how to use these if our weird homestead is ever in need of defense,” I countered with an eye roll. “What’s in New Jersey?”

His hand went to the small of my back, which was the most certain way he’d ever had to get me to move in any direction that he wanted just so I could make sure his hand wasn’t on me for too long.

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