Page 56 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

Quinn wrapped her hand around the grip, feel­ing the rough tex­ture against her palm.

“Good. Now fit your left thumb right un­der your right thumb like a puz­zle piece. That’s it.”

Re­mem­ber­ing Un­cle Pete’s lessons, Quinn locked her el­bows and bent her knees slightly.

“Good stance,” Esmé said. “Fo­cus on the front sight and get­ting it be­tween the rear sights. And squeeze the trig­ger.”

Quinn lined up the sights with the bull’s-eye of the tar­get and squeezed. What she hadn’t re­mem­bered was the gun’s kick, and her hands jumped up­ward. “That was em­bar­rass­ing.”

“Now you know what it feels like,” Esmé said. “Keep shoot­ing.”

Quinn fired un­til she’d emp­tied the mag­a­zine, her arms feel­ing a resid­ual, phan­tom vi­bra­tion as she low­ered them. Esmé hit the but­ton that whipped the pa­per tar­get up the lane to them.

All but two of the bul­let holes were within a four-inch spread. Esmé gave her a skep­ti­cal look. “That’s pretty good shoot­ing for some­one who hasn’t held a gun in years.”

“Be­gin­ner’s luck?” Quinn sug­gested. Pete had al­ways said she was a nat­u­ral with a pis­tol. Some­thing about fo­cus­ing in­tensely on a vis­i­ble goal worked for her brain.

Esmé pulled off the used pa­per tar­get and slot­ted in a new one. “Reload and let’s see if you can tighten your spread at the same dis­tance.”

Quinn had al­ready ejected the empty mag­a­zine, so she slammed in a new one with a sat­is­fy­ing click, cham­bered a round, and aimed down the lane. Esmé had changed the tar­get from a bull’s-eye to a hu­man sil­hou­ette. She sighted down the bar­rel and squeezed off a suc­ces­sion of shots.

The tar­get zipped up to the bay. “A three-inch spread and no strays this time. You hit right in the heart,” Esmé said with ap­proval.

They did it again and again and again, un­til Quinn’s eyes re­fused to fo­cus, her arm mus­cles felt like over­cooked spaghetti, and her palm was bruised from shov­ing the mag­a­zines into the grip.

“Im­pres­sive!” a man said from be­hind Quinn, and she spun around, the Glock half­way raised be­fore she re­mem­bered that she was not sup­posed to aim the gun at a hu­man be­ing on a shoot­ing range.

Not to men­tion that the per­son she had nearly pointed it at was Raul.

“You shouldn’t sneak up on a woman with a Glock in her hand,” Quinn snapped be­fore she re­mem­bered that he was a prince and mum­bled, “Sorry.”

Luck­ily, he smiled in that mag­netic way he had. “If you’d shot me, I would have de­served it.”

Esmé gave a nod that was sort of a bow. “Your High­ness.”

“I’m just Lieu­tenant Raul Dragón in the Royal Cal­e­van Re­serves to­day,” he said with a wave at the dirt-smeared cam­ou­flage fa­tigues he wore. “I’ve got a short break while the rest of the di­vi­sion fin­ishes the ob­sta­cle course.”

Quinn didn’t bother to ask how Raul had known she was there. The prince could find out pretty much any­thing he wanted to. She turned, checked that the Glock was un­loaded, and laid it on the counter pointed away from all hu­man be­ings.

“Esmé, may I speak with Quinn pri­vately for just a few min­utes?” Raul asked, mak­ing Quinn jerk her head around in sur­prise.

“Sure.” Esmé grinned as she headed out the door. “She’ll be happy to rest her arms.”

“Amen to that,” Quinn said, even as nerves quiv­ered through her. If Raul asked her ques­tions about the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, she wasn’t sure how much Mikel would want her to say. It would also be tough to tell the frick­ing crown prince she couldn’t share clas­si­fied in­for­ma­tion with him. His se­cu­rity clear­ance was a lot higher than hers.

She eyed him war­ily and waited.

He plunked down on the hard plank bench at the back of the booth and stretched out his long legs. “I could use a rest my­self. You def­i­nitely lose your edge when you don’t train ev­ery day. Will you sit?”

Was that a royal com­mand? She perched on the other end of the bench. A not-un­pleas­ant smell of sweat, dirt, and woodsy soap em­anated from the prince, and she could see per­spi­ra­tion-streaked dust on the back of his neck. It raised her opin­ion of him.

She sud­denly re­mem­bered that Esmé had bot­tles of wa­ter in her gun bag, so she leaped up to grab one. “You’re prob­a­bly thirsty,” she said, hold­ing it out to the prince.

“Thank you.” He took it, twisted the cap off, and took a long swig. “Ahh.” Then he re­capped the bot­tle and shifted so he could look di­rectly at her where she had sat once more. “Gabriel is play­ing the gui­tar again.”

“Isn’t that good news?” Raul seemed more con­cerned than happy.

“He prac­tices like he’s pos­sessed. His fin­gers are lit­er­ally bleed­ing.”

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