He hit the button. Above them in the high house, he heard the machine cycle as a clay launched.
She fired, the disk exploding into a fine, powdery cloud over the center stake by the bunker.
She broke the gun open and removed the spent shell, dropping it into the other part of her pouch. “Save the hulls, by the way. Stations one and seven are usually easiest for beginners, because the birds are flying either toward or away from you, not across.”
She shouldered her gun and took the remote control from him. “Your turn.”
“I thought there were more shots.”
“There are. I’m just showing you. High and low singles, then doubles.” She grinned. “But I’ll pull on rapport for you since you’re a noob.”
He laughed at her good-natured smile. “Awfully nice of you.” He started to load the gun but she stopped him. “What?”
“Close it and show me your stance.”
He did.
She laughed. “Nope. You won’t hit shit like that with a shotgun. She corrected his form. When she was happy with his stance, she had him load the gun.
As he sighted across the field where she said, he asked, “Why’d you say ‘ha’ instead of ‘pull’?”
“Just what I was taught. Say whatever you want, as long as you say it so whoever’s pulling knows it’s your call.”
“Oh.” He took a couple of breaths to settle his mind. “Pull!”
Her finger was far faster on the button than his had been. The bird immediately appeared. He tried to find it, lost it when he raised the barrel too high, then found it again and fired.
It dropped unbroken to the far end of the field, where it shattered as it hit the ground.
She patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. We’ll just shoot stations this time around, no score. Try again.” It took him four more attempts to break the high house. Three to break the low.
She skipped on rapport and moved him to station two, where it took him three attempts to hit the high house and another three to hit the low.
“I’ve got to tell you,” he said, “I feel humbled.”
She snorted. “You really want to feel humbled?” She handed him the remote again and led him back to station one. “High, low, doubles,” she said, pointing to the buttons. Then she loaded a shell. “High house… Ha!”
The clay exploded before it even crossed the bunker in the center of the field. He’d yet to make one shatter so eloquently. His had either split into a few pieces, or broken, but not into a cloud of literal dust.
She reloaded. “Low house. Ha!”
That one broke as well.
She didn’t miss a shot until station six, where she missed the low house double. “Dammit,” she said as she unloaded. “Good thing we’re not playing for money.”
He laughed. “Yeah. And yes, I’m humbled.”
“Good.”
She walked her gun back to the gun rack at the shelter before rejoining him. “Let’s finish up that first box of shells and then we’ll try you on a real round.”
Nearly an hour later, he had a sore shoulder and a score of twelve for his first official round of skeet.
He also felt closer to Sachi than he had before. He felt he’d finally been allowed a glimpse behind her wall. He saw another side of her, the confident woman at home here, the encouraging, positive instructor who didn’t tease him in a bad way or make him feel inept for his lack of skill.
If she acted a fraction of this way around her other students, he easily saw why she was such a popular and successful instructor.
He also saw the dedication she had for the science of the sport, from the way she helped him correct his form to discussions about reloads. Even though being a serious skeet shooter seemed to fly in the face of her reading Tarot and teaching chakras or whatever it was she did at the store, he felt far more respect for her than he did when they’d started.
The metaphysical stuff she and Mandaline and even Brad were into no longer provided the mental block it had before this whole experience started weeks earlier with walking into Julie’s store and making the appointment.
“Thank you for this,” he said as he helped her put everything away and they walked his rental gear back to the pro shop.
She shrugged, her sunglasses and hat once again hiding her features. “You’re a good guy. Both of you are.” She turned to him and looked up. He saw himself reflected in her glasses. “Don’t hurt her,” she whispered. “Please. Don’t screw it up again. It was a huge leap of faith for her to trust you.”
He stuck his hand out. “I promise. You can shoot me if I screw up.”
She looked at his hand before shaking it. She grinned. “I will hold you to that.”
“I know you will. That’s why I said it.”
Mandaline nervously looked for any sign of a problem when they returned to the store.
Sachi laughed. “Don’t worry, boss. I didn’t scare him.”
Ellis gave Mandaline a hug. “I had a lot of fun. Sachi’s a great teacher.”
Mandaline knew her relief almost palpably washed off her. “I’m glad you enjoyed it.”
“You know,” Sachi said, “I can go to a hotel—”
“No,” all three of them said.
Mandaline couldn’t get over her feeling there was more to this than just a break-in. “You are staying here, with us, and that’s it. When they get the alarm in, then you can go home.”
Sachi cocked her head. “You don’t think you’re being a little paranoid?”
She struggled to keep the shrill tone out of her voice. “After what we just went through, I’m not ignoring a bad feeling ever again!”
Sachi hugged her. “Okay,” she softly said. “I’ll stay. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for you to worry.”
“You can’t leave here and not have an alarm!”
“Shh, it’s all right. I won’t. It’s okay.”
She didn’t want to cry. Not after she’d made so much progress. Ellis and Brad walked over and joined their group hug.
“It’s really okay,” Ellis assured her. “We don’t mind you being here, either. We’re with Mandaline, we’d rather have you here and not have to worry about your safety.”
When they finally broke apart, Mandaline wiped at her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she told Sachi, “but I’m now officially a worrywart.”
Sachi smiled. “That’s okay,” she gently said. “For you, I’ll make an exception. Although I suspect I’ll be sleeping with my shooting muffs on tonight.” She grinned.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Monday afternoon, Ellis went back to the store for lunch. When he walked in, Brad was alone behind the counter and on the phone. He looked exasperated, which wasn’t usual for him. “Look, mister. I recognize your voice. Like I keep telling you the other times you’ve called, we don’t have anyone on our staff here named Mickey. We have a Makenzie… Dude, I don’t care if you saw her on TV. You’ve got the wrong name. We’ve got Mandaline, Mina, Makenzie. Those are the em names. We have a Paige, Anna, Kim and Sa—”
He looked at the phone and hung up in disgust. “Asshole.”
“What’s wrong?” Ellis asked.
“Same fricking rude old guy’s called like three times today. Keeps asking for Mickey.” He let out a snort. “He calls again, I’m telling him to try Orlando.”
“Where’s Mandaline?”
“Out shopping. I gave her an assignment and sent her down to the IKEA store in Tampa. I told her I wanted her to pick out bedroom furniture.”
“Why there?”
“Because when I started talking about more expensive furniture, it looked like she was going to pop a vein.” He smiled. “Sachi warned me she’s a thrifty shopper.”
“Oh. So when will she be back?”