July 2012
NOAH RAISED HIS Smith & Wesson and waited for the range safety officer to give the all clear. He stared at the target in the distance. Ten shots. He could place every one in the center. But he didn’t want to shoot at a damn piece of paper. He wished like hell he could fire holes through his reasons for leaving Forever.
With one well-placed bullet, he wanted to blow away his family’s financial problems. And yeah, he’d put a hole through his dad’s reasons to keep Big Buck’s a country western bar.
For two generations loggers have visited this bar. They come here after a long, shitty day and pretend they have what it takes to be a cowboy. For eight seconds after work, these guys are stars.
Except more and more had been landing on their asses before the buzzer. And they hadn’t come back for more. There were too many “kids” from the university in the area. Housing prices had gone up and the loggers had moved to Independence Falls and some of the other neighboring towns.
Noah knew they’d make more if they took out the mechanical bull and changed the place into a nightclub. Sure, the remaining locals who kept Forever’s Main Street looking like a picture-perfect, all-American town might protest. But the students would flock to the place. And the twenty-something university crowd didn’t sit at the bar nursing one beer all night. They drank mixed drinks and shots.
“Fire!” the volunteer safety officer called.
He pressed the trigger. Once. Twice. The bullets spiraled to the target. In a few weeks, maybe months, he wouldn’t be shooting at stationary pieces of paper. If he deployed . . .
Shit. He lowered his weapon. Not if. When he deployed to one of the countries no one in their right mind put on their list of dream vacation spots, he’d shoot to defend, to protect, and to kill.
Noah set his gun on the table. He moved through the motions, releasing the clip, racking the slide, and ejecting the round from the chamber. He set the piece and the ammunition down. Then he stepped back from the line, vaguely aware of the people moving around him. The range safety officer had called out “cease fire” and he’d been so caught up in the future, the what might happen when he left, that he’d missed it.
He stared down the range and out into the rolling hills lined with evergreens. So damn beautiful. He wished he could stay in the Willamette Valley, surrounded by the familiar scenery and the people he loved. But someone needed to make enough to pay for his grandmother’s retirement. And her rising medical costs.
“Noah!” a familiar voice barked.
He turned away from the hills in the distance and focused on the two men standing just beyond the line in his bay.
“Take off your ears,” Dominic hollered, raising his right hand to his ear.
Noah pulled off the safety gear that blocked out a helluva lot, including Josie’s brother.
“Hey,” Noah said, nodding to the man who was unmistakably related to Josie. He had the same dark hair and green eyes. Although the similarities stopped there. Dominic had played center for the Forever football team. He was built like a tank and stood an inch or two taller than Noah. He was going to make one helluva soldier. Plus, Josie’s brother had been itching to enlist since graduation. His father had tried to steer him toward the police academy, but after a few years of working with his dad, Dominic wanted more of a challenge.
And Noah wanted to stay right here and shoot at fucking paper.
“You didn’t hear a word we said, did you?” Ryan smiled, looking more like a movie star type than a football hero—probably because he’d rarely taken the field as the backup kicker. And Ryan sure as shit didn’t look like a future air force pilot.
Noah forced a grin. “Had my ears on.”
“I said I bet Travis is glad you went after him with your fists,” Dominic informed him. “Not your pistol.”
“Yeah.” Noah shoved his hands in his pockets, his knuckles still raw from sparring with Travis Taylor. He’d had the upper hand. He’d approached the kid angry and knowing he planned to land a hit or two. Sure, he’d waited two weeks, giving Josie’s face time to heal so that no one would connect the pieces.
“Any reason you hit my sister’s boyfriend?” Dominic asked mildly.
“Ex-boyfriend,” Noah corrected. He turned to the table to pick up his gear.
Dominic held out a hand to help. “They’ve broken up before and gotten back together.”
“They won’t this time.” Noah shook his head, declining his friend’s helping hand, and headed for the viewing gallery.
“Why?” Dominic demanded, abandoning his easy-going tone. “What the fuck happened?”
“Ask your sister,” Noah said. “But our fight—”
“That wasn’t a fight,” Ryan jumped in once they were alone in the small room designed for spectators. A bulletproof glass window separated the space from the range where the other shooters were heading back to the line.
“You took Travis out, man,” Ryan continued. “At least that’s what I heard.”
“He pissed me off.” Noah shrugged and headed for the gun case he’d stashed in the corner with his duffel. “And it wasn’t all about Josie.”