Chapter 26

We rolled onto a parking lot next to a plain, inconspicuous warehouse surrounded by woods. Only a few cars were parked out front, and there were no other buildings nearby.

Jay parked his bike, and I looked around the lot with my helmet in hand, trying to get a hint at what this place was.

I glanced at Jay questioningly. His mouth was curved into a smile, but he didn't want to uncover the mystery just yet. Instead, he took my hand and led the way to a rusty metal door on the front side of the building. Inside, we entered a long hallway lit in the cold light of a long line of fluorescent tubes. Our footsteps echoed between the concrete walls.

"If your end goal was to kidnap me, why did you date me for three weeks first?" I quipped as one of the lights eerily flickered above my head.

"Maybe I developed a reversed case of Stockholm syndrome?" Jay mused with a smirk on his lips.

We rounded a corner and came into an open space with a front desk and a small sitting area. I looked around but still didn't find any indication of what this building was used for.

Behind the desk, sat a middle-aged man with a long, reddish-brown beard that reached down to his belly. He had his feet up on the counter and was watching TV while twirling the end of his beard. I noticed that one of his legs had a splint on it.

"'Sup Dave, how's your heel?" Jay greeted the man and tapped his hand on the counter.

Dave grunted and put his feet down. "Don't even ask, Detective. Just when I thought it had healed, that damn Achilles tendon snapped again. It'll be yet another four months at least before I can walk without this thing." He knocked on the splint.

"I'm sorry to hear that, man," Jay told him earnestly.

"Yeah, yeah," Dave grumbled and handed Jay a bag. "Go skip off into the sunset with your perfectly working tendons." He put his feet back up and waved his hand away from his body, motioning for Jay to keep walking.

Jay chuckled, and I followed him through a door next to the front desk. The walls of the room we entered were lined with lockers with wooden benches in front of them. Jay opened one of the lockers, put our helmets inside, and handed me a coathanger. After we'd stored away our jackets, he sat down on the bench and pulled out two opaque, black storage cases with handles from the bottom of his backpack. I studied the cases curiously as he stuffed his backpack into the locker, locked it, and put the key into his pocket.

"You ready?" he asked and walked over to a different door than the one we'd come through.

"I still don't know what for, but yes. Let's g-."

As the last word crossed my lips, muffled shots rang through the building. My eyes widened as I finally understood where we were. Then a grin took over my face.

I followed Jay into another hallway with five doors and a light hanging above each of them. One light was red, the others green. Jay picked the first door with a green light and hit the light switch while entering. The light above the door turned red, and the lights inside illuminated a big, long room. In front of us, was a row of firing booths, and at the very end of the room, I saw the targets.

"Thought we'd start your training a day early," Jay grinned at me as he set down the two cases and the bag Dave had handed him in one of the booths.

I stepped closer to him and hugged his side, excited.

"Have you shot a gun before?" he asked and placed a kiss above my eyebrow, happy that I liked his surprise.

"No, but I've played paintball many times, and my brothers and I had BB guns growing up," I replied and he chuckled.

"Okay, that's a start but not quite the same." We grinned at each other, and I shrugged casually. "We'll start with the basics then."

I let go and stood next to him, ready to learn.

"I brought two guns with me," he said and opened the cases. "This is my service weapon, a Glock 19, and since Kim prefers a Glock 17 as a sidearm and you'll probably be taught with this model at the academy, I also brought one of those."

He rested his fingers on each gun as he mentioned it, and I nodded along.

"There's not a big difference between the two," Jay took the guns out of their cases and held them up. "As you can see, the 17 is slightly longer and also heavier."

He put them next to each other to compare their lengths and then handed them over to me. I compared their weight in my hands and noticed close to no difference.

"The recoil is very similar too, but the 17 holds two more rounds," Jay explained and took the 19 back to place it back into its case. "Do you know the parts of the gun?"

I twisted in in my hands and pointed out the grip, the magazine, the slide with the ejection port, the muzzle, the trigger and trigger guard, the front and rear sight, and the slide release. When I couldn't think of any more, he pointed out the parts I had missed.

"Do you know how to take it apart?" Jay wanted to know.

I ejected the magazine and held it up with a playful half-smile because I knew that wasn't what he'd meant. He smiled back and spent the next few minutes patiently explaining to me in great detail how to take apart the gun, he showed me all the parts and their functions, told me how to clean them, and then instructed me on how to put the weapon together again.

"Okay, now we need to load the magazine and then the fun part can begin," he said when my gun was back in one piece and let me put the bullets into the magazine.

I loaded the weapon, and my nerves spiked up slightly because I was now holding a loaded gun for the first time.

Jay opened the bag Dave had given him and pulled out two pairs of safety glasses and earmuffs. "First, I'll guide you through the right stance for shooting and keep the safety on and the earmuffs off so you can hear me. Okay?"

I nodded and placed the gun down for a moment to pull my hair up into a ponytail, ready for business.

When I picked it up again, Jay moved behind me. "Show me how you would hold it," he instructed me.

I changed my stance and pointed the gun towards the target.

"Okay, you're left-handed, so you need to mirror everything you're doing right now," Jay observed bluntly.

"What!" I blurted out and lowered the weapon. "Are you telling me I've played paintball wrong all these years?"

"If you did it like that, yeah," Jay laughed. "Or at least you made it harder on yourself."

"Okay," I sighed and repositioned myself. "I'm impressed that you noticed that I'm left-handed."

"I'm a cop, Hailey. Of course, I notice those things," Jay noted with a small smile and moved my hand higher up the backstrap of the gun. "This needs to be flush against the curve here, and your middle finger should be pressed up against the trigger guard." He adjusted the fingers of my right hand over my strong hand. "Angle the wrist of your weak hand down a bit. See how that makes your hand move up the grip? That gives you a firmer hold."

He let his hands slide down my arms from behind me. "You need to line the barrel up with this arm," he murmured next to my ear, and I felt his breath on my neck. "Bend your arms slightly so they absorb the recoil."

Jay's hands moved to my waist as he put a foot between mine and gently tapped against them with the tip of his boot to move them apart. "Spread your legs a little more," he instructed, "and your right foot should point towards your target, while your left foot is angled at about 45°." He aligned my feet a little more until he was happy with their placement.

"Bend your knees slightly," he said and let his hands slide down to my hips to adjust their angle. "And now, line up the target with the front and rear sight, and you're ready to shoot."

I tried following his instructions, but Jay made it difficult for me to concentrate as he moved my ponytail off my shoulder and brushed his lips against my neck.

"You might need to work on your professionalism as a teacher," I chuckled as I tried to focus on aiming the gun.

"Where's the fun in that?" he murmured and nibbled at my neck, holding my waist tightly for a moment longer before letting go and returning to teacher mode. "Any questions or do you think you've got it?"

"I think I've got it," I said confidently and set the gun back down.

"Okay, then," Jay approved and handed me a pair of glasses and an earmuff.

He put his on too, and I pulled the slide of the gun towards me to insert the first bullet into the chamber and took up my stance again. I purposefully kept my hips at a wrong angle so he'd have to readjust them again, and when he'd repositioned a few of my fingers, he reached up to release the gun's safety and took a step back.

I lined up the gun with the target and fired off the first shot, then a few more. The sound was muted to a bearable volume by the muffs, and the recoil wasn't as strong as I had expected because my stance with my arms and knees bent helped my body absorb the shock. The air around us filled with the smell of gunpowder, and my adrenaline spiked.

I put the safety back on and laid the gun down onto the table.

"Oh, that was fun!" I beamed.

"Let's see how you did," Jay suggested with a smile and pressed a button on the wall of the booth.

The target flew towards us, and when it came to a stop, we inspected my work.

Jay puffed out a breath of air. "I did not expect that for your first try!"

A couple of shots had missed but most had gone through the target and a couple had hit the paper just a few inches away from the middle.

A proud grin spread on my face.

"Well done, babe!" he praised me, impressed, and sent butterflies flying in my stomach as he had never called me that before.

"Thank you," I gushed and beamed. "Your turn? I'd like to see you shoot."

"Okay," he agreed and took down my target. "Would you like to keep this and frame it?" he joked.

I chuckled but liked the idea and rolled my target up while he hung up a new one and prepared his Glock 19.

When he positioned himself to shoot, I studied every one of his moves and every detail of his stance attentively. With the focused look on his face, his powerful bearing, and the flexed muscles in his shoulders and arms, Jay gave off an impressive, tough, and authoritative image.

He emptied his magazine and hit the button to retrieve his target.

He'd shot two perfect groupings in the centre of the body and the head of the paper target.

"Wow," I breathed, and he glanced at me with a humble smirk.

He gave me a few more pointers and safety instructions and then let me practice on my own while he moved over to the booth next to mine.

A few empty magazines later, I'd familiarised myself with the gun and the stance, and fired off my best round of shots.

I took the latest target off the hanger carrier and held it up for Jay to see when he'd fired off his last round too. Naturally, my cluster of holes was a little more spread out than his, but not a single shot had missed that time, and every bullet had hit fairly close to the centre.

Jay took off his earmuffs. "You've got an impressive natural talent for this. I've seen a few veteran cops that don't have that consistent accuracy."

I blushed, and he took a quick step towards me and swept me off my feet. "You are going to ace your first shooting lesson at the academy!" he proclaimed, and I wrapped my arms and legs around his shoulders and hips and let the paper flutter to the floor.

He grinned up at me, and I leaned down to kiss his smile. His arms around me tightened, and the kiss deepened. I cupped his cheek with one hand and slipped the other through the neck opening of his shirt to trace my fingers over his back. His lips were soft on mine, and his beard tickled my skin.

Eventually, Jay broke the kiss. "I think Dave might be watching," he whispered against my lips breathlessly and shifted slightly so I could follow his gaze to a surveillance camera with a flashing, red light in the corner of the room.

A soft snort escaped my nose, and I gave the camera a playful wave before looking back at Jay.

"Let's go home then," I murmured and gave him one more peck on the lips before he set me back down.