Chapter Ten
Ozzy
It’s hard not to go to her when she leaves the US Attorneys office. She looks pale, exhausted, and drawn. She’s clearly approaching the end of her rope and every part of me is urging me to go to her side. To comfort her. To do whatever I can to take her pain away.
But I don’t. I can’t. A guy like me sprinting towards a government building would probably draw some unwanted attention and turn this already fucked-up scenario into even more of a mess.
So, instead, I casually get up from my table, head outside, and give her a small wave. Just enough to let her know I’m here.
She’s on the lookout for me, and replies with a subtle nod.
Preacher’s not long in following me, stopping only to put down a handful of cash to cover our food and drinks.
“I’m going to go keep an eye on that other lawyer and make sure no one offs him. Remember, you’ve got two days,” he says. “I’ll follow your call for now, brother.”
I nod. “Yeah, I got it. And thanks, mate.”
I’m grateful for the time I’ve got. Two days is a lot to ask for, but I’m confident that I can figure a way to end this situation without Maria getting hurt. It’s going to take some work, but making something out of nothing is what we Kiwis do — it’s baked into our history to improvise in tough spots and during leaner days in our history there wasn’t much we couldn’t fix with a little determination and some number 8 wire.
I’m going to do the same here.
“Take care, brother. If this goes sideways, there’s no way the club goes to jail easy. A lot of people could get hurt.”
“Trust me. I’ve got this.”
He nods and leaves without another word, but, by that point, I’m hardly paying attention — my eyes are back on Maria and I can’t help but smile as she gets closer.
“How are you holding up?”
She rolls her eyes. “Hellish. You ready to go gun shopping? I could really use the release of blowing something up right now.”
“Lead the way.”
I follow behind her a step or two, which gives me the advantage of being able to keep my eyes on her for protective reasons, and it lets me have a great view of her ass. Even in her lawyer’s outfit — conservative black pants, suit jacket, and dress shirt — she’s a knock-out. I have to keep reminding myself that I’m not here just to stare at her ass, I have to keep it safe, too.
Thankfully, we don’t have far to walk. Montana’s a strange place, with a gun shop right next to an important government office. Eddie’s Armory.
I put my hand on her shoulder and stop her before she heads inside.
“Wait here,” I tell her, after taking a quick look around to make sure no one suspicious looking is coming up behind us. “I’m going to check it out first, ok?”
“Seriously?” she says, giving me a funny look.
“Yes, seriously. I may not know much about being a bodyguard, seeing as I’ve never been one before and haven’t even watched that Kevin Costner movie, but I know it wouldn’t be a good idea to let you just walk into a gun shop of all places without me first taking a look.”
That funny look turns into a suppressed smile. “Ok, go ahead.”
I step inside.
A tiny bell rings as I enter and I take a quick look around. It’s a typical small town gun shop. The room is filled with racks of guns divided up by type — shotguns, handguns, hunting rifles, and so on. More guns than anyone in their right mind could ever need, which is sort of the American way. There’s no one else inside except the guy behind the counter — Eddie, unless the sign’s lying — and he looks like a decent bloke, so I head back out and wave for Maria to come on in.
“Thanks for keeping me safe,” she says, that kind-of-smile still on her face.
“You’re welcome,” I say. “So what kind of gun did you have in mind?”
She shrugs. “Something small, something I can easily carry around with me. All I care about is that it’s enough to stop whatever asshole I need it to.”
I think for a minute, remembering everything I’ve learned about guns in my career with the club.
“Well, a lot of these are going to have some decent stopping power. That’s sort of the point, ain’t it?” I say, walking with her through the store. I lead her to the racks of handguns and I stop and take her hand and look at it — checking the size, the length of her fingers, sizing her up. “But it’s about more than just stopping power.”
“What are you doing?”
“The size of your hand is pretty important. You want to pick a gun that you can easily handle. For example, my hands are on the bigger side, which means if I pick a gun with a smaller grip, I’m going to have a pretty bad time. Just like you wouldn’t want to pick a gun that’s too big for you, because you might hurt yourself.”
She nods, slowly. “Fair enough.”
I hold onto her hand more than is strictly necessary — it feels good to touch her — and then I pick out a few guns from the shelf. Glocks, mostly, since they tend to be pretty reliable. “Check these ones out. Hold them, see how they feel in your hand. You want your grip to be comfortable.”
We go through them one by one, and I show her how to hold them. It only takes a couple before she finds one she likes: a compact Glock 9mm pistol.
“How’d you learn so much about guns?” she says, checking over the Glock in her hands.
For someone new to firearms, she’s confident in holding them and, what makes me even more pleased to see, she’s holding it carefully. She doesn’t look down the barrel, she doesn’t carelessly point it around. Like she is with so many things, she’s measured and smart.
What a woman.
“I grew up around them,” I say. “My great grandad was an ANZAC — fought in Gallipoli and earned all sorts of commendations — and the men in my family have always had a bit of a fighting edge to us. Hunting, the military, or just plain brawling, it’s in our blood.”
“You ever kill anyone?” she says, looking into my eyes.
I don’t blink. “I’ve done my fair share of what it takes to support the club. And keep my family safe.”
She looks down at the gun in her hands. “They point, you shoot?”
“It’s not that simple. You know that. As much as I love the simple things in life — family, riding, fucking — stuff like that is complicated. You just do the best you can to keep the important people in your life safe,” I say. I pause a second, looking at her. She hasn’t taken her eyes off that gun and she’s got this strange look on her face. “You really think you could use that thing if it came down to it?”
She looks to me, eyes set, stubborn. “If I have to, yeah. But I hope I don’t have to find out.”
It’s easy as to buy the thing and some ammo. All it takes is taking it to the counter, Eddie checks her ID and asks her a few questions to make sure she’s not intoxicated, and that’s it. All-in-all, the whole shopping experience takes about twenty minutes. Twenty minutes to get the woman I care about armed and deadly. It almost seems criminal.
“Now, you want to go learn how to shoot that thing?”
“Lead the way,” she says, taking my hand.
* * * * *
I take her to a place a bit out of town, stopping first at a gas station to buy a twelve pack of beer. We find some deserted road next to some empty ranchland. There isn’t a person for miles, and there’s still enough sun in the sky to do some actual shooting.
It’s time to get down to business.
But first, we drink the beer.
And we chat. Mostly about empty things, like how her life is going in Chicago, TV shows she’s watching and books she’s reading. It’s a moment of normalcy and peace in the crazy swell around us. I don’t much care about what we actually talk about, I don’t guide it with any agenda, I just want to get her to relax and give her a bit of time in her day where she’s not thinking about all the shit that’s going on.
After a little bit, she opens up.
I poke, I prod, I joke until the cares start to slough off her shoulders.
Soon, she’s smiling, laughing, and she’s the confident, beautiful woman I remember.
As the sun’s starting to sink toward the horizon, we finish the beers and line the empties up on the fenceposts.
“So let’s go over a few of the basics, ok? First thing: always, always, always, treat the gun like it’s loaded. That means when we’re doing this stuff out here and when you’re carrying it around, you don’t point it at anything you don’t intend to shoot. Got it?”
She holds the gun in her hand, looks at it, considering, and nods. “Alright. Seems simple enough. What’s next?”
“The other thing is what Gunney and Bear call ‘trigger discipline’, but what everyone else just calls ‘not being a fucking idiot’. It’s where you don’t put your finger on the trigger until you’re ready to shoot.”
“What’s next?” she says.
“Holding it. It’s pretty simple, really,” I say, showing her how to grip it and hold it high with her dominant hand and use her other hand to support it. Then I show her how to stand and how to aim.
It’s such a strange thing seeing a gun in her hands.
I’m used to her being tough – it’s one of the qualities about her I respect the most — and if the circumstances were different, I’d be excited as hell teaching her how to use a gun. But these circumstances aren’t exactly ideal. I’m teaching her because we both know there’s a chance she might need this thing to kill someone.
There might come a time where I can’t protect her.
“Shooting’s next, I assume?” she says.
Without waiting for me, she takes aim and pulls the trigger. There’s a crack and an explosion rocks the wooden fence post. It’s an ok shot for a beginner, but at least a foot off the target.
After a breath, she fires again, and then once more, until the can finally goes flying.
Maria stops, looking down at the gun. “That wasn’t too hard.”
“It’s a good start, but you still need some work,” I say. Carefully, I get behind her. I wrap my arms around her and help fine-tune her grip and stance. There’s a moment where she leans back into me and, with her body against mine, I don’t feel so conflicted about this whole mess.
“Now?” she says, looking back at me over her shoulder.
I nod. “Now.”
It only takes her two shots to hit the next can and even her miss is much closer.
She smiles in satisfaction. “Much better.”
“You know, there’s an even better way you could protect yourself in all this,” I say, once she’s knocked her fourth can and she’s used up all the rounds in the clip. “You could go back to Chicago.”
She doesn’t hesitate. “No.”
“It would make things a lot simpler. For both of us. You go back to your job, Preacher and I do what we came here to do, and it keeps you out of danger. It’s heaps better than you needing to carry a gun because you’re worried some cornbread-eating cunt is going to kill you.”
“First, don’t use that word. And second, I don’t think you’re getting how important my job is to me.”
“More important than your life?”
She sets the pistol down on a fence post and takes my hand. “Ozzy, if someone asked you to betray the club, would you do it?”
I shift a little, put off a bit by the question — helping her is already closer to that line than I’m comfortable with. “No. Of course not. The club is part of who I am.”
“Right. Same for me. I love what I do. I actually love it. I didn’t have a judge for a dad like Roxy; I didn’t have those connections. My dad was great, supportive, and so was my mom, but my dad did factory-line QA work for some supplier for Boeing and even that wasn’t always steady work. I fucking fought to get here. Day after day. For scholarships to pay for college, for respect among my peers, for my bosses to take me seriously. It is satisfying like you wouldn’t believe to be doing work that makes me, and my family, proud. If I leave, I could very well lose my job. I’d be betraying my family, my co-workers, and my self,” she says, reloading the gun and firing a shot that takes out another can. “No fucking way.”
I take a step towards her, my blood running hot. “Do you understand where I’m coming from? Do you understand that the guy you’re working for is a danger to you, to the club, and to so many people you care about? This is going to get a lot more bloody before it’s over.”
“Ozzy, for the last time: no.”
“He needs to die, Maria,” I say. “Are you really going risk everything for piece of dirt like him? You’re better than that.”
“You think less of me because I actually give a shit about making something out of myself?” she says.
I don’t answer.
Wordlessly, Maria picks up the pistol, re-loads it, and takes a few more shots, missing the next can by a wide mile.
“Fuck,” she screams, taking aim and firing another few errant angry shots that also completely miss the can.
“You’re doing it wrong,” I say, coming in slow and careful to stand behind her.
“It’s still ‘point and shoot’, right? Unless shit changed in the thirty seconds you tried to convince me to abandon my job and my principles.”
“You need to bloody well calm down. Especially if you’re new at this, shooting while you’re all worked up means you’re going to have bad aim. Take a breath, yeah?” I say, unable to keep the irritation out of my voice.
Inhaling and exhaling, she tries again.
Perfect shot.
There’s a moment of silence between us. It’s weighty, loaded with conflict — I’m trapped in a fight between the woman who holds my heart and the club that holds my soul.
“Thank you,” she says.
“I still care about you, Maria. Even if you think I’m being an ass, I’m doing it because I give a damn.”
We work shot after shot that evening, until the light fails us and our stomachs go from grumbling to roaring like famished tigers. There’s an urgency about her. The cans get shot to pieces, and those pieces get shot to atoms. I almost feel sorry for the rancher: more than a couple of his fenceposts get blasted to pieces in the process.
When the light’s dead, I call a stop.
“You can only get so good in a day. Let’s call it a night,” I say, hoping tonight’s work has been enough to cool the fire inside her.
She gives gives me a look, and it’s only reluctantly that she puts the gun down. I love her tenacity. I love her fire. If only I weren’t teaching her how to hang around in a situation she definitely should not be in. If only she weren’t the obstacle between me and the man who threatens my club.
Sighing, she looks over what little bit of her handiwork is visible in the dim light. “Come on, let’s go back to our hotel,” she says, with a subtle note of heat in her voice.
Our hotel.
She slips her hand in mind, tightens her grip, and leads me towards her rental car. Thoughts about conflict and loyalty fade. I smile.
Our hotel.
I like the sound of that.