Page 113 of Where Quiet Hearts Scream
I’m about to leave him with a sarcastic quip but the squeals of my sisters reuniting in the parking lot drags my attention away.
“Have a good ‘meeting,’” I say, putting finger quotes around the word because I know they’re all heading to a bar for an hour. Then I blow him a kiss and skip toward my sisters.
“Everyone ready?” Trilby is wearing a face of forced optimism.
“Yes.” I smile and take her hand. “It’s going to be fine. And we’re going to learn some useful skills.”
I push the door open and we’re immediately hit by the smell of hot metal, precision and power. A dustyceiling fan spins noisily but pointlessly above our heads. It’s the kind of place where bullet holes outnumber windows and the vending machine only works if a large shoulder is slammed against it.
“Hi. You must be the Castellano sisters. I’m Drake.”
An enormous, burly man who makes even my six foot five husband seem on the short side, greets us. He’s in possession of a long, thick beard, backward cap and an armful of vests.
“We’ll be over there.” He points to a steel door. “But before we go in, I need you to put these on.”
He hands each of us a vest. Mine fits perfectly but the others drown my sisters. Tess, the slightest of the four of us even looks a little comical—like a Barbie doll in a grown man’s overcoat.
“Ready?” the guy asks.
Trilby straightens and smiles with the apprehensive air of a woman who’s been manically Googling “how to shoot a guy but legally.”
“Alright, let’s get this over and done with,” Tess huffs. She looks the most lethal of all of us with her hair now pulled back into a severe ponytail and thick goggles making her feline eyes look otherworldly.
We follow Drake through the door and into a kind of viewing area overlooking several lanes with cardboard mannequins at the far end.
“I’m ready,” I shrug. “I watched six hours of YouTube tutorials andTop Gun 2. I’m basically lethal.”
Tess narrows her eyes. “Top Gun 2is about planes, not guns.”
Damn. “Okay, fine. But there’s a lot of… adrenalin.”
“Let’s just get used to feel of a pistol first,” Drake says, giving each of us a hand gun. Trilby lets hers dangle between two fingers like it might leak something toxic.
Bambi disappears behind Tess. “I’m not touching that. I told Allegra, I don’t have any intention of ever using one. Can’t I just scream at people? I can be very loud.”
“You know this is why we’re here,” I say, kindly. “It shouldn’t be a surprise.”
“Allegra told me we were going to brunch,” she whines. “This is not brunch.”
I mentally curse our aunt. She clearly said that to take the easier way out and leave the rest of us to deal with Bambi’s disgruntlement.
“Thisisbrunch,” Drake deadpans. “For bad-asses. Now, I want you to hold it like this.”
Bambi reluctantly takes her hand gun and we all copy the way Drake is holding his. I’m mildly alarmed at how natural this hunk of metal feels in my grip. It’s a little less cumbersome than the M27 but I have a particular fondness for that one. Perhaps fortunately for everyone, Andreas has locked it in a case and hidden the key.
Tess, having handled one of these before, is a natural, much to her feigned dismay. Trilby and Bambi need a little help from Drake.
“Okay, good. Now we’re going to load them up.” Drake demonstrates again how we’re to do this.
I watch him with an inexplicable level of curiosity. Trilby eyes the magazine in her hand. “I thought ‘magazine’ meantVogueorGood Housekeeping, not something you jam into a death tube.”
“It still is,” Tess says, calmly sliding a magazine into her Glock with a click. “Just, this one delivers bullets instead of fashion and interior decorating tips.”
Bambi is staring at her gun like it’s a sleeping dragon. “It’s heavy,” she whispers. “What if it goes off by itself?”
“You still have the safety on,” Drake replies in a bored monotone. “Right, stand at one of these four posts. You each have a target. You click off the safety catch like this. Then hold the pistol this way, and pull back the trigger. It’s pretty simple. Let’s see how you do.”
Tess lifts her gun and fires three precise shots.Pop. Pop. Pop. Dead center. She even returns it to her shoulder and blows invisible smoke from the end of her barrel.
