Page 11 of For the Love of Animals

“What are the coins for?” she asked, wary, although from the tone of her voice, she’d already guessed.

“Three coins each, three shots. Winner takes all.”

“What happens if we both hit all three?”

“You think you’re that good?”

“Yes.”

At least she was confident in one area of her life.

“In that case, how about rock, paper, scissors?”

She rolled her eyes and chambered a round, then waved a hand at him. “You go first. How dirty are you planning to play this time around?”

Was this Nate’s lucky day?

“We can get as dirty as you like, querida.”

Nate loaded his gun and stretched out prone, lining the quarter up in his sights as he got into the right headspace. Back in the military, he’d spent many hours with Black as his spotter, focusing on targets as much as eighteen hundred metres away. At that distance, muzzle velocity plus wind speed and direction became crucial, and even breathing could make the difference between killing the target and missing completely.

Carmen settled beside him, leaving a gap of a foot. Near enough to be distracting, but still not as close as he’d like. He took aim, and just as he squeezed the trigger, she let out a piercing whistle.

Nice try. The quarter vanished.

“Gotta put in more effort than that, sweetheart.”

“I’m not your sweetheart, or your querida, or anything else.”

“Just a sore loser, huh?”

“I haven’t lost.”

“Yet.”

Hmm, what to do first. Touching her was a bad idea, because as she’d pointed out, she had a gun in her hands and Nate quite liked his balls where they were. But she’d been the one to moot the possibility of playing dirty.

“Getting hot out here,” he said, inching forwards.

She caught the movement out of the corner of her eye. “It’s always hot. Wait, what are you doing?”

Nate peeled off his shirt and dropped it beside her, and yeah, she looked. He could bench-press four hundred pounds, and it showed.

Carmen’s mouth set in a thin line, and she squinted through the scope. Paused. Flicked her gaze back towards him and shifted her position slightly. Uncomfortable. Good.

“You’re an asshole, you know that?” she said.

Oh, he had her. “It’s been mentioned a time or two.”

Crack. The quarter flew off its chewing gum mount. Fuck, she was good. Better than good.

“Your turn.”

Nate was more interested in what Carmen might come up with to distract him than the target, but he settled in behind his CheyTac. Until last year, he’d shot a Dragunov, an old Soviet-made design he’d grown fond of during a mission to assassinate a Ukrainian politician and make it look like the Russians did it. But Black had given him the CheyTac as a Christmas gift, and he had to concede it was more accurate.

Carmen’s fingers curled around the hem of her top, a plain-black, no-nonsense T-shirt. No way. Surely she wasn’t going to…

She did.

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