The McClane Apocalypse Book Five (27 page)

“No, you probably don’t suck at all. You just
didn’t have the right skills to work with the equipment,” he tells
her.

Cory takes her back to the same spot
where Samantha is still perched on her
log
, drawing with fervor. She puts her own set
of
earplugs
back in and keeps on
sketching away.

“Let’s try this again,” he tells her and
presses the gun into her hand.

Paige sighs long and with great exaggeration,
“You really think that eye trick is gonna make me the next Annie
Oakley?”

“Yep, take aim,” he orders.

Paige offers him a scowl and raises the rifle
to her shoulder again.

“Nope,” Cory says and takes the
rifle
. “Right there is the first
problem.”

“What do you mean?”

He places a large hand on her left
shoulder and twists her body just slightly. Then he
places
the gun back into her hands and
helps her pull it up into her left shoulder. It feels awkward. Of
course, guns always feel
awkward
to her.

“Try it now,” Cory says.

He uses both hands this time to turn her
shoulders a little more. Then he goes too far, nearly causing her
to jump, and places his hands on her hips and gives them a small
twist.

“Breathe,” he says into her ear.

“Give me some space!” she hisses.

She glares over her shoulder at him,
which makes Cory grin at her in return. That elusive
dimple
peeks at her from his right
cheek. Paige glares at it, too. Then she takes aim.

“We’ll get you outfitted with a different
rifle back at the farm before we go to the city, but for practice
today, let’s just keep with this one. Load a round into the
chamber. Take your time,” he instructs patiently.

His voice is actually soothing. Paige does as
he says and aims at the fallen log with the red leaves. She
squeezes and bam! She hits her target.

“Good. Again,” he orders behind her.

Paige does it again.

“Good. Stay here,” he says.

“What? Why? Where are you going?” Paige
asks.

Cory takes the rifle from her, unloads
it and rests it against the tree. He
takes
the pieces of white paper that Sam is already
holding out to him. They apparently don’t need a lot of words in
order to communicate. Paige watches as he jogs across the pasture
and
tacks
the papers to three
different branches. Unfortunately, the branches wave around in the
breeze. She’s never going to hit any of those. While she waits for
Cory to finish and jog back, she takes a look at what Sam has been
drawing. She’s not sure Sam even notices her as she
hovers.

The sketch is of her and Cory standing near
the copse of trees shooting. She has no idea how Sam has sketched
this out so quickly. She’s a little maniac. Paige isn’t sure she is
truly fond of the subject material, however. Cory is standing
behind her, his arm under her own, assisting her. It’s too personal
and almost intimate as if they are friends or lovers just out
enjoying the fall day shooting guns. None of that even makes sense.
But it does seem too intimate. She just frowns and returns to the
tree line to join her enemy.

“Ready to go again?” he asks.

Paige nods with reluctance but does as he
says. She got a big lecture, thankfully in private, last night from
her brother. He’d warned her to cooperate and be respectful of Cory
while he’s training her.

“Sure, but don’t get too excited. I don’t
think I can hit those,” she warns him.

“Have some confidence in yourself, woman,”
Cory says with a smile.

A few minutes later, she has obliterated her
paper targets to nothingness, rendering Sam’s art paper to shreds.
And it feels pretty darn good not being a total loser who misses
everything when everyone else in the McClane family can shoot like
a professionally trained sniper.

“Clear your weapon before we move on,” Cory
says.

She doesn’t really know what he means, so he
shows her patiently. If there was one thing that the family said
about Cory so far that’s true, it’s that he is a very patient
instructor.

“Now, let’s go have some fun,” he
prompts.

The three of them tromp farther into
the forest, quite a bit
farther
until they come to another pasture that isn’t enclosed with
fencing. The field is cut as if the family has made hay in this
particular pasture.

“We’ll shoot prone for this. I want to see
how you do with that, too, just in case you’d ever need it,” Cory
tells her.

Sam lies on her stomach on the soft bedding
of the forest floor just inside the woods.

“Like this, Paige,” she says to her.

“Oh, all right,” Paige replies and mimics
Samantha’s movements.

“It doesn’t take long to spot them,” Sam
tells her. “They pop out pretty quick.”

“You don’t mind shooting animals?”

“Nope, not groundhogs,” Sam says. “I had a
friend in my riding academy who almost had to put her horse down
for a strained fetlock because of a stupid groundhog hole in her
pasture.”

No wonder, Paige thinks. Sam and
her
stupid
horses
and her unbridled love of the dumb beasts.

Cory kneels down on one knee between them and
helps Paige get her own rifle set up.

“Found one,” Sam says a moment later before
Paige even has a chance to get a bullet in her gun.

“Fire at will, kid,” Cory instructs.

A second later, Sam’s rifle report cracks
through the still air. Her gun doesn’t seem as loud as Paige’s. She
wishes she could trade with Sam. This thing kicks hard. Her
shoulder is surely going to be bruised.

“Got it,” Sam reports.

Paige grimaces. Gross.

“Find one?” Cory prompts.

“No, I don’t see anything,” Paige answers,
scanning the area.

“You will. Just relax. Pretend it’s
a
creep
thug out there trying to
steal from you or something,” he says.

His hand lands softly on her right shoulder.
Then he gives a gentle squeeze. If he’s trying to distract her,
it’s working.

“There’s one,” he announces.

So maybe he isn’t
attempting
to distract her because he’s obviously
scanning the pasture better than her. Then she spots it.

“Fire when you’re ready,” he says
quietly.

Paige does as he says and hits her target.
Then she feels like shit. What a jerk! She’s gone from being a
vegan to an innocent animal slaughterer.

“Good,” Cory exclaims and pats her shoulder
roughly.

Paige tries to conceal her frown. It’s
hard to get over her distaste for shooting animals. Then again, if
she and Simon ever leave the McClane farm, she knows for
certain
that she’ll need better shooting
skills. She’s already been out there trying to survive and did a
barely passable job of it. Her lack of skill had nearly cost her
the only friends she’d had in the world. It had cost her roommate
and friends from college their lives. She could never let anything
happen to her brother. He’s the only family she has left. He’s the
most important person in her life, and she needs to be able to
protect him and watch his back.

They shoot for about another hour, sometimes
from a one-knee position, sometimes from the prone position and a
few more times from the standing position. Paige actually starts
having fun. She doesn’t relish the killing of the groundhogs part,
but she does like shooting more than she’d thought she would. Cory
lets her trade rifles with Sam to try out hers. He explains that
she needs to be familiar with any and all of the different guns and
their calibers on the farm. She finds out that it’s called a Ruger
10/22. Then he has her shoot at small targets around the forest
with the handguns he’d brought. Sam gets bored and ditches them and
heads back for the Johnson farm to retrieve her horse and go home.
She’s safe to do so because there isn’t any danger between their
property and the McClane farm. Plus, Paige knows that Chet Reynolds
and Kelly are on patrols until Cory returns.

“See? You don’t suck at all,” Cory tells her
as they walk side by side back to his horse.

“It’s kind of fun,” Paige says
reluctantly.

“Yeah, it is. I guess I don’t usually see it
like that,” he confesses softly as the house comes into view.

He doesn’t expand on that thought but looks
off into the distance.

Evie Johnson is waiting for them near Cory’s
mammoth horse. She is tying a sack onto his saddle horn.

“Hey!” she calls over. “Have any luck?”

“Sure did,” Cory tells her when they get to
Evie. He replaces the rifle to its scabbard.

“Well, good,” Evie says, a smile touching her
mouth. “You’ve got a great teacher, Paige.”

Paige doesn’t really want to comment on that,
so she gives a nod instead. Cory swipes a hand through his hair,
attempting to secure it back into its ponytail. He still looks like
a barbarian to her.

“I don’t know about that,” Cory says with a
chuff.

“Oh, you are. You’re awesome. You taught me a
lot about shooting, more than I knew before,” Evie tells them.

“You’ve taught me some things, too,” he quips
with a grin that conceals quite a lot.

Evie’s cheeks redden slightly. Paige doesn’t
miss it. She also doesn’t miss the other woman’s eyes slide over
Cory’s body quickly.

“That’s the vinegar for Simon,” Evie
stammers, indicating the canvas sack.

“Cool,” Cory replies. “I’ll make sure he gets
it.”

He and Evie stand uncomfortably in
silence and so does Paige because she hardly knows the other woman
and isn’t quite sure how to go about small-talk with her. But she
and Cory are certainly familiar, and Paige believes her earlier
assumptions to be
true
,
especially after the strange cavern of silence and the cryptic tone
of their conversation.

“Good, thanks,” Evie blurts.

“Catch ya’ another time,” Cory says, which
comes off more as a promise.

This time, Paige’s cheeks redden, or at least
they feel like they do. For some reason, the thought of him
sneaking off every night to meet up with Evie Johnson bothers her
and she can’t for the life of her fathom why. She couldn’t care
less with whom he’s sleeping around. It just goes to show Evie’s
poor taste in men.

He mounts the stallion again and tugs her up
behind him.

“See you later,” Evie says to Cory.

“Maybe,” he hints with a cocky grin.

“Bye, Paige,” Evie says.

Paige just gives her a wave as he turns the
horse toward the path home. They don’t gallop across the pastures
again. Cory steers his horse toward the forest where they take a
well-trodden path. The foliage has started turning from those reds
and bright yellows of early autumn to the drabber browns of dead
leaves.

“You wanna’ drive?” he asks jokingly.

“No way!” Paige tells him honestly. She has
zero desire to be in charge of his wild horse.

“You’re gonna need to get over your
fear of the
horses
. We can’t
always take vehicles to get where we need to go
anymore.”

“Then I’ll stay at home on those days.
Besides, I thought we were taking the truck when we go to
Nashville.”

“We are, but you still need to learn how to
ride,” Cory says. “I’ll work with you on that, too.”

“No thanks,” Paige mumbles. He smirks over
his shoulder at her.

“I’ll show you some of the basic hand signals
we use. I’ll go over them later in the cabin before bed,” he tells
her.

Paige is still contemplating whether or not
Cory is having an affair with the Johnson daughter so his statement
surprises her.

“Ok, fine,” she says.

“Anything else you might need instruction
on?” he asks, his gaze hot on hers.

“Not from you!”

Cory just chuckles and turns back around in
the saddle.

“There are a lot of tactics and maneuvers
we’ll need to cover before I agree to take you with me. I know the
guys want us to go soon, so we’ll need to cram,” he says before
turning the horse up a short incline. “Lean forward.”

She does as he orders, leaning into him. He
smells like sweat and horse and gun smoke and something else that
is unrecognizable but not unpleasant. The second the ground levels
out again, Paige straightens back up to put some space between
them.

“When we go out, you’ll pair up with me,” he
informs her. “We’ve discussed it. Simon and Sam will stick
together.”

“Who discussed it? I wasn’t in on that
discussion and I don’t like the result.”

“Me and John,” Cory says.

“I’d rather go with my brother,” she says, a
little miffed.

“We know. That’s why you won’t be.”

“How’s that make sense?”

“Because you need to get used to working with
other people, too. And Sam is used to going with Simon. They make a
good team,” he says, maneuvering the horse around a fallen log that
has rotted nearly through.

“Then why don’t we all four stick
together?”

“It doesn’t work that way. We go in pairs of
two. If only two of us go, then we generally stick together. That’s
just how it works,” he says and then pauses. “Maybe we’ll end up
making a good team, too.”

Paige snorts through her nose, causing him to
laugh loudly. His laughter is infectious and she finds herself
smiling.

“If you don’t threaten to kill me again, then
maybe,” she tells him.

“I already apologized for that. Remember?” he
asks. “Damn, you can hold a grudge.”