Starting with June. Emilie Rose
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and fix it.
Her scent drifted across the booth, disrupting his focus. Mind games? Blondie was playing with him—a man who’d been trained to block out biting insects, snakes and other vermin and even bodily functions to get his shot. Hell, he could lie in wait for hours or days, if necessary.
He’d better concentrate if he didn’t want to spend a meal looking into smug green eyes.
Come on, Rivers. You’re better than this.
He shook off her hand and fixed his gaze on the intersecting lines, very conscious of the woman watching him. He exhaled, ignoring her as best he could, squeezed the trigger repeatedly until his magazine was empty. His anxiety level rose with each shot.
He looked at the Swiss cheese of his target—pitiful—then at June. For a moment he thought he saw sympathy in her green eyes, and his spine turned to steel.
Then she shrugged. “Sixty-one more rounds to go. I like my steak medium rare with a baked potato drowning in butter on the side.”
He had to keep his head in the game. “You think you’re gonna beat me.”
“Of course. I know this weapon as well as I know my own face. You, on the other hand, are still learning your HK’s quirks and you’re out of practice.”
Her cockiness would have been cute if anxiety hadn’t been chewing a hole in his stomach. “My sights are off.”
She offered him her weapon, grip first. “Use mine.”
In other words, put up or shut up, Marine. What choice did he have? He exchanged guns with her. “Are you going to yap all day or shoot?”
Her eyebrows arched above the clear lenses. Then she about-faced. She took lane three. He moved to lane two, beside her.
He heard the telltale sound of her popping in a magazine and loading one in the chamber. He’d do better with her weapon. The sights were on target. Her accuracy proved that.
But he didn’t improve. Four magazines later he admitted it wasn’t the weapon. It was him.
He was a sniper, a sharpshooter, without a single bull’s-eye. If he couldn’t hit his target, where did that leave him?
Unemployable and without marketable skills.
Was the blind spot in his peripheral vision not enough of a curse? Was his visual impairment permanent? It had been five damned months since his final surgery. He was counting on healing and proving the doctors wrong.
Movement downrange caught his attention. June reeled in yet another target with a gaping hole in the center. Each perfect sheet had ratcheted up his tension until he was almost ready to burst out of his skin. His targets looked as if he’d used buckshot. A new recruit who’d never touched a weapon before boot camp would have had better results.
Desperation filled him, forcing out oxygen. He had to improve his scores. Again and again he reached for the box, until there were no rounds left. He’d wasted one hundred rounds and hadn’t scored a single winning sheet. He’d improved his score by shooting with his injured eye closed, but he was still nowhere near his previous proficiency.
“Nothing more we can do. Give it time,” the doctors had said.
Sometimes life sucked.
And then it got worse.
He removed the glasses and wiped his face, then backed out of the booth, facing one cold, hard fact. He was no longer a Marine. He was no longer a sharpshooter.
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