Chapter 2

It was nuts, but Ellis liked it. Mostly because Clark approved. Ellis might not be the needy bitch he’d been when freshly discharged and looking for a place to go that wasn’t back to Oklahoma, but he kind of lived for Clark’s approval nonetheless. He’d made peace with the need. Clark was one of the best men Ellis knew. What the hell was wrong with getting such a man’s nod of acceptance? It made Ellis feel good—and precious little ever did.

Ellis retrieved his Colt Defender from the second drawer of his pressboard night table. He checked the Wilson Combat seven-round mag and the standard safety. He strapped on his holster, secured the weapon, and turned out the lights before dashing down the narrow stairwell to the main level of the shooting range. The stairs came out in a long storage room filled with cleaning supplies, range merchandise, crates, boxes, and God only knew what. Miss Maggie wasn’t exactly the most organized of owners, and Miss Jillian, Maggie’s wife, was no help. Jillian’s idea of organization was to file membership forms under “C” for “Care.” As in “We care about our members.”

The sheer chaos the place must have been when Jillian and Maggie lived in Ellis’s rooms was hard to imagine. They had their own place now, though, thank goodness. Ellis knew they could both shoot the balls off a gnat at a thousand yards, and Miss Maggie probably knew more ways to kill somebody than Clark did, but Ellis still didn’t like to think about the women alone at the range at night by themselves. They deserved their safe, cozy home with their six cats. Ellis was more suited to the pad above the range. It made more sense: Ellis as semi-expendable sentinel.

Ellis went through the storage-room door and shut it behind him, listening to the electronic lock beep as it engaged. He flipped light switches, and the fluorescents flickered to life. The range’s main room was a big one, and it stood in an L-shape around the insulated indoor range. Round racks full of T-shirts stood near the front of the room. They had hats on shelves and trinkets on endcaps. Jillian loved to put the range’s logo on pretty much everything, from pop bottles to keychains to plastic bobblehead bulldogs. The stuff sold surprisingly well. Every lesbian in the world wanted one of Maggie’s gun-range shirts. Miss Maggie offered discounted memberships to members of the LGBTQ community. She also taught self-defense courses in the shop and did a three-day-long, intensive crash course to get a carry permit. Revenue was good.

The weapons for rent and for sale and the ammo for all of the above were kept in several glass cases. The glass was bulletproof, and each case was locked with folding metal cages after hours. It took an electronic passcode and a key to undo the cages. If Miss Jillian was flighty, then Miss Maggie was paranoid. At least, that was what she said she was. To Ellis, it seemed more like Miss Maggie had enough money to indulge her security fetish. Miss Maggie loved making life hard on would-be thieves and intruders. They’d had a few over the years, but not since she’d installed the roll-down, garage-style metal doors to fit behind the range’s front door and glass windows. The emergency exit had more bars on it than a jail cell. Even the bathrooms had a code.

Ellis unlocked the ammunition case and one of the display cases. He went to the front and undid the security mechanism so the metal door would glide up and unblock the main entrance. He kept the door lock engaged for now. It was still early, or late to the all-night New Amsterdam crowd, and the crazies would be out looking for a place to roost until twilight. Most of the homeless or the clinically insane who’d accidentally entered the range looking for food, money, or their lost wits had been harmless enough. But with so many weapons lying around, Ellis couldn’t be too careful.

The other counter jockey, Chuck, wouldn’t be in until the shop opened officially at nine, so Ellis had the place—and Sinful Bryn—to himself. Or, well, Lord, Ellis hoped Bryn was sinful. It’d be a shame for somebody who looked like that ever to be lonely.

Ellis had just finished putting the coffee on in the communal pot when he heard a taxi pull up directly by the doors. Ellis had never asked if Bryn took the train into the borough and then a car to the shop, or a car all the way from point A to point B. He figured it’d be rude to ask something like that, dealing with money and all. Clearly the guy had no cash-flow problems. He was paying Maggie to open the shop for an extra half hour of business.