Texas Outlaw (Rory Yates #2)(33)

When I’m finally ready, I settle in and try to slow my breathing and my heart rate. The scope magnifies the sight by ten, but the jug still looks tiny. The crosshairs float all over and around the target. At a thousand yards, the slightest movement on my end could throw the bullet five feet off course.

I’m able to still my body and line up the crosshairs. I steady my breathing so it won’t move the sight. I’m locked on the target.

I squeeze the trigger.





Chapter 42



THE RIFLE KICKS against my shoulder. As the bullet soars through the air, I have time to reorient myself in the scope to see where it hits. A puff of dust bursts from the dirt mound about a foot high and to the left of the target.

“Not bad,” Gareth says. “Not bad at all.”

He shakes my hand. Now that he’s proven he’s better than me, he doesn’t seem to feel the need to be such a jerk. It’s as if he genuinely respects me for my attempt.

“In all fairness,” Carson McCormack says diplomatically, “a sniper rifle isn’t really your specialty, is it, Ranger?”

He points to Gareth and me with both hands, aiming his fingers specifically at the pistols on our hips.

“How about one more contest?”

Ariana gives me a look that says, Don’t do it, but Carson starts in again about how he won’t talk without his lawyer. I tell them I’ll do it, and Carson clasps his hands together with enthusiasm.

At this point I’m not participating to get Carson and Gareth to talk. I have a feeling what they tell us won’t be all that useful anyway.

But I’m anxious to shoot my gun after having it knocked out of my hand the other night. I’ve taken it apart, cleaned it, and reassembled it. But I won’t really feel that it’s undamaged until I get a chance to fire it again. And if I’m honest with myself, there’s another reason I’m participating.

I’m curious to see how good Gareth McCormack is with a pistol.

Gareth and I move the long folding table that held the cooler and the bottles about twenty feet out into the range. Carson puts two empty bottles on the table, about five feet apart. The bumblebee that had been circling the bottles earlier reorients, then finds its way to the bottles and begins buzzing again.

Gareth and I stand facing the table, with Ariana and Carson behind us, off to the side so they can see the bottles. Carson says he’ll drop an empty shell casing on the concrete flooring. When we hear it ding against the concrete, that’s our signal to draw.

I ready myself, my hand at my side, inches from my SIG Sauer. Carson was right. Shooting a sniper rifle isn’t my specialty.

But this is my specialty.

I was raised by my dad to think of a gun as an extension of my hand. I should be able to hit any target as easily as reaching out and knocking it down with my fist, he told me. And on top of that, I went on to train in law enforcement, even studied under quick-draw experts and became just as fast as them. My brother Jake says I am with a pistol what LeBron James is with a basketball. Or Serena Williams with a tennis racket.

Or Michelangelo with a hammer and chisel.

It’s hard to describe how I feel as I get ready to draw against Gareth. There’s a song by Charlie Daniels called “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” in which Satan challenges a young fiddle player named Johnny to a competition. After Johnny has won, he calls the devil a son of a bitch and declares, “I’m the best there’s ever been.”

That’s how I feel.

That confident.

“Ready?” Carson asks.

Neither of us says anything—which tells him his answer. Everyone is silent. Time stands still for a moment. Then I hear the ding of the shell casing as it hits the concrete.

My hand flies to my pistol.

Draws.

Fires.

Gareth’s gun goes off, the shots so close together that it’s impossible to tell who fired first.

Gareth’s bottle detonates in an explosion of glass.

My bottle stands upright, not even wobbling.





Chapter 43



“HOT DAMN,” GARETH says, thrusting his fist in the air like a pitcher who just struck out a batter in the ninth inning of the World Series.

“Good shot,” I say, trying to be as genuine in my sportsmanship as I can.

I glance at Ariana. She replaces the disappointment on her face with a mask of indifference, pretending that she doesn’t care who won and doesn’t support this whole charade anyway.

Carson and Gareth are in good spirits after the contest, and they seem friendly and forthcoming as we sit in the shade and talk. Carson admits that he convinced the town council to buy the land and designate it as open space simply because he didn’t want to buy it himself.

“I didn’t need to drill on it,” he says. “But I didn’t want any competitors to drill on it, either.”

There is an old access road that runs from his property to the highway, bisecting the open space, and he admits that his drivers had been using it for a few months when someone—he doesn’t know who—spotted them and complained to the town.

“So I put in a request to use the road, make it official. Hardly anyone goes out there.”

When I ask him if he was aware of Susan Snyder’s objection, he says he was.

“She wanted an environmental impact study done,” he says. “Which would have cost me and wasted a bunch of time. I’m a businessman, and if I can get what I want without spending extra money, I do it.