Chapter Five
There wasn’t much that ruffled Gill. He knew at the time something about Anne wasn’t up-front. But a small town sheriff? No, he didn’t see that coming. When he’d woke just before dawn and she wasn’t there, he was surprisingly disappointed. She’d been demanding . . . a little needy, even. Then there was the fire that she lit with a touch. JoAnne Ward . . . Little Miss River Bend Nowhere, Oregon, gave as much as she took and asked for more. They’d gone at it for hours. Not something he often did. It was like she was saving it up, soaking it all in to last.
Yeah . . . that crack about hooking up in a small town was laughable. He’d have to ask Burton about what she knew when it came to Sheriff Ward’s love life.
He watched her ass as she moved through the doors of the training center. There were plenty of law enforcement officers there for the very same training as Jo. They mingled on the sideline while several receptionists took in the newcomers.
Gill approached the desk by Jo’s side.
“Agent Clausen? What are you doing here?”
Gill shook hands with an old friend. “Agent Ault, this is JoAnne Ward. Sheriff of River Bend, Oregon. She’s on the roster this week.”
Agent Ault looked over his printed sheet, found her name, and checked it off.
“Welcome to Quantico, Sheriff.”
“Thank you,” Jo said.
Ault twisted a waiver in front of her. “You need to sign this.”
She skimmed the document . . . the one saying if she was hurt or killed she had no right to sue the federal government. The part about her being dead and not being able to sue never managed to be questioned.
“Have you been with us before?” Ault asked.
“No. First time.”
Gill made sure Ault knew to take care of her. “She’s a close friend of Agent Burton,” he told him.
“Ah, right. Shauna said she was coming in later to help with the hand-to-hand. Had a friend coming.”
“This is her.”
“Great. Locker rooms are in there.” He pointed down the hall. We’ll be starting in fifteen.” He looked at her feet. “I hope you brought running shoes.”
Jo smiled, something Gill had yet to see since she arrived.
He liked it.
“Burton suggested it.”
“You’re all set, then.”
Jo stepped away and turned toward him. “Well, Agent Clausen, thanks for getting me here.”
“I can’t let my partner down.”
Jo put her hand out as if she was shaking it good-bye. “It was a pleasure.”
He took her one hand in both of his briefly before she pulled away. “No, it was mine.”
A tiny bit of heat rose in her face before she walked down the hall to the locker rooms.
As she did, he envisioned the tattoo she had on the small of her back. The simple, geometric design women want when they’re young as a form of rebellion but have no true idea what they want in life.
Didn’t matter if it was rebellion or not . . . Gill thought it was sexy. He’d wanted to eat breakfast off it the morning after.
Only she’d left.
“You and Burton are on tap for instruction this week, right?”
“We volunteered to help.”
“See you out there.”
Dressed in dark blue from head to toe, with FBI Training written on her T-shirt, her hat, and even the belt they’d given her . . . Jo walked out with several other female law enforcement officers with the same purpose.
They met their male classmates in a large room that housed close to two hundred of them.
Gill hovered in her head. The idiocy of him suggesting she couldn’t take care of herself burned.
He didn’t know what he was talking about. And after this week, she’d be even better equipped to ward off any unwanted man.
She’d wanted Viking Man.
Arrogant Fed that he was.
She forced his image from her brain and switched her attention to those around her.
Reminiscent of her days in the academy, Jo stood shoulder to shoulder with the other officers while the instructors filed out in front of them.
As they lined up, the room grew silent.
When Jo saw him, she cussed under her breath. She didn’t see where Gill’s eyes fell from behind his sunglasses, but she felt the weight of them nonetheless.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m Agent Ault. Welcome to Quantico. Where we help take your skills you’ve obtained in your local law enforcement agency and help you find your weakness and attack it. We will hone and teach you what you may not know . . . use what you’ve forgotten, and remind you every day that you’re one bullet away from being a statistic. We’re here to help you stay alive, help you keep your civilians breathing, and above all else, know what you are capable of doing and what you are not. We are not on a military base by accident. This week will feel like boot camp. It will challenge you, leave you bruised and exhausted. Welcome the pain. It will make you stronger.”
The woman standing to Jo’s right shifted and muttered something she couldn’t hear.
Jo looked back up and felt Gill staring.
Agent Ault explained how the days would progress before dismissing them to their preassigned groups.
Jo didn’t bother looking for a group number, she walked right up to Gill, knowing his half smile that bordered on a smirk was meant for her. “What a surprise,” she said without humor.
He tilted his glasses enough to make sure she saw his dark orbs. “Time to see what you’re made of, Sheriff.”
Jo knew, without a doubt, this was going to hurt.
They started at the range. A place Jo felt comfortable. Her father had raised her with guns in the house, and there wasn’t a memory there that didn’t involve her safely using every gun available to him.
Small towns didn’t have a ton available, however. And with the price of finely tuned weaponry, Jo didn’t have the budget to add to her personal arsenal.
Gill introduced his group to the range officer, who went over the plan for the morning.
“We want to know your baseline . . . want you to know it. I’m sure you’re accurate with your service weapon. What about your perpetrator’s weapon? When you manage to disarm your suspect and have need to use their guns?”
Gill took up where the range officer left off. “We want you to team up with another person who uses a weapon different from your own. Who uses a forty?” he asked.
Several hands went up.
“The nine millimeter?”
Jo raised her hand.
He went down the short list of backup weapons after that, before pairing the groups.
Jo found herself with Lenny, a deputy from somewhere in Ohio, and Sal, a vice cop from Chicago. Both men had half a foot or more on Jo and several more years on the force than she. When she introduced herself as the sheriff of River Bend, the men exchanged unconvinced glances.
“It’s a small town,” she explained.
“How good a shot are you, Sheriff?” Sal asked. Sal had a long, lean face that belonged on top of a thin body . . . instead it bobbled on a thick neck that made the man look completely out of proportion.
“I hold my own,” she said as she loaded the clips for her weapon of choice.
“I’m a betting man . . . how about you, Lenny?” Sal asked.
Lenny, a little younger than Sal, glanced at Jo. “Small town girls grow up with guns,” he told Mr. Vice. “I’ll stay out of that bet.”
Sal smirked as he loaded the forty-caliber Glock. “What about you, Sheriff? Put some money behind your skills?”
Jo saw Gill approach.
She stopped being a sheriff for two seconds and gave Sal the sweetest smile she could muster. “I don’t know, Sal. You probably get all kinds of practice in a big city like Chicago.”
Sal tilted his head. “Where’s your confidence, Sheriff?”
She knew Gill heard the bet. “Twenty dollars says I’m a better shot with my nine than you are with your forty.”
Sal approved with a nod.
“And . . . just for shits and giggles, twenty more says I’m better with your forty than you are.”
He blinked. “Fifty.”
Jo forged insecurity with a dip of her chin. “Small towns don’t pay well.” Before he could back out, she agreed. “But I’ll take that bet.”
Shots started to ring out around them.
Jo covered her ears with the protection provided and pushed her sunglasses higher on her face.
Out of the corner of her eye, Gill watched.
Her target was twenty-five yards out. The first round suggested the sights on Sal’s gun were a little high. She adjusted her aim and concentrated. The rapid succession of bullets flew through the air until her clip was empty. She dropped the clip and set the empty gun down and stepped back.
Lenny sat with his arms crossed, a smile on his face.
Gill smirked.
Sal wasn’t happy.
“Your turn, Chicago,” Jo said.
Gill walked by, patted Sal on the back. “Never bet your lunch money against a woman at the range. She’ll take it every time.”
Seventy dollars richer, Jo happily moved on to weapons she didn’t have as much experience with.
The .45 shot a lot like her 9mm with a little more kick. Her backup .38 was easy, but when put in a smaller weapon, she found the target moving around. Or perhaps she wasn’t hitting it.
Sal wasn’t a sore loser, and gave her pointers on the smaller weapon.
Gill would walk by on occasion and offer one of them a pointer they hadn’t thought of that helped them improve their game.
When they moved to the outdoor long range, Jo asked Sal if he wanted to win his money back.
He hesitated, and Lenny reminded him that there was more open space in rural Oregon than there was in the city of Chicago.
Sal passed.
This was where the best military snipers in the service came to train. There was something inspiring about the grounds. The group training wasn’t there to hit their targets at five hundred yards with scopes and spotters . . . but with what they’d actually use in real-life scenarios they’d face.
Agent Ault and the range officers spoke of offense and defense when being called for backup.
When he asked how many of them hunted for sport, less than half of them raised their hands. Though Jo didn’t do it any longer, she had when her dad was alive. The small hunting cabin her father had used for years sat high in the forest above River Bend collecting spiders and dust. She’d been a couple of times since his death, just to make sure the place wasn’t overtaken by raccoons, but couldn’t bring herself to stay. It was the one place she left exactly as it had been since the day her father passed. Removing any of his things felt like a sacrilege. So she left all as it was and thought one day she might bring herself to use the space.
Or maybe she should just open it up to Luke and Wyatt, not that either of them hunted for venison. The place was off the grid, completely unavailable outside a two-way radio that her dad had kept with him in case of extreme emergencies. When he’d been sheriff, he never really took any time off away from River Bend. Even the cabin wasn’t outside of the zip code. When she was older and didn’t go up to the cabin with him, he’d come back from a weekend refreshed and ready for a new month, a new season.
She smiled fondly into the memory and remembered that he was the reason she was there.
“Sheriff?”
Jo jumped. How someone the size of Gill could sneak up on her was a mystery.
“Agent Clausen.”
He looked out over the range and back to her. “You looked lost in your thoughts. Uncomfortable with rifles?”
“I hold my own.”
He smiled.
“I don’t have a lot experience with ARs. We trained with them, but it isn’t what I carry in the squad car. I’d use a range rifle when we’d hunt,” she confessed.
“We’d?”
She looked past the man, tried not to imagine the ink she knew was under his FBI T-shirt. “My father and I.”
Gill turned a chair around and straddled it. “Burton told me about your father. I’m sorry.”
He sounded as if he was.
“It was a long time ago.”
She watched Sal struggle with a lever-action 558, paid attention when Lenny instructed the man.
“I was surprised to hear your father died of an accidental shooting.”
Lenny looked behind his shoulder and waved her over.
“Yeah,” she said, standing up. “I was, too.” Without more, she placed her ear protection on and moved in, leaving Gill behind.
Later, when they’d moved to the ARs, Gill took a space beside her and took over the instruction.
The man was distracting. When he called her on a lack of concentration, she focused and went through the paces of becoming more familiar with a weapon she hardly ever shot. Problem was, this gun was available to most anyone out there who had the money. Unfortunately, law enforcement in rural Oregon didn’t think she needed one enough to put it in her budget. Once she started shooting it, however, she made a note to lobby the deciding parties to change their stance. Even without the use of the scope, the gun was a dream.
Gill stood behind her when she shot, a pair of binoculars in his hands. The targets were as close as one hundred yards out and as far out as three. Hitting the mark wasn’t easy, and it took more concentration than would work in any real-life uses.
Once she’d squeezed the trigger, she’d wait to hear him call out if she hit, if the shot was high, or if it was too low.
“High and to the right,” he told her.
She adjusted.
“Too low.”
Another breath, her eye peering down the barrel at the sights, she missed her target again.
“Lean into that gun, Sheriff,” Gill called behind her.
She squeezed.
“Closer.” Gill stood behind her, his chest pressed into her back, his face close to hers. “Get closer to the weapon.”
He moved away far enough to not be hit by the casing as it exited the chamber.
She didn’t need him to tell her she hit her target. So did the next six shots.
When she pulled the clip and sat back, Gill was smiling. “A couple hundred more hits and I might consider you efficient.”
She’d argue with him if he wasn’t telling the truth.
He waved one of her trio over. “You’re up, Lenny.”
By lunch, she was already tired . . . and they hadn’t even started the hand-to-hand yet.