Chapter 5: Dawn Range

The new training ground lay behind the olive grove, a quarter mile from the house.

I had never been there.

The sun was barely over the hills when I arrived with the pistol in my coat pocket, and Gaspare was already standing at the far end of the range.

He had taken off his jacket and rolled his sleeves to the elbow.

"You came," he said.

"You left me a gun with my initials on it."

"It has a short barrel and a light pull. You can carry it in a handbag."

"Is that supposed to be romantic?"

"It is supposed to keep you alive."

He set a paper target at twenty paces.

"Feet apart. The width of your shoulders."

I put my feet apart.

"Wider."

I moved them wider.

He came up behind me and put both hands on my hips.

He turned them a few degrees to the left and held them there.

"Like this. Don't lock your knees."

His hands were warm through my thin skirt.

In nine years he had touched every part of me, and I had not known the sides of my hips could feel this way.

I told myself it was the early cold.

"Now lift it," he said.

I raised the pistol in both hands.

He put his arms around me, covering my hands with his.

His chest was against my back, and I felt him breathing, slow and careful, and then not slow at all.

Something hard pressed against me through his trousers.

I did not say anything.

I told myself he was a man who had slept three hours, and that it meant nothing.

"Breathe out and squeeze," he said, close to my ear. "Don't pull."

I fired.

The pistol kicked and the shot went high, tearing the paper at the top corner.

"Again."

I fired again, and again, and the third hit the paper's edge.

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