I so wanted Robert’s truck to be a dusty old pickup, but it was just a regular shiny SUV, the kind that may have had bulletproof glass. Which could surely come in handy considering my deftness at sharpshooting.
Dillinger sat up front with Robert, who was driving. Driving. Robert. It was so insane seeing him perform such a normal, mundane activity. And he didn’t even drive like a grandpa. He drove like he gave orders, with precision, and not so much patience.
We sped around the side of the house, along a path to another field that wasn’t visible from the driveway. It, too, was ringed in forest. Robert and Dillinger conversed about work, while I silently tried to gauge on a scale of one to ten just how drunk I was. One being too drunk to hold a gun straight, ten being way too drunk to hold a gun straight.
We arrived in the middle of nowhere, stepped out onto the grass, and Robert opened the tailgate. Inside it looked like something out of the movie Goodfellas.
Robert tossed a rifle to Dillinger but strapped the one intended for me over his own shoulder. Then we walked a good distance away from the truck.
“Now, Jason, you just hang back,” Robert said. “Because I know you know what you’re doing, but Tina here needs a lesson.”
Dillinger sulked off to the side and kicked a rock, jealous that I was the recipient of all of Robert’s attention.
“Now.” Robert got organized. He demonstrated how to load the rifle, how to hold it. He showed me how to aim it, toward the forest. Then he held it out to me like an offering. “Go ahead now, give it a try, I’m right here, don’t be scared.”
I took the gun into my hands and tried to mimic his exact position, gripping it just as he’d gripped it, holding my body just as he’d held his.
“Good.” He arranged my arms and shoulders, reminded me to keep my feet planted. “Now, when you pull the trigger, you’ve got to be strong. Not weak, you understand? You’re like a sturdy oak tree.”
I swallowed hard. I could hear my own heartbeat.
“Firing a gun is all about power. You’ve got to acknowledge the power and harness it. You control it. You’re in charge. You can’t be a chickenshit with a gun in your hand,” he said. “Can you feel it, Tina? Can you feel the power?”
I did. And in that moment I wanted to turn it on myself.
“Now go on,” Robert said. “Fire.”
10
THE WEEK FOLLOWING the trip to Robert’s ranch, I felt like I was being wrung out and twisted dry every time Robert’s eyes met mine, every time he pointed at me with his fingers shaped like a pistol and called me shooter. If only he hadn’t been so welcoming and so protective of me during that visit. It made delivering this week’s envelope of cash to Margie Fischer worse than ever, not because of the cameras—I decided there weren’t enough security guards in the world to actually watch all the footage those Titan cameras recorded—but because all I could see when I looked at that envelope of money was Robert with his hand on my back, pouring me another bourbon and saying thatta girl in his unguarded twang when I swallowed it down in a single gulp.
I needed to be done with this. I needed to get Margie’s blackmail debt settled and have this be over, because after the bonding we’d done at the ranch, I would literally die—from shame more than guilt—if Robert found out what was going on.
Midweek, Kevin and I met for lunch at the chopped-salad station in the Titan cafeteria and he drilled me with questions: How many acres is the ranch? Were there horses? What did you think of Wiles’s wife? She used to be a stripper, that’s how they met, can you believe that?
“I can totally believe that,” I said. In fact, the first thing I’d reported back to Emily upon returning from the ranch was: “Glen Wiles’s wife looks like a former stripper; I bet that’s how they met.”
Kevin shook a bottle of balsamic over his spinach salad. “Come on, Tina, give me something, some gory detail. Were the toilet seats made of gold? Was the main course an endangered species?”
I took comfort in the fact that Kevin’s tone was more curious than snooping, which calmed my paranoia somewhat. This was no official investigation.
He passed me the Russian dressing. “Did Robert make you slice the limes for everyone, or did he have a servant to do that?”
“Screw you.” I slammed the bottle of Russian dressing down too hard, causing it to spurt orangey-pink nastiness into the air. I looked down to find the front of my navy-blue sweater speckled with the stuff, but I ignored it. “Robert is really good to me. Slicing the office limes is just part of my job.”
Kevin was taken aback by this sudden turnaround. In the past I’d always been glad to rag on Robert for an easy laugh.
“Sorry,” he said, after the longest twenty seconds of all time. “I didn’t mean to . . .”
“It’s fine.” The chopped salad attendant offered me a napkin and I addressed my sweater. “It’s just that Robert was a model host and—”
“I get it,” Kevin said. “He’s your boss, you’re right, I was out of line.”