by Diana X Dunn
“In order to graduate from the class, you have to be weapons certified,” Sara told her.
“I don’t care if I graduate or not,” Donna told her. “I just want to stay here for the next six months. I’ll keep my head down, work hard in all of my classes, do whatever else you want, but I don’t want to do any shooting.”
“I can talk to Robert, see what he thinks of the idea,” Sara said slowly.
“Jake was going to talk to Robert for me. He promised me that he’d get Robert to agree. He even said he could get Robert to let me graduate, even if I didn’t do the weapon stuff. He, I mean I, that is, oh, never mind.”
“I won’t ask what you did for Jake in order to get him to make that offer,” Sara said dryly. “You should know that he would have been fired if he’d told Robert that he was in any way involved with a student.”
“He wasn’t worried about getting fired. He told me that he’d saved Robert’s life once and that Robert was so grateful that he could do anything he wanted to do.”
“Did you believe him?”
“I believed him that he could do whatever he wanted. I assumed that he was blackmailing Robert about something.”
Donna wasn’t stupid, then, Sara thought. “And now Jake is dead,” she said in a thoughtful voice.
“You saw the body. Do you think he really had a heart attack?” Donna asked.
“I saw the body on the same camera feed as everyone else. I tripped over the body in total darkness. I’ve no idea what happened to him.”
“Are you just going to believe Dr. Freeman then?”
“I don’t know that I have much choice.”
“I think Jake was murdered and that Robert was behind it,” Donna told her. “As long as I can stay here for the next six months, I don’t really care, though.”
Sara wasn’t sure how to respond to the woman. “I hope you’re wrong about Jake,” she said eventually.
Donna shrugged. “As long as Robert’s secrets died with Jake, I don’t think anyone else is in any danger, do you?”
“I don’t know what to think,” Sara replied honestly.
“Are you truly going to talk to Robert about me?”
“Yes, of course. I’m going to try to persuade him to let you do everything except weapons training, assuming I can’t change your mind about the training, that is.”
“I’d rather you didn’t even try.”
“Is it just laser weapons you have a problem with? Would you like to try an old-fashioned shotgun from nineteen-sixties?”
“I might be able to manage that,” Donna said with a smile.
“You did well today,” she told Donna on their way back down to Ethel’s classroom. “I don’t know that I need to talk to Robert about you, at least not yet.”
“Thank you,” Donna said. “The stuff you had me do today was okay. Maybe, given enough time, I’ll be able to work back up to using laser weapons.”
“We can take things slowly,” Sara promised. “We have six months.”
Donna nodded and then followed Sara back to class.
“I’d like to have Lloyd next,” Sara told Ethel.
The woman chuckled. “I was trying to guess who’d you ask for next. Lloyd wasn’t very high on my list.”
Sara grinned at her. “My order is entirely random so you’ve nothing to base your guesses on, really.”
“I suppose that’s wise.” Ethel called Lloyd’s name and he jumped in his seat. “It’s your turn to go with Sara,” he was told.
“Must I?” he shot back. “I’m enjoying this bit of code work and I hate guns.”
“I’m afraid weapons training is a vital part of the course,” Ethel replied. “The code will still be here when you get back.”
Lloyd muttered something under his breath as he got to his feet and stomped to the front of the room. “Let’s go and get this over with, then,” he snapped at Sara.
She raised an eyebrow and then followed Lloyd out of the room. He was already sitting in the transport when she reached it.
“In a hurry?” she asked as she climbed inside.
“I don’t want to do this. The sooner we get it over with, the better.”
Sara made the short drive in silence. When they arrived at the range, she turned to Lloyd. “What experience do you have with weapons, then?”
“Aside from the class we had the other day, none.”
“Right, let’s start with the basics, then.” She climbed out of the car and then waited for him to join her at the counter where various weapons were laid out. “Pick your favorite.”
“My favorite? I don’t like any of them. I think they’re dangerous and unnecessary.”
“Why are you here?”
“Because I was told I had to come with you.”
“I mean, why are you here at this school, doing this course.”
“I’ve been an accountant for twenty years. In that time, I’ve worked with hundreds of clients. Three or four of them, over those years, have asked me to help them cheat the system. I turned them all down.”
“And?” Sara asked as he fell silent.
“I could have done it, that’s the thing. There are a million different ways to hide things like income from illegal sources. I once had a client who’d been dealing drugs for years. He wanted my help to clean up the money so he could start living a respectable life. I could have done that, too, but I turned him down.”
“I’m still not clear on how that brought you here.”
“The police came to me, a year or so ago. They wanted my help with sorting through some financial records. A former client of mine had taken his business elsewhere. He was one of those who’d asked me to help him with some more creative accounting. I’d turned him down. I was happy to assist the police by going through his accounts and finding the things that didn’t add up, as it were.”
“And you enjoyed the work?”
“Very much. Poring over accounts for hours at a time, that work suits me. When the job was done and my former client was sent to prison, I applied for a job with the local police department, hoping to work in financial crime. They turned me down because I didn’t have any police training. The police academies don’t take candidates over the age of forty. A friend suggested that I apply here.”
“A friend?”
Lloyd shrugged. “It was Jake Brown. He wasn’t exactly a friend. He was the one who’d initially brought me in to work on the case against my former client. I’d asked him to put in a good word for me when I applied for the job with the force, but he never got the chance. I was rejected based on age and lack of experience before they ever looked at my references.”
“So you knew Jake before you arrived.”
“Only slightly. As I said, he made the initial contact, but I actually worked with some of the officers from the specialty financial crimes division. Jake’s job had been to track me down, that’s all.”
Sara nodded. “What did you think of Jake?”
“I barely knew him, but I was grateful to him for suggesting this school. At least I was grateful to him before I got here. I invested just about every penny of my savings to come here and things haven’t turned out at all the way I was expecting.”
“What were you expecting?”
“The way Jake described it was more like a college, with various areas of study, like financial crime or homicide investigation. I thought I would have to take a few classes in physical fitness, maybe a class or two in basic investigation, and that the rest of my time would be spent learning more about financial crimes and how to spot them. I wouldn’t be here if I’d known I was going to be expected to train in the use of weapons.”
“I believe all modern police departments require their officers to be weapons certified.”
“Do they? I wasn’t aware of that.”
“I’ll be honest with you,” Sara said. “Getting weapons certified isn’t difficult. You only need very basic skills to earn a level one certification. If that’s all
you’re interested in, and that’s all you need if you want to apply for the sorts of jobs you’re talking about, we can focus on those skills and forget about everything else.”
“Really?”
“I’m meant to be teaching you a whole range of skills, helping Robert create individuals who can perform at the highest level as covert operatives. Is that what you want to do?”
“Do you mean spying and things like that? I can’t even imagine.”
“I didn’t think so. Let’s start working on the basics for today. It’s where we need to start, anyway, but I’ll talk to Robert. Hopefully I can persuade him that a level one certificate will be enough for you.”
“I’d be very grateful.”
Sara nodded. She spent the next half hour helping Lloyd learn to hold and fire a basic laser pistol. By the time they were done, he’d stopped shaking and even managed to hit a target twice. Once had been a complete accident, but it was still progress, Sara told herself as they climbed back into the transport.
“Can I go next?” Bill asked as Sara walked back into the classroom with Lloyd.
“I suppose so, if Ethel doesn’t mind,” Sara replied.
“The order doesn’t matter to me in the slightest,” Ethel told her.
Bill jumped to his feet and followed Sara out of the room, nearly stepping on her heels as they went.
“I’m so excited about this,” he said as she started the transport. “I’m sure I’m going to be really good at shooting things, once I get a bit of expert tuition.”
“Just listen to me and follow my instructions very carefully.”
“Yes,” the man flushed. “I am really sorry about what happened the other day. I didn’t realize that gun was loaded and I definitely didn’t mean to almost shoot Tamara.”
“Yes, well, I’d like to avoid any more accidents.”
“Can I shoot that one?” he asked as soon as they reached the counter at the range. He pointed to the laser repeater, a weapon that could shoot hundreds of laser blasts in less than a minute.
“Let’s start with something a bit less lethal.” She handed him a small laser pistol. “Let me show you how it works.”
“I already know the basics. Let me have a go.”
Sara shrugged. “Okay, hold it in your dominant hand and point it down range.”
He took the gun and turned it over. “On low, does it just stun?”
“Yes, on low it will just stun. On high it’s deadly.”
He laughed and tried to slide the selector to high. “It’s stuck.”
“It’s locked. You don’t need anything more than stun on a practice range.”
“But that’s no fun.”
“Weapons aren’t meant to be fun. They’re dangerous, They’re a tool, nothing more. I was in the field for many years and I never once fired a lethal shot.”
“Jake told me that he shot at least ten suspects during his career. His police issue weapon only had a low setting, though.”
“Which was perfectly adequate for his purposes.”
“You had a gun that would kill, didn’t you?”
“We aren’t here to talk about me. Aim down the range and then hold down the firing button.”
He stared at her for a moment and then nodded. Turning the gun around in his hand, he swung his arm around and then frowned. “It isn’t firing.”
“Give me the gun,” she said flatly.
“It isn’t working,” he said as he handed her the weapon.
“You were aiming it straight at yourself,” she countered.
“Was I? I thought I was aiming down range.”
Sara raised an eyebrow. “Where do you think the laser fires from?”
He took the gun back and studied it. “Here?” he guessed.
“If you aren’t sure, why in the name of Hades were you trying to fire it?”
“I thought I knew.”
“You were wrong. You could have been dead wrong.”
“It’s only set to stun.”
“And if you’d shot me, I’d have killed you.”
Bill laughed, the sound dying in his throat as he stared at her. “You almost sound serious,” he said after a minute.
“I’m going to give you one more chance at this. Mess this up and you’re finished here, do you understand me?”
“I didn’t mean any harm. I just didn’t realize how the gun worked.”
“If that’s actually the case, then you should have asked me to explain it to you, not tried to fire it anyway.”
“I thought I knew what I was doing. Jake showed me a few things the other day. I’m sure that’s how he said to hold the gun.”
“Jake showed you a few things? Why were you and Jake even on the weapons range?”
“We weren’t,” Bill said quickly before he flushed. “I suppose he can’t get into any trouble now, can he? We were in his room. He invited all of us to come over for a drink after our first class. After a while, he got out a laser pistol and let some of us have a look at it. It was locked. He wouldn’t let us fire it, but it was really cool anyway.”
“Jake wasn’t meant to have weapons in his room,” Sara said tightly.
“It was his personal weapon, one he’d bought years ago when they were still legal. That’s what he said, anyway.”
Sara nodded, even though she knew better. There was nothing legal about Jake’s pistol. “And he showed you how to hold it?”
“Yeah, but he was pretty drunk. Maybe he got confused.”
Or maybe he thought it would be funny if you accidently shot yourself the first time you had a go with a laser pistol, Sara thought. That seemed like the sort of thing that Jake would find amusing. He’d know that the pistols on the range would all be locked on stun, of course. Bill could have knocked himself out for a few hours, but he’d have been okay after that.
“Can I try again, please?” Bill asked softly.
“Sure. Let me start at the very beginning.” Sara identified each part of the weapon to him and let him examine it closely before she showed him exactly how to hold it and aim. After a short while, she took it back and unlocked the firing button. “It’s live. Aim carefully before you fire.”
“I did it,” Bill shouted, jumping up and down. “I shot the target.”
Sara checked the target on the screen. “You hit the top right corner. Try to aim for the middle of the target next time.”
He nodded and then sent three shots in quick succession at the target.
Sara pointed to the screen. “Your first shot was closer to the middle. Your second was back in that top right corner. Your third missed entirely.”
Bill sighed. “It’s harder than I thought it would be.”
“It takes practice, that’s all.”
Half an hour later, Sara was ready to give up on the man. He’d improved only slightly, in spite of shooting at the target thousands of times. “I need to get you back to class,” she said. “We’ll do this again soon.”
“We will? Excellent,” he said, putting the gun down and clapped his hands together. “I loved that.”
“Great. Let’s go.”
“My hand is killing me,” Bill said as she drove. “It started to cramp near the end. That’s probably why I didn’t get much better after a while. I’m sure I’ll do better next time. Maybe I’d do better with a laser rifle. What do you think?”
“I think we’ll work on one device at a time. Once you’ve mastered the pistol, we’ll move on to other things.”
“Thank you so much,” he said as they got out of the transport. “That was the most fun I’ve had since I’ve been here. That was amazing.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it.” She walked him to class and then took a long deep breath before she entered the room.
Ethel gave her a sympathetic smile. “Who’s next?”
“Mark,” she said. She wanted a session with someone who would know exactly what they were doing, and she wanted to save Luke for last.
Mark rose to
his feet and followed Sara out of the room. “This isn’t necessary,” he said as she drove, “but I’m looking forward to having some time alone with you, anyway.”
“I know you were with a police department, so I’m sure you’re familiar with most of the weapons on the range. Maybe there’ll be one or two that will be new to you, anyway.”
“Or we can just talk and get to know each other better.”
Sara wasn’t sure if he was simply being friendly or if he was flirting. When she joined him at the counter, things instantly became more clear, as he slid an arm around her, ostensibly to reach for one of the guns in front of her. That wasn’t behavior she was prepared to tolerate.
As he blinked at her from the ground, she shrugged. “Sorry, I reacted instinctively.”
“Those are some instincts,” he said as he slowly got to his feet. “I was just trying to get that old handgun to take a look at it.”
“Have you ever fired one?”
“Yes, many years ago. We busted an arms dealer who dealt in everything from laser cannons to much older stuff. Everyone involved in the case was allowed to have a go with some of the weapons before they were destroyed.”
“Is there anything here you haven’t used that you’d like to try?”
He looked at her for a minute and then raised an eyebrow. “Are you single?”
“No.”
“No? I didn’t realize. Are you and Robert together?”
“Not in a million years.”
“I can’t believe a woman as attractive as you would be involved with Dr. Freeman.”
“My private life really isn’t any of your concern.”
“You weren’t involved with Jake, were you? He would have told us if you were, actually. He’d have bragged about it.”
“Should we get back to training?”
“I’d really rather talk about you. It’s been ages since I’ve talked to a beautiful woman.”
Sara rolled her eyes. “Let’s get you back to class.”
“I thought we were supposed to be out here for forty minutes.”
“We’re out here to practice shooting, not talk.”
“I know how to shoot,” he said, taking a step closer to her. “Tell me about the man in your life, then.”
