Page 62 of Double Shot

“Not a lot of stopping power, and that’s what she would need, keep her out of CQC.”

“She did a ton better with the rifles, mate. Something she can put in her shoulder, pow pow.” He made finger guns. “And she can ring the bell damn near every time.”

“How much are you exaggerating?” I asked.

“Mate, listen, she’s a better shot with an AR thanIam,” he said soberly. “Sadie has my full confidence, not because she’s my childhood sweetheart, but because she would have even made Drill Sargent Hartman scream a compliment at her.”

“That’s gilded praise, indeed. Impressing a drill instructor?” I asked. I thought about my own instructor, back in Manchester. I suppressed a shudder.

He nodded. “After guns, there was hand-to-hand,” he said. “It took a while to get to that part.”

“What was the problem, did she need confidence or competence?”

“Mate, I had a chest full of cracked ribs that healedslow.For a month there, breathing fuckinghurt. I’m thankful to be alive and not a fucking morphine addict right now.” He ran his hand across his ribs, phantom memories of the pain etched on his face. “But that dragonscale armor held up, just bruises and cracked ribs, no actual holes in me. At least not where the armor had me covered.”

“That’s good to know; so, it was you holding things up?” I asked.

“Once I could move without screaming, we went to work training. It was stressful. That place up there isdesolate.”

“It is a bunker in Montana, desolate was a feature,” I admitted. “So, what did you do for downtime?”

“There was no downtime.” He looked down at the floor, at his shoes. “That was a luxury that we didn’t have.”

“I know the bunker, it had amenities.” I scowled. “She’s not like us, she never had a drill instructor, you can’t run a civilian through that and expect them to be okay.”

“I didn’t have any choice, mate.” He looked up at me, his eyes uncharacteristically sheened with moisture. “Conan, you weredead. The house was a burning crater. We were fugitives and not just with the authorities, but the entire fucking underground, and I didn’t know how close the Escadrille was to finishing us off. I barely remember firing rockets at boats in the bay, I probably had a concussion, and Sadie pretty much carried me through the bug-out plan. If they had found us, we would have been killed pretty quickly, and easily.”

I didn’t say anything and had to look away. I had been captured, tortured, abused in ways that still burned in my dreams. For some reason, part of me imagined them escaping easily, that they were safe and comfortable wherever they had managed to hide. I wanted to hoard the suffering, like it was mine, and no one else’s…

“So, we trained, we sparred, and it was bleak as fuck. Neither of us fared well, and that was all I felt like I could fucking do.” He let his words trail off.

“She was frayed and about to fall apart when you two found me,” I said, concerned. “I don’t want there to be a repeat of that.”

“Yeah, me either. I’m not cut out to be a drill instructor, and the bunker is a place I never want to go back to, physically or emotionally.”

“So, we make sure that this house,” I gestured to the Pinterest worthy carved staircase and inlaid walls, “doesn’t become a second bunker.”

“I don’t want this place to be a bunker,” Sadie said, drifting into the room like a vagrant balloon. “Is there coffee?”

“Yeah, in the pot,” Lach said. “The cream is on the table.” She looked at the service I had in front of me and the modern glass teapot among the various offerings of cream, honey, and sugar.

“Why would someone put cream in tea, ugh,” Sadie said and poured herself a cup from the coffee carafe. “I overheard some of what you two were talking about, are you hiding stuff from me?”

“Nay, wouldn’t dream of it, love.” I smiled at her.

“Carry on, then,” she said, jingling the spoon in the cup. That was an obscene amount of sugar she’d dumped in.

“We need to do things, things that don’t involve being sweaty and tangled up,” I said.

“I like some of those things,” she said, hiding the gentle curve of her lips by sipping her coffee.

“Aye, as do I,” I said. “But all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

“I liked when we dressed up and had fancy dinners,” she said softly and her expression held a sadness and a wistfulness at the same time.

“Agreed, and we should continue that. Cocktail dresses and fitted suits, dinners out on the town, the fancy places in Baltimore, DC, and here in Indigo, they’re all on the table,” I said.

“I also liked movie night,” she added.

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