Long Range (Joe Pickett Book 20)(41)
“Dennis!” Becky said again. “I’m taking Emma out of the room. She can’t hear you talking like this.”
“She’s four months old, for God’s sake,” Sun said to Becky with an upward roll of his eyes. “She understands nothing and will remember nothing of this.”
“You don’t give her enough credit,” Becky Barber huffed as she gathered up Emma and stormed out of the room.
“Tell her,” Sun said to Joe. His voice rose and he shouted, “A four-month-old baby comprehends nothing.”
Joe nodded reluctantly that he agreed with the producer.
“You’ve had children who are now grown,” Sun said. “You know. As have I—five of them scattered around the world. Children are both resilient and oblivious to any stimuli up to a certain age. They certainly don’t understand actual words—just tones. Becky doesn’t know this yet. Emma’s her first, and of course being her first means Emma is an exceptionally bright and perceptive child who is wise beyond her months on earth and cognizant of everything going on around her. According to Becky, Emma is the smartest baby on God’s green earth, you know. And Becky is the only woman to have ever given birth.”
Joe wasn’t sure how to respond.
“Can I tell you something?” Sun asked.
“Sure.”
“My unsolicited advice to you is to never marry someone younger than your oldest daughter.”
“That’s not likely to happen,” Joe said.
“Good. Because it isn’t as fun as it looks,” Sun said. “Now, if we’re done here, I’ve got a motion picture to edit and I’m sure you have many important things to do.”
Joe said, “I saw your range outside.”
“Yes, and?” Sun asked, arching his eyebrows comically.
“You’re a long-distance shooter?”
“You know I am,” Sun said. “You and Judge Hewitt confiscated several of my best rifles, if you’ll recall.”
“I do,” Joe said.
“Since then I’ve managed to acquire two new ones,” Sun said. “I’ve a wonderful Gunwerks Verdict in .338 Lapua and a Cobalt Kinetics BAMF XL Overwatch PRS in 6.5 Creedmoor. The Gunwerks rifle was accurate at fourteen hundred yards straight out of the box.”
“So a sixteen-hundred-yard shot is within your range,” Joe said.
“Obviously. And farther than that if wind conditions and atmospheric pressure are favorable.”
Which echoed what Nate had said that morning, Joe thought.
“Look,” Sun said, “there’s no law against having an interest in premium precision rifles or acquiring them. I got interested in them shooting Assassin’s Castle in Bulgaria several years ago and I’ve kept up with the technology. Becky absolutely hates my interest in weapons. Hates it. She’d rather I take up painting landscapes. By the way, did you see Assassin’s—”
“No,” Joe answered quickly.
Sun grunted. “Not many people did, I’m afraid. It was about a dozen international hit men and women invited to a mysterious castle by a supposed employer. None of them knew the others would be there. Only, instead of hiring them for a job, the overseer created a scenario in which the assassins were set up to take each other out one by one until only one was left standing. I won’t give away the ending in case you’d like to rent it. But it involved a lot of high-velocity long-range headshots.
“Anyway,” Sun said, “I ended up with several of the rifles we used after the filming. Those are the ones you stole from me. So in order to keep up with the sport, I needed to buy new ones.”
“Who is your spotter?” Joe asked. “Not Renaldo?”
“God, no,” Sun said with a laugh. “The only thing Renaldo can spot are emerging fashion trends. No, when I shoot on my range, I invite David Gilbert out to the house.”
“I know him,” Joe said. Gilbert was a local insurance broker in Winchester and Joe had interviewed him several years before. Gilbert’s reputation as an honest businessman and/or ethical sportsman was spotty at best. There was no doubt, though, that Gilbert lived for the outdoors and considered his small business solely as a means of financing his adventures.
“I didn’t realize Gilbert was a long-distance guy as well,” Joe said.
“He is. We trade roles spotting for each other.”
“There are a lot more of you people around here than I realized,” Joe confessed.
“Alas,” Sun said, “every man can be a sniper these days.”
Joe recalled that Nate had used the exact same words.
“There’s something esoteric and darkly fascinating involved with it,” Sun said. “Hitting a target so far away that it can’t even see you fills a man with a sense of lethality and power that’s hard to describe. And once you do the math and unleash that bullet, you actually have time to think about taking it back—but you can’t. It’s either on target or it isn’t. The target is dead before the sound of the shot even gets there.”
“Where were you two nights ago?” Joe asked.
Sun paused and considered the question. “Just like that, huh?” he asked. “No building up to it or slipping it in there?”
“No.”