Gunfire rang out around Riley. To her left, she heard the noisy cracks of pistols. To her right, she heard heavier weaponry-blasts from assault rifles and staccato sprays from submachine guns.
In the midst of the clamor, she drew her Glock handgun from her hip holster, dropped to a prone position, and fired off six rounds. She rose into a kneeling position and fired three rounds. She deftly and quickly reloaded, then stood and fired six rounds, and finally knelt and fired three more rounds with her left hand.
She stood up and holstered her weapon, then stepped back from the firing line and pulled off her earmuffs and eye protectors. The target with the bottle-shaped outline was twenty-five yards away. Even from this distance, she could see that she had clustered all her shots nicely together. In neighboring lanes, the FBI Academy trainees kept up their practice under the guidance of their instructor.
It had been a while since Riley had fired a weapon, even though she was always armed on the job. She'd reserved this lane at the FBI Academy firing range for a little target practice and, as always, there was something satisfying about the gun's powerful recoil, the raw force of it.
She heard a voice behind her.
"Kind of old-school, aren't you?"
She turned and saw Special Agent Bill Jeffreys standing nearby, grinning. She smiled back. Riley knew exactly what he meant by "old-school." A few years ago, the FBI had changed the live-fire rules for pistol qualification. Firing from a prone position had been part of the old drill, but it was no longer required. Now more emphasis was put on firing at targets from up close, between three and seven yards. That was supplemented by the virtual reality installation where agents were immersed in scenarios involving armed confrontations in close quarters. And trainees also went through the notorious Hogan's Alley, a ten-acre mocked-up town where they fought off imitation terrorists with paintball guns.
"Sometimes I like to go old-school," she said. "I figure that someday I might actually have to use deadly force at a distance."
From her own experience, Riley knew that the real thing was almost always up close and personal, and often unexpected. In fact, she'd actually had to fight hand to hand in two recent cases. She'd killed one attacker with his own knife and another with a random rock.
"Do you think anything prepares these kids for the real thing?" Bill asked, nodding toward the trainees who were now finished and leaving the firing range.
"Not really," Riley said. "In VR your brain does accept the scenario as real, but there's no imminent danger, no pain, no rage to control. Something inside always knows there's no chance of being killed."
"Right," Bill said. "They'll have to find out what it's really like just like we did a lot of years ago."
Riley glanced sideways at him as they moved farther away from the firing line.
Like her, he was forty years old with touches of gray in his dark hair. She wondered what it meant that she found herself mentally comparing him to her leaner, slighter male neighbor.
What was his name? she asked herself. Oh, yeah-Blaine.
Blaine was good-looking, but she wasn't sure whether he gave Bill a run for his money. Bill was big, solid, and quite attractive.
"What brings you here?" she asked.
"I heard you'd be here," he said.
Riley squinted at him uneasily. This probably wasn't just a friendly visit. From his expression, she detected that he wasn't ready to tell her what he wanted just yet.
Bill said, "If you want to do the whole drill, I'll keep time for you."
"I'd appreciate that," Riley said.
They moved off to a separate section of the shooting range, where she wouldn't be at risk of being hit by stray bullets from the trainees.
While Bill operated a timer, Riley breezed through all the stages of the FBI pistol qualification course, firing at the target from three yards, then five, then seven, then fifteen. The fifth and last stage was the only part that she found the least bit challenging-firing from behind a barricade at twenty-five yards.
When she was through, Riley took off her headgear. She and Bill walked up to the target and checked her work. All the impact marks were clustered nicely together.
"A hundred percent-a perfect score," Bill said.
"It had better be," Riley said. She'd hate it if she were getting rusty.
Bill pointed toward the earthen backstop beyond the target.
"Kind of surreal, huh?" he said.
Several white-tailed deer were contentedly grazing on top of the hill. They'd actually gathered there while she'd been shooting. They were within easy range, even with her pistol. But they weren't the least bit bothered by all the thousands of bullets slamming into targets just below the high ridge they walked on.
"Yes," she said, "and beautiful."
Around this time of year, the deer were a common sight here at the range. It was hunting season, and somehow they knew that they would be safe here. In fact, the grounds of the FBI Academy had become a sort of wildlife haven for lots of animals, including foxes, wild turkeys, and groundhogs.
"A couple of days ago, one of my students saw a bear in the parking lot," Riley said.
Riley took a few steps toward the backstop. The deer raised their heads, stared at her, and trotted away. They weren't afraid of gunfire, but they didn't want people getting too close.
"How do you suppose they know?" Bill asked. "That it's safe here, I mean. Don't all gunshots sound alike?"
Riley simply shook her head. It was a mystery to her. Her father had taken her hunting when she was little. To him, deer were simply resources-food and hide. It hadn't bothered her to kill them all those years ago. But that had changed.
It seemed odd, now that she thought about it. She had no trouble using deadly force against a human being when it was necessary. She could kill a man in a heartbeat. But to kill one of these trusting creatures now seemed unthinkable.
Riley and Bill walked off to a nearby rest area and sat down together on a bench. Whatever it was he came to talk about here, he still seemed reticent.
"How are you doing on your own?" she asked in a gentle voice.
She knew it was a delicate question and she saw him wince. His wife had recently left him after years of tension between his job and home life. Bill had been worried about the prospect of losing touch with his young sons. Now he was living in an apartment in the town of Quantico and spending time with his boys on weekends.
"I don't know, Riley," he said. "I don't know if I'll ever get used to it."
He was clearly lonely and depressed. She had been through enough of that herself during her own recent separation and then divorce. She also knew that the time after a separation was particularly fragile. Even if the relationship hadn't been very good, you found yourself out in a world of strangers, missing years of familiarity, never knowing quite what to do with yourself.
Bill touched her arm. His voice a bit thick with emotion, he said, "Sometimes I think that all I've got left to depend on in life is … you."
For a moment Riley felt like hugging him. When they had worked as partners, Bill had come to her rescue plenty of times, both physically and emotionally. But she knew she had to be careful. And she knew that people could be pretty crazy at times like this. She had actually phoned Bill one drunken night and proposed that they begin an affair. Now the situations were reversed. She could sense his impending dependence on her, now that she was just beginning to feel free and strong enough to be on her own.
"We were good partners," she said. It was lame, but she couldn't think of anything else to say.
Bill took a long, deep breath.
"That's what I came out here to talk to you about," he said. "Meredith told me he'd called you about the Phoenix case. I'm working on it. I need a partner."
Riley felt just a trace of irritation. Bill's visit was starting to seem like a bit of an ambush.
"I told Meredith I'd think about it," she said.
"And now I'm asking you," Bill said.
A silence fell between them.
"What about Lucy Vargas?" Riley asked.
Agent Vargas was a rookie who had worked closely with Bill and Riley on their most recent case. They both were impressed with her work.
"Her ankle hasn't healed," Bill said. "She won't be back in the field for another month at least."
Riley felt foolish for asking. When she, Bill, and Lucy had closed in on Eugene Fisk, the so-called "chain killer," Lucy had taken a fall and broken her ankle and almost gotten killed. Of course she couldn't go back to work so soon.
"I don't know, Bill," Riley said. "This break away from work is doing me a lot of good. I've been thinking about just teaching from now on. All I can tell you is what I told Meredith."
"That you'll think about it."
"Right."
Bill let out a grunt of discontentment.
"Could we at least get together and talk it over?" he asked. "Maybe tomorrow?"
Riley fell silent again for a moment.
"Not tomorrow," she said. "Tomorrow I have to watch a man die."
