CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Veronica’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking. She held the revolver straight out from her body and breathed slowly, deeply, the hot-metal smell stinging her nostrils. She tried to relax her shoulders. Then she pulled the trigger.
It was early afternoon on Saturday. She’d come to the range by herself, slipping out the door once she’d heard her dad start his lawnmower in the backyard. She didn’t want him to see her sneak into the kitchen like a thief and take the gun from where they’d both left it on the kitchen island.
She knew she was being stupid. Keith was a good shot—he should be teaching her. But for some reason she wanted to do it alone. Perhaps it was that she wasn’t ready to eat crow after their argument, even though he wouldn’t try to rub it in. More likely, it was that she didn’t want him to see how scared she was, holding a thing that was intended to hurt someone. To kill someone. She didn’t want him to know that the idea of using it made her feel sick to her stomach. Because she knew he’d see it as a weakness, a sign that she really wasn’t ready for this kind of work. So instead she’d spent the morning googling how to load and shoot a revolver. She found a video blog giving step-by-step instructions, starring a plump, cheerful ex-cop from Florida who managed to put a hole through the target’s head every single time.
Veronica took aim again downrange, trying to focus on the target, and fired.
The only other people at the range were a heavyset man with two teenage sons, all of them in camo. The man had a slabby jaw and short, bristling hair. His sons wore matching baseball caps in neon orange. They had a dozen guns between them and were taking turns in a variety of Rambo poses, jeering at one another for every missed shot. Veronica couldn’t hear them through the enormous plastic earmuffs, but she got the gist. A few times their eyes twitched slyly toward her, and she caught an ain’t-she-cute smile on the dad’s face once when he thought she wasn’t looking.
She fired again, thinking about the party and the knife Eduardo had pressed against her throat. She tried to get angry enough to enjoy this—to hate Eduardo enough to imagine his face on the target. And she did hate Eduardo. But the idea of killing him held no joy for her. She wanted to hurt him, it was true. She wanted revenge. But not like this.
The gun was a snub-nosed .38 Special, pocket-size. It didn’t look like a lot of gun. But the recoil slammed through her body with every shot. She reloaded, stood wide legged, squared to the target, and shot all five rounds, slow and deliberate. Then she pushed the button that pulled the target back to her. It ran slowly back up the range, fluttering as it went.
She’d hit it twice, once on the bare edge of the page, and another time in what would be the victim’s shoulder. Victim—is that how you’re supposed to think of it? Or is it a perp? She gritted her teeth and hit the button to send the target back out. There was no sense in putting up a new one—she’d barely dented her first.
She was turning to reload her gun when a hand touched her shoulder. She gave a start and whirled around.
Weevil Navarro stood a few feet behind her, in a glossy black motorcycle jacket and jeans. His trim goatee framed lips that were pursed in a look that was part pensive, part tough guy. Outsize diamond studs punctuated both earlobes, and she could just make out the edges of the tattoos that climbed up his neck and down his arms.
She carefully set the revolver down in its case, then took one muff off her ear. “I don’t think you’re supposed to sneak up on someone holding a gun.”
“You wanna keep your knees soft. Bent a little, to absorb the shock.” He lifted his head up, then down, a short appraising nod.
Veronica gave him a skeptical smirk. “Huh. I’m not actually sure if it’s a good or bad idea to take advice from someone with a stolen weapons rap.”
“Hey, you know as well as I do that Glock was planted.” He straightened up and moved into a shooting stance to show her, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet. “You can lean forward a little from the waist too. It’ll help with balance.”
She watched him for a moment but didn’t move to pick up the gun.
She and Weevil went way back, and while she was pretty sure she could call him a friend, the relationship had sometimes been … complicated. In high school he’d headed the PCH Bike Club, and there’d been a whole mutual back-scratching agreement between them. Veronica knew she could call him in for muscle if she needed it, and sometimes he was good for information on Neptune’s underworld. Veronica, for her part, had helped him out of a few tight spots, including juvie. But she’d seen just how far he would go to stay on top—and just how much destruction he could cause.
When she’d returned to Neptune a few short months ago, he’d been on the straight and narrow. She’d seen with her own eyes how he looked at his wife, and it had made her feel—what? Happy for him? Jealous, that even Eli “Weevil” Navarro could settle down and find some kind of peace, when she thought she’d go out of her skin if she had one more long, quiet, calm afternoon?
But when Celeste Kane shot him, claiming self-defense, a stolen gun had ended up in his unconscious hands. Since then something had changed. He was back on the bike, roaring through the streets of Neptune with his old gang, believing that if the system was rigged, this was the only way to give himself a fighting chance.
And suddenly the thought made her deeply, achingly sad. Because they were both back in it. Because it looked like neither one of them would ever be able to walk away from the past, no matter how hard they tried.
“So what are you doing here, anyway?” Veronica asked.
“I saw that fancy car you’ve been driving in the parking lot, and thought to myself, I gotta see this. Veronica Mars with a gun. Like you weren’t scary enough already.”
She looked down at the revolver, nestled against the bright foam packing. “Dad wants me to learn.”
“Smart man.” Weevil picked up the gun and weighed it in his hands. “This is a shit town. You gotta look out for yourself.” He aimed out downrange, cowboy style, gun in one hand. “I heard you got into it up at the Gutiérrez party.”
“Who told you that?”
“Oh, you know. I follow you on Twitter, @?too_?nosy_?for_?her_?own_?damn_?good.”
Veronica faked a smirk, then became serious. “So you know the Gutiérrez cousins?”
He turned to look at her, pointing the gun carefully downward. “I know of them. Trust me, V. There are some things in this town even I stay clear of. I’d say you should take my example, but you’ve never been smart enough to listen to good advice.”
She shook her head. “Weevil, there are two missing girls. I have to try to find them.”
“Yeah? I heard they got the guy who killed them.”
She grimaced. “Willie Murphy? I have my doubts. Yesterday the families got ransom messages from someone who claims the girls are still alive. If you know anything about these guys that can help me find those girls …”
Weevil sighed and set the gun down. He rubbed the corner of his jaw with his thumb. “Look, like I said, I steer clear of that whole scene. I don’t know much. But I can tell you this—the Milenios don’t do any kind of business in this town.”
She frowned. “But Eduardo and Rico—”
“—are two squeaky-clean schoolboys with no records. And you bet your ass they want to keep it that way. They got a good thing going here—they’re out of the line of fire, they’re getting educated, and they have a chance to wash all that dirty money clean by dumping it straight into a legitimate business.”
“But the Milenios are known for taking hostages, holding people ransom. There are hundreds of documented cases where they take some university student right off the streets,” Veronica argued.
“In Mexico,” he said. He shook his head. “Use your brain, V. What kingpin in his right mind is gonna order the kidnapping of two white American girls? He’d risk bringing the FBI or the DEA right down on his head, when he’s got such a nice arrangement here.”
“One point two million in ransom is a lot of money.”
“That’s chump change to these guys.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I don’t know. It’s possible los primos Gutiérrez have gone rogue. Maybe they’re trying to get a bigger piece.”
“Maybe they just like hurting people, and no one has ever told them no.” Veronica’s voice was low and tense.
Weevil shrugged. “Maybe. But all I’m saying is, these guys don’t shit where they eat. There’s no way El Oso sanctioned any of this. Not a kidnapping, not a murder. And if he found out those kids went off book, I’m guessing there’d be hell to pay.” Then he shrugged again. “But like I said. I don’t ask too many questions about those guys. So maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
Veronica nodded slowly. She picked up the gun and ejected the cylinder. Her fingers weren’t shaking anymore. She loaded five more rounds.
“Did they hurt you?” Weevil’s voice was quiet behind her. A few bays away the teen boys and their father were packing up their guns. One of the kids was watching her and Weevil with watery, pale eyes. She curled her lip at him, and he turned away, blushing.
“I’m okay.” Then she shut the cylinder with a click. “You should put some earmuffs on.”
Then she shot five more times in quick succession. The sound echoed distantly around her skull, the powder sharp and oddly sweet in her nose.
When she hit the button to call the target back, she’d gotten two more shots into the perp’s silhouette. One was low, in the gut. And the other went right through his head.