Diaries of an Urban Panther (19 page)

“Lunching your way across the Metroplex, one wealthy Y-chromosome at a time.’

Jessa gasped and then glared. Her arms went straight down at her side and her little hands were clenched into tight little fists.

The hanger on the decorative mirror next to us snapped. The mirror slid down the wall and crashed onto the table below it. Half my turtle collection was pulverized and the other half launched towards us like shelled artillery.

My hand flew to my face to block the glass. Little cuts grazed my forearms and neck. After the shards fell around us, my eyes snapped from the decapitated tortoise heads, beady eyes staring up at me, at Jessa. She hadn’t moved, hadn’t even flinched as the glass flew around the two of us.

“I came here to invite you to a party, to get you out of whatever’s been up with you lately. But you obviously don’t need me with your perfect little life here,” she huffed as she threw the white shirt at me and turned towards the door. “Maybe my family was right about you.”

“That’s right, just leave. You’ll never have to lower yourself to middle class again.”

“Thank God.”

When Jessa slammed the front door, the mirror above the foyer table flew off the wall and shattered into a million pieces. Great, another mess.

I stood there fuming. Jessa better inherit that fourteen years of bad luck.

When Chaz came in the front door, I hadn’t moved. Not really. I was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the silver rain of glass, headless turtles lined up in front of me. And the Godiva espresso beans were half gone.

“Violet, what the hell happened?” he asked as he carefully stepped around the first disaster area with long stride and made his way over to me.

I offered up the bag of chocolate. “Want one?”

“No. Are you okay?”

I gulped. “Jessa’s never going to speak to me again.”

My face heated and the anger, fear, and newly forming anguish all came rushing back. Groaning, I put my head in my empty hand, not relinquishing the bag of chocolate.

“Get up, Violet.”

I offered a hand but didn’t look up at him. I’d been crying and I was sure my eyes were a lovely shade of salmon.

With one strong pull, he lifted me up off the floor. My head fell forward against his shoulder. His heartbeat calmed my racing thoughts. He rubbed my back as I sucked in a stuttered breath of his sweaty, earthy smell.

“It’s not the end of the world,” he whispered.

“You got a heads up on that, do ya?”

He chuckled and pushed me away from him. He wiped the few tears that had fallen already. “What happened?”

“She asked me about your bloody shirt. And I called her selfish and she stormed out.”

Chaz looked as confused as I was. We just stayed there for a few moments, silent and awkward, not quite knowing what to say next. Not that I expected much verbal consolation from Chaz.

I sniffed and wiped my eyes.

“I’d offer coffee but after those,” he said, his eyes glancing down at the bag in my hand. “You’re not going to sleep for a week. So how about some lunch?”

H
e took a thirty-five minute shower in my shower. I think it was a record, but I did have the best shower head in the world. I sat in the kitchen waiting for the dryer to finish. It still had twenty minutes. I’d actually done his laundry. Willingly. I’d offered somewhere in the verbal confession in the kitchen after he’d fixed ham and cheese sandwiches for the both of us. He’d listened like a true professional and I was reminded that he was the professional at this; chasing and violence was a normal workday for him.

Something was brewing in the ether, dancing along my skin as my leg bounced with anxiety. Yet, I felt numb, battered senseless. Like none of it had really settled in yet. These were things that happened to people in my head not to me, not to little Violet Jordan who really had locked herself in a tower.

Chaz tromped down the stairs and finally ended up in the kitchen, dragging me painfully from my pity party. “What’s going on up there?” he asked as he flopped in the chair across from me.

“What?”

“You’re bouncing like a rubber ball,” he said pointing to my leg.

“Jessa, on top of this thing last night,” I finally said.

“Took you long enough,” he grumbled.

“Well forgive me,” I snapped. “Been a while since I’ve had to deal with traumatic aftermaths.”

I took in a deep breath. Now was not the time to be snippy or mad, or weak. Look where it had just gotten me, what it might have just cost me. I exhaled slowly and he looked up at me. I needed someone in my corner right now.

He moved around the place like he owned it, as he opening cabinets and drawers to find the making for a bowl of Cocoa Puffs. He looked good in my kitchen as he moved around, already knowing where everything was from his Julia Child routine this morning. He sat back down across from me and began to shove huge spoonfuls into his mouth.

“Do you always get hungry when you’re talking about mortal danger?”

“No, I get hungry after I’m used for slave labor.”

I tried to fight a smile. “You seriously could have said no.”

He just shrugged. “I wanted to be here.”

I watched him eat for a moment. Did he have any idea what he was saying in between the shovels of sugar? “So what do we do?”

He shrugged as he rose to rinse out the bowl and put it in the sink.

I had nothing. I looked at the bare wall where my mirror had been and then out at the clear sky of the November day. The clouds moved carelessly across the sky, free, and, at least to my knowledge, without the threat of mortal danger looming over them.

“Come on, I’ve got an idea.”

Chapter Eighteen

“T
ell me why we are here again?” I whispered as I felt the stare from the line of men behind the glass gun counter. I gulped; all of them were openly carrying guns. Welcome to Texas.

I held my coffee tightly and looked around. The writer in me thought this was great material: the guns, the accents, all wonderful little accoutrements for a future scripts. The animal in me didn’t like being around so much ammunition. And really didn’t like the mounted animals head above the row of shotguns on the far wall.

I also had the creepy feeling I was the only female who had visited these premise in a very long time. There was a hungry look to the men’s eyes as they watched me cross the room. I stayed just behind Chaz’s shoulder as we walked through the aisles of ammunition and practice targets. There was a distinctly grimy feel to the beige-stained colored walls and the smell of spent gunpowder was everywhere.

“I come here when I’m having a rough day,” Chaz said simply as he slapped his gun range pass down on the counter next to the register. “And you need to learn to protect yourself.”

The white-haired man in a flannel shirt with a rocket launcher strapped to his thigh took it and began hitting the keys on an antique cash machine, running the station fees, looking up intermittently at Chaz and then at me.

“I thought the dojo was enough,” I whispered to him.

“Last night, it was. But you have to be prepared for every possible scenario.”

I glanced at him. I suppose thanks to his fancy shotgun, I wasn’t dinner. “Fine.”

“I need your driver’s license.”

I dug through my huge purse groping for my wallet. Found a book, a notepad, my cell phone. Finally, I found it and pulled it out for him.

With a slightly bemused look, he took the license and handed it to the man. As he was signing the receipt, I took a moment to peruse the merchandise.

The guns were intense. Different brands, different sizes. I knew a little from the research I had to do. Frankly
,
I was more a proponent of the Louisville slugger kind of self-defense than a Colt 45.

“Can I show you somethin’, miss?” the salesmen asked.

“Can I see this one?” I pointed to a shiny silver revolver. Very classic, very old time detective.

The man smiled and pulled his keys out from a pocket on his holster and unlocked the cabinet.

He opened the chamber before he handed it to me.

“It’s heavier than I thought.”

My finger curled around the pearl handle and I spun the chamber. Something about the solidity of the silver in my hand felt good.

“Your girl’s got a good eye,” the man said.

Chaz pulled up alongside me. “Yeah, she’s a quick learner.”

I laughed at the comment and flipped the chamber into the gun. Even after I handed the gun back to the man, I felt the residual weight of it in my hand.

The men began to discuss calibers and ammunition and my attention drifted over the man’s shoulder to see their “Perfect Score” board, as announced by the black Sharpie letters scrawled on a white piece of spiral-bound paper. It was blue poster with Polaroids stapled to it. More proof there was not a female touch around this place. The pictures displayed men proudly holding up their targets. My eyes glanced from face to face but one jumped out of the flannelled crowd.

It was a young Chaz with a taller man’s arm slung across his shoulders. The man had sandy brown hair and golden green eyes, just like Chaz. Both were smiling, dressed almost identical, both holding up bull’s-eyes.

I leaned across the glass counter as far as I could to get a better look at his father. The scribble in the white space of the photo was dated March 1995.

Chaz leaned over to see what I was looking at.

I straightened up quickly, coming practically nose to nose with him. “You and your dad used to come here.”

Chaz’s eyes dropped when he saw the picture. He took a small step away. “Yeah.”

“So you’re really good at this?”

“Kinda,” Chaz mumbled, as he put his credit card back in his wallet and the wallet in the pocket.

The man behind the counter hacked out a laugh as he slid two boxes across the counter. “Don’t be shy, Charles. This ’en won the state sharpshooter championship at fourteen.”

I looked back at him. He looked young as he fiddled with the zipper on his tote.

“His dad was a helluva shot too,” the man continued. “God rest ’im.”

“Thanks for the ammo, Buck,” he said, his eyes locked on the two boxes.

The man nodded and walked over to another customer.

Chaz stepped around me and gestured to the back of the shop towards the inside ranges. As we cleared the earshot of the other men, he stopped and turned towards me. He couldn’t look at me as he spoke. “Dad wanted to make sure I was good; that I could protect those who needed protecting. We came out here a couple times a month to practice.”

Brushing past me, he headed for the back of the building. I took one last look at the board and slowly headed towards the brown signs that read “Lanes 1–7.”

C
haz hoisted the olive drab duffle from the back of his car onto the ledge behind the shooting alley. I just watched him. I’d never seen him this focused. As he began to set the guns and boxes of bullets on the wooden ledge, he didn’t have the furrow he usually had.

Three different handguns and a shotgun. I was pretty sure I had seen a “no shotgun” sign in the front room. But this was Chaz, he probably got special privileges.

He reached into his bag and pulled out a pair of headphones. They were huge and orange.

“Got an eight track to go with those?”

He handed them over. “They’re monkey ears. They’ll block the noise.”

“Monkey ears?” I looked at the awkward, heavy things. My pride prevented me from putting them on. I wasn’t much for the Princess Leia look, but hey, maybe he was.

“Just put them on,” he griped with a small smile curling at the corner of this mouth as he readied a pistol.

I put my coffee down on the ledge and pried the headphones open and put them around my neck. They weighed heavy on my clavicle. “There. On.”

Chaz shook his head. Picking up the nearest gun and clip, he strode to the lane, jammed the loaded magazine into the gun and fired off four shots.

The boom of the rounds not only startled me but the smell of gunpowder assaulted my nose as the crack ripped through my eardrums.

“Crap,” I yelled, covering my ears.

“I warned you.” Chaz said innocently as he left the gun on the ledge of the lane and walked back to where I was still holding my ringing ears.

“Super sensitive hearing, you jerk!” I dropped my hands from my ears and punched him in the arm.

He shrugged as he lined up the weapons for the day’s lesson.

The headset was heavy and it took a while for me to get them on comfortably. But with it came a newfound respect for Carrie Fisher and a little bone to pick with him later, maybe when there wasn’t live ammunition around.

He motioned for me to join him at the lane. Through the headset, it sounded like he was yelling at me underwater, but I got the gist of his speech.

“Here’s the trigger, the slide, the clip releases and the shell will fly out here,” he pointed in quick succession. “There’s two triggers so you’ll need to pull them both back evenly.”

He put the warm gun in my inexperienced hand.

“That’s it?”

He nodded and backed away.

“So I point and shoot?”

He nodded again. “That way,” he pointed down the range.

I turned towards the paper silhouette about ten feet away. He really didn’t expect much.

“Are you going to hate me if I’m some sort of prodigy?” I called back over my shoulder

“I’d probably marry you.”

My cheeks flushed and my hands went slick with sweat. He just had to say that now.

I took in a deep breath. I had seen guns fired tens of thousands of times on TV. It couldn’t be that hard. Of course, all the actors on TV were shooting blanks and hadn’t just been proposed to by a supermodel.

Okay. Hold my arms straight out before me. Line up the sights, I thought. Relax. Exhale to focus; this was beginning to sound like shifting.

I didn’t even have to close an eye to focus. God bless hunter’s vision.

I widened my stance, just like he had done, held my breath, and pulled the trigger.

The power of the shot jerked my arms back and the fire rung in my ears even with the mufflers on. But there was a hole in the target. Right lower quadrant. In the circle. Crap. Maybe I was a prodigy.

I heard a rumble from behind.

Suddenly, his heat was at my back. Goose bumps blazed a trail across my skin, and the panther stirred a little. I gulped. Damn him for smelling so freakin’ wonderful even over the sting of powder in my nose.

The little stall left us a mere foot of personal space. I held my breath as he reached out as if to stroke my cheek. With a cocky grin he leaned in, and flicked the switch directly behind me, sending the target sailing out to twenty feet.

“You really shouldn’t creep up on a girl with a gun,” I said to him, my voice muffled by the monkey ears.

He looked down at me and smiled with one side of his mouth. I watched his perfect lips as he spoke. “I like to live dangerously.”

Moving back to the shelf, he crossed his arms and watched as I turned back towards the alley.

I mumbled curses under my breath as I squared up to shoot the hell out of this target. Let’s see if you really can resolve sexual tension with gunfire.

Five rounds into this set, he crept up behind me again, but I didn’t jump, just pulled the headphones down. All amped up and nowhere to go, I could feel his heat before he slid his arm down mine.

“See how your shots are to the right? Your finger isn’t on the trigger properly, so when you fire, it’s pulling right.”

He wrapped his hand around mine on the hot metal of the gun and pulled my finger out a little from the trigger guard, so the pad of my finger was on the trigger better.

“There you go. Try that,” he whispered into my ear.

He had to know that his breath sent shivers down my neck and tingled all the way down my back. Damn him.

“Are you sure you want to be that close?”

He drew his hand back down my arm and stepped away slowly. I pulled the monkey ears back on and let that poor little paper target pay for his sins.

Ten shots later, the heat had barely begun to fade from my skin as the slide locked back empty.

“My turn.”

I released the clip from the gun and left it on the ledge for him.

“Show me how it’s done, sensei.”

I moved back to where he had been standing and watched his wide shoulders as he snapped in a fresh magazine into the 45. He rocked his feet into a comfortable shoulder width apart and let seven rounds loose, all perfectly in the center circle.

“Let’s see how you do with some distraction.” I called out.

He looked over his shoulder with his little furrow back between his brows. “Violet. I’ve got a gun. Now’s not the time to play.”

I held my hands up in surrender. “I’m not going to move an inch.”

He turned and focused back on the mutilated circle.

I took in a deep breath and felt my furry center. With a small push, I bathed him in my magnolia scent.

The first shot went wild, hitting the target of the lane over from us, sending it dancing wildly.

I smiled.
That’ll teach ya.

Chaz looked over his shoulder with a raised eye brow. “You want to play that way?”

“Yes please.”

“Fine.”

He took in another deep breath. And steadied his arms. Chaz squeezed off the rest of the magazine. Perfect. He ejected it and turned around with a look of satisfaction. “Are we done?”

“Not even close.”

Pulling off his ear plugs, he walked back to the shelf with all his supplies and picked up another full clip. “Feel about ten times better than you did this morning, don’t ya?”

I did. I hadn’t thought about Jessa since we hit the door. But as I looked up at him, I honestly didn’t know if it was the mutilation of the fluorescent targets that was making me feel better or if it was his relaxed frame as he showed me part of his world.

“Let me fire off a few more rounds and we’ll see.”