Quantico, Virginia, three days later …
Daniel and Remi sat in Assistant Director Ochiai’s office, debriefing the professor now that she was back from her rest break in Italy. Daniel noticed that Remi looked rested and eager, flushed with excitement and positivity as if she had made some great discovery there instead of sipping wine in sidewalk cafés and visiting art galleries.
Daniel felt jealous. He could have used a vacation too, although not in Italy. Too many bad memories.
Although sometimes, hanging out with Remi, he had forgotten all that. Maybe if he had spent more time with her there, he would have forgotten it more often.
No chance to test that, though. He had come back to a mountain of paperwork involving this case.
The last bit was debriefing Remi. They had just spent an hour with Assistant Director Ochiai as she grilled Remi about every detail regarding the case. At last Daniel’s boss leaned back and nodded.
“It was all in Agent Walker’s report, but I wanted to hear it from the art expert too. It looks like you’ve done us a second favor, Professor Laurent.”
“You can call me Remi.”
A brief flicker of annoyance passed over the assistant director’s features, so quickly Daniel almost missed it. No one got casual with Keiko Ochiai.
She didn’t let it show in her tone. “We’re very happy with your performance, Professor Laurent.”
“Have you considered my suggestion?” Remi asked.
“We haven’t come to a decision.”
Daniel sensed the disappointment emanating from her.
“The way this division is shaping up,” Daniel said, “I doubt this will be the last time we work together.”
Remi smiled, and that made Daniel feel good.
“Probably not,” Assistant Director Ochiai conceded. “And we will keep your suggestion in mind. For the moment, however, you can go back to Georgetown and resume your teaching. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an online meeting with the head of Scotland Yard.”
Daniel and Remi rose, thanked her, and left. They walked in silence down the hall for a minute. Finally, Daniel spoke.
“So I guess you’ll be heading up to Georgetown now,” he said. He was going to miss this annoying academic.
Remi wagged his finger at him. “Not until tomorrow. You have a promise to keep.”
“I do?”
Remi pulled out her phone. “I think I still have the search saved.”
“Search for what?”
She gave him a mischievous look over the top of her phone. “Shooting ranges.”
“Ugh. Still on that, are you? OK, fine, I’ll take you shooting, but it’s not like it is in the movies.”
“I know it’s not like in the movies,” Remi said, tapping away on her phone. “I’ve shot someone before, you know.”
“True enough. Search for ones where you can rent guns. Not all of them do that. And before you ask: no, you can’t use my sidearm. I could get fired if I let you touch it.”
Yeah, why not let her handle a gun? It was time for this professor to have a wakeup call. She had shot the killer at point blank range. She’d find shooting a man-sized target at twenty yards a bit more difficult.
Remi’s eyebrows shot up. “Here’s one, and it’s only fifteen minutes’ drive away. American Pride Guns and Ammo. Yee haw!”
“Not a bad cowboy imitation.”
“My father loved Westerns. I sat through far too many of them growing up.”
They shared a chuckle.
This is nice.
* * *
American Pride Guns and Ammo was a windowless concrete building that looked like it had once been a warehouse. A large parking lot was about a quarter full. Across the street was a liquor store and a payday loans business.
“You picked a classy place,” Daniel said. “Your European refinement is really shining through.”
Remi nodded. “It certainly isn’t the top of the Eiffel Tower. Only snipers in the French army are allowed to practice from there.”
Daniel stared at her. “Really?”
Remi laughed. “No!”
“Oh.”
They went up to the front door, a blank steel rectangle with a buzzer and video camera next to it. Above the buzzer was a sign reading, “Homophobes will be shot.” Remi rang the buzzer.
“Yeah?” an indifferent male voice crackled through the intercom.
“I’d like an introductory shooting class,” Remi said.
“Sure, come on in girl.” Daniel could recognize a Southern twang in the disembodied voice.
The door buzzed and clicked, and they pushed it open.
The interior was similar to the usual gun shops Daniel had seen—aisles of camouflage clothing and gun accessories, and plexiglass cases lining the walls filled with rifles and shotguns. A long counter along the back wall had a display of sidearms. The dozen or so customers were all men, half of them wearing some sort of camo.
Daniel saw only two things different about this place, and they made the shop very different—a male love doll in full camo (minus pants) hanging from the ceiling, and a Confederate battle flag on the wall decorated with the silhouette of crossed AR-15s and a rainbow flag background. Daniel stared at the flag for a moment. He tried to figure out what it meant and decided he couldn’t.
A short man in a cowboy hat and cut-off jean vest that showed off beefy arms adorned with tattoos waved to them, smiling from under his handlebar moustache.
“Howdy! Welcome to American Pride Guns and Ammo,” he said in an accent that sounded like it came from the Ozarks.
Pride. OK, I get it.
They walked up to the counter. The man behind the counter looked him up and down, tut-tutted, and turned to Remi.
“Girl, you put your man on a diet right now. Give him six months in a gym and you’ll have yourself a cutie.”
Daniel blushed. Remi laughed. “He’s not my boyfriend.”
The gun shop owner turned to Daniel. “Well, good luck for me.” He pulled a business card out of his vest pocket. “This is the best gym in the city. Run by a good friend of mine. He’ll work you out until you’re sore.”
The business card said “Adonis Gym” next to the figure of a Greek statue.
“Right now we’re here to give my friend a shooting lesson. I’ll take a few practice shots too. I brought my own pistol.” Daniel opened his jacked to reveal the holster holding his 9mm.
“I need to see your concealed carry permit,” the gun owner said.
Daniel nodded and showed him his FBI ID.
The man raised an eyebrow. “My, my, you’re quite the prize. Let me show you the gun range.”
The man motioned for them to follow as he headed for a steel door at the back of the store.
“You brought me to a gay shooting range?” Daniel whispered as they followed.
“Does that make you uncomfortable?” Remi asked and smiled.
“No. A bit confused, but not uncomfortable.”
There was a time when he would have run out of the place. It had taken him several years to understand that regular gays and Uncle Ray were as different as he was from men who went after little girls.
That didn’t mean he wanted a gun-toting hillbilly flirting with him, though.
They went down a flight of stairs closed in by blank concrete walls to another steel door. The crack of muffled gunfire could be heard from the other side. The gun shop owner picked out three pairs of noise-blocking earphones from a rack and distributed them.
When they passed through the door, they found themselves in a standard shooting range—a row of booths, each separated from the other and facing a row of targets set out at various intervals depending on the shooter’s preference. A couple of the booths were occupied.
Shouting to be heard, the gun shop owner went through the basics of firearm safety and had Remi sign a waiver. As he did so, Daniel leaned against the wall and watched. He didn’t see any purpose in this. It wasn’t like Remi was going to carry on this case. Or ever.
Still, it was kind of fun. His ex-wife sure never wanted to come shooting with him.
Once Remi was ready, Daniel picked a booth and went to a table where they had paper targets stacked. This place offered the choice between a terrorist, a Ku Klux Klan member, or the standard silhouette. Daniel picked the Klan member.
Clipping it onto the target retriever, he pressed a button and the target retriever slid away from him on rubber wheels attached to an I-beam on the ceiling. Daniel stopped it at fifty yards and drew his Glock 17M, the FBI’s standard sidearm with a seventeen-round clip of 9mm ammunition.
Daniel proceeded to empty that clip at the target.
After he shot his final round, he placed the gun on the counter in front of him and pressed the button to retrieve the target. There was a nice cluster on the torso, two head shots, one total miss, and one at the very peak of the hood. If the Klan member had a pointy enough head, that would count as a headshot too.
He felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned around to see the gun shop owner, who lifted up one of his protected earpieces and whispered,
“If you wanted to impress your girlfriend, I think you succeeded.”
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
“Oh honey, if you looked at me like she was looking at you, I’d be whistling Dixie.”
“I don’t know what you mean by that, and please don’t tell me.”
He told Daniel anyway, but gunshots from further down the range drowned out his explanation.
Now it was Remi’s turn. Under the owner’s instruction, she came up to the counter, fitted a target of a terrorist on the target retriever, and put it out to ten yards.
The professor got into a proper stance and held the gun shop’s .38 revolver like she knew what she was doing. Daniel nodded in appreciation. This hillbilly was a good teacher.
Slowly and methodically, she fired one round after another. Every one of them hit the target. One was even a headshot.
Daniel and the gun shop owner gaped.
“Daaang!” the hillbilly said. “You’re a natural, girl.”
Remi smiled and placed the revolver on the counter. “My father was a police officer in Paris. He taught me how to shoot.”
She retrieved the target. “Hmmm. Looks like I’m out of practice. It’s difficult for regular civilians to get guns in France. We have a shotgun and rifle at the farm. I’m better with those.”
“Oh, I like this gal,” the gun shop owner said, winking at Daniel. “You got to keep her.”
Remi gave Daniel a satisfied smile.
“Do you think your boss will give me that permit now?” she asked.
“It’s not up to her,” Daniel replied.
Don’t get overconfident, Remi. The last time you did that you nearly got yourself killed.
And me too.
“She’ll come around,” Remi said with that overconfidence that always made Daniel feel a mixture of admiration and worry. “Oh, can you come down to Georgetown sometime in the next week or so? Cyril wants to get to know you.”
They had already met two days before. Cyril had come up to stay in the hotel with Remi. In separate rooms, he noticed. A bit nosey of him to notice that, but he was an FBI agent. Being nosey was part of the job description.
What wasn’t part of the job description was the smug satisfaction that gave him. He hadn’t delved into that feeling too much. He had a job to do.
They had a job to do.
And it gave him a great deal of satisfaction to know they would keep on doing it.
Because the file that Assistant Director Ochiai had handed him earlier that day was about a case that he stood no chance of doing alone.
He wasn’t even sure Remi and him together could tackle it.
“Better fire off another few clips,” Daniel said. “You might need the practice.”