She shrugged. “Not one that I can remember seeing.”
“The rule about the no guns allowed sign is that it has to be visible. It has to be on contrasting backgrounds, and it has to be posted somewhere that it will be clearly visible as you enter the building,” I explained. “So this would be a question for the mall owner, and once you made him aware of these disparities between the businesses, he’d likely fix them anyway.”
Her mouth twitched, and I had the oddest urge to drop a kiss on top of her upturned lips.
“Once you get your license, you can carry anywhere that doesn’t have this sign posted…unless the owner of the establishment verbally tells you that he or she doesn’t want you to carry there.”
I droned on, stopping periodically to answer questions, most of which came from Audrey.
Her latest question, though, had me stopping in my tracks.
“What happens, say, if you go into a restaurant and someone has their gun drawn and starts shooting,” she questioned. “What should I do? Can I just pull it out and shoot?”
I thought about her question for a moment.
“Yes,” I said. “But you need to consider what’s in the background behind your target. You have to weigh the possible consequences of shooting. Also, what makes you think that the guy shooting is the bad guy?”
Her mouth opened, and then closed.
“Well,” she hesitated.
I grinned. “You’re not sure now, are you?”
“I was at a class a few weeks ago,” I started. “During the class, the instructor gave a PowerPoint presentation. There was one particular slide titled ‘What would you do?’ that stuck with me.” I leaned against my desk and crossed my feet out in front of me. “The scene unfolds like this: a girl is out with her friends. A group of them exit the mall, six or so in total, and they’re all giggling and laughing.”
“So they’re just about to step into the parking lot from the front exit when a van pulls up. Two masked men get out, take hold of a girl who was with the group. She is kicking and screaming, but despite that they force her, bodily, into the van.”
Audrey’s eyebrows rose in interest.
“What would you do?” I asked. “If you were there watching that happen, would you act?”
She thought about it. Then shook her head. “I don’t know.”
My mouth formed into a grin.
“What about you?”
I asked the guy in the front row.
He was an oil field guy, and the little nametag I’d given him earlier declared him as ‘Dayton P.’
“I’d act. I’d take the van’s tires out. Anything I needed to do to get that girl out of the van.”
“And you’d have been in the wrong,” I told him.
His eyes narrowed, and I clearly saw the anger on his face.
He was one of those guys that I had a feeling would get a hero complex when he finally got that concealed carry permit. He thought he was invincible, and he’d be the type of guy who would act before thinking.
“Why?” he barked.
I stared at him for a long moment and then turned my attention back to the rest of the class.
Today’s class had fifteen students total, the majority of whom were men from the volunteer fire department one town over.
Each of them was looking at the guy in the front of the class. The one who’d been spitting dip into a clear plastic bottle for the last hour of class.
I looked away from that bottle.
It really grossed me out.
There was this one time, as a kid, that my father left his dip spit cup out on the counter. Thinking it was mine, I’d taken a big swig, realized instantly that it wasn’t mine and had promptly blown chunks all over the kitchen, which my father had then made me clean up.
“What you don’t know is that the girl was a runaway, and the two masked men forcing her into the van were her brother and her father. By law, the two men did nothing wrong, but you would have been in the wrong for pulling your gun out on them and discharging it without just cause,” I answered. “So yes, there can be multiple things playing out at once. If you don’t have the full picture, then it’s possible that you could be acting without cause.”
“Plot twist,” Audrey grinned.
She then raised her hand.
I raised my brow at her.
“I have to use the bathroom. Can we have a break?”
I rolled my eyes to the clock, my eyes widening slightly. “It’s only been an hour.”
She shrugged. “I had coffee. And you didn’t let me go before we left.”
Goddamn, she was cute.
“Yeah, we can take one,” I agreed with a sigh. “Everyone, take ten minutes.”
The room emptied of everyone except Audrey.
“I thought you had to pee.”
She nodded. “I do.”
“Then why aren’t you going?” I pushed.
She stared at me.
“I want you to take me to the nice bathroom. Not the one you let guests use,” she ordered.
I cocked a brow at her in question.
“That man just came out of there, and he spent a good ten minutes in there while we were talking about where we could and could not take our guns. I don’t want to go into a stinky bathroom.”
I just rolled my eyes and jerked my head. “This way.”
We passed by the front door on the way, and I saw the people who had left the room loitering outside, smoking.
“What did you do?” she asked as she followed closely behind me. “Hit up some smoker’s anonymous group to get them to come to your concealed weapon class?”
My lips twitched. “No.”
She stopped when she saw a picture of my mom and me.
“Is that your mom?”
In order not to answer her, because I knew she’d have questions if I told her that it was, I said, “And to answer your question about the group, they’re the volunteer fire department.” I gestured to the empty bedroom. “The bathroom’s through there, just hang a left once you go through the door.”
She eyed me warily.
“Is this the master bath?”
I nodded.
“Okay.” She left without saying another word, and I was left wondering what it mattered if it was the master bath or not.
She’d told me to take her to the nice one, and other than the one that was in the horse barn outside, this was the only other one there was beside the one she refused to use.
Though, now that I thought about it, I’d left the lube out on the counter I’d been using this morning before heading out to get the complicated girl who never strayed far from my thoughts.
I absently lifted my hand up to run it over the scar that was now a magnet for my hands when I was stressed.
It was an ugly scar.
A few months ago, I’d been going to Ghost’s house to help him when I was shot in the neck. Some men had been after Ghost and his wife, and I’d never seen it coming.
I probably should have, of course.
I was a fucking LEO—law enforcement officer—after all.
But I hadn’t.
I’d been so freakin’ focused on looking around for Audrey that I hadn’t been paying attention to my back.
My inability to pay attention nearly cost me my life.
“You’re gross.”
My gaze found hers.
“Why?”
She lifted her brows.
“As if you don’t know what I’m talking about,” she sniffed, pushing past me.