Shadow Prey

thing I ever heard. You’re too fuckin’ old for that, Davenport. You’ve got lines in your face. Your hair is turning gray.”
    Lucas reddened but grinned through the embarrassment. Dick was walking back toward them. “It might be juvenile, but that’s what I want,” he said. “Unless you’re chicken.”
    “You really do a number on a person’s head, don’t you?”
    “Puk-puk-puk,” he said, doing an imitation of a chicken’s cackle.
    “Fuck you, Davenport,” she said.
    “So maybe we just have a pleasant afternoon shooting guns. We don’t have to compete. I mean, if you’ve got cold feet.”
    “Fuck you.”
    “Anytime, anyplace.”
    “What an asshole,” she muttered under her breath.
    “What does that mean?” Lucas asked.
    “It means you’re on,” she said.
     
    Lucas tossed the quarter and won. They shot a round of five shots for familiarization. Neither showed the other the practice target.
    “You ready?” Lucas asked.
    “Ready.”
    Lucas fired first, five shots. He used both hands, his right shooting hand cupped in his left, the left side of his body slightly forward of the right. He kept both eyes open. Lily could tell he was hitting the black, but she couldn’t tell how close he was to the center 10 ring. When Lucas finished, she stepped to the line and took a position identical to the one Lucas had used. She fired her first shot, said, “Shit,” and fired four more.
    “Problem?” Lucas said when she took down the gun after the last shot.
    “First shot was a flier, I think,” she said. The deputy rolled the targets back to the shooting line. Two of Lucas’ five shots had clipped the 10 ring. The third and fourth counted 9, a fifth was in the 8 ring. Forty-six.
    Three shots from Lily’s .45 had obliterated the center ofthe target, a fourth was in the nine, but the flier was out in the four. Forty-three.
    “Without the flier, I’d of won,” Lily said. She sounded angry with herself.
    “If pigs had wings they could fly,” said Lucas.
    “That’s the worst round I’ve shot in a year.”
    “It’s the less than ideal conditions, shooting targets with a gun you don’t use on the range,” Lucas said. “It gets you range shooters every time.”
    “I’m not a range shooter,” she said, now angry at Lucas. “Let’s get the new targets up, huh?”
    “Jesus, what’d you guys bet? Must be something, huh?” asked the deputy, looking from one of them to the other.
    “Yeah,” said Lily. “A hundred bucks and Davenport’s honor. He loses either way.”
    “Huh?”
    “Never mind.”
    Lucas grinned as he finished reloading. “Bitch, bitch, bitch,” he said, just barely audibly.
    “Keep it up, buster,” she said through her teeth.
    “Sorry. Wasn’t trying to psych you,” he said, trying to psych her. “You shoot first this time.”
    She fired five shots and all five felt good. She smiled at him this time and said, “I just shot a fifty or close to it. Stick that in your nose, asshole.”
    “Temper, temper . . .”
    Lucas fired his five. After the last shot he looked at her and said, “If that doesn’t beat you, I’ll kiss your ass in Saks’ front window.”
    “Side bet?” she asked before the deputy reeled in the targets. “I got fifty bucks that says I win this round. And don’t give me any shit about anything else.”
    “All right,” he said. “Fifty.”
    Dick pulled in the targets and whistled. “I’ll have to count these careful,” he said.
    All ten shots were deep in the black. Dick spread the targets on a workbench and started counting, Lily and Lucas looking over his shoulder.
    “Wait a minute,” Lucas started, when the deputy wrote down an eight.
    “Not a fuckin’ word,” Lily said, pointing her finger at Lucas’ nose.
    The deputy added up the totals, turned to Lucas and said, “You owe the lady fifty bucks. I count it forty-seven to forty-six.”
    “Bullshit. Let me see those . . . .”
    Lucas counted them forty-eight to forty-seven. He took two twenties and a ten out of his wallet and handed them to her.
    “This pisses me off,” he said, his voice tight.
    “I hope being pissed off doesn’t make your hand shake,” she said sweetly.
    “It won’t,” he promised.
    Lucas shot first on the third round. All five shots felt good, and he turned to her and nodded. “If you beat me this time, you deserve it. This time, I got the fifty.”
    “We’ll see,” she said.
    She fired her five and they followed Dick down to the