Goddess Rising Page 17

  Sam looked down in amazement. He’d hoovered up that extra-large pizza like he’d just gotten out of prison. “You can have it.”

  Chris grinned, scarfing down the last piece as she sat back, wiping her hands on a napkin and looking at him.

  “What?” he asked around a mouthful.

  “You know that second date?” she asked.

  “Yeah?”

  Sam smiled slowly. “Want to make it a double?”

  Chris rolled his eyes. “Is Wes gonna be on all our dates?”

  “Well, you know what they say…” Sam replied. “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”

  *

  September—Friday Night

  Lone Star Cerveceria, Bryan, Texas

  W E S L E Y

  “I’ve got to admit, I was surprised when you invited me out,” Miranda admitted as Wes opened the restaurant door for her.

  “Why?” he asked, smiling back at her. “We’ve always been friendly. Just ’cause we’re competitors now doesn’t mean we can’t hang out every now and then, right?”

  “Friendly?” Miranda laughed. “Is that what you call what we did in the darkroom last year?”

  Wes grinned, admiring the view as she passed by him. Miranda was a natural redhead with the kind of strawberries-and-cream skin that was dusted with freckles all over. Tall and leggy, she was a head turner and she knew it. Made good use of it too, to get what she wanted.

  “I call what we did in the darkroom some good, clean fun,” he replied as he looked across the crowded cerveceria.

  “Not that clean,” Miranda teased. “So who are we meeting again?” she asked, glancing around the crowded restaurant.

  Wes put a hand to the small of her back as soon as he spotted them. “My roommate and our friend Samantha,” he answered smoothly, though the idea of a double date still rankled him. Count on Sam to date Chris just to spite him. Just the thought of them together stuck in his craw—much less the idea of them touching and kissing.

  “Samantha?” Miranda looked at him quizzically. But Wes had already spotted Sam across the restaurant and was steering Miranda toward the table at which she and Chris sat. He saw Sam’s look of surprise as she took Miranda in.

  Yeah, that’s right. You’re not the only smart, pretty girl I know. Sam had probably expected him to show up tonight with some bar room bimbo in tow rather than a perfect ten like Miranda. But his self-satisfied amusement was short-lived as Sam stood up and hugged Miranda like they were old friends.

  “Miranda, you look amazing,” Sam told her sincerely, stepping back to admire Miranda’s outfit. “I love that top.”

  “Oh my God, who are you kidding?” Miranda replied. “I’ve never seen your hair like this. God, girl, you’re a knockout!” she trilled.

  Wes glanced back and forth in surprise. “You two know each other?”

  “We have Spanish together,” Miranda explained. “Usually followed by liberal amounts of coffee before language labs,” she laughed.

  Sam looped an arm casually through Miranda’s as she turned toward Chris. “Miranda, I’d like you to meet Chris Fields.”

  The way Samantha said it, in sort of a confiding tone like she and Miranda were sharing a secret, perked his ears up. Wes went from feeling mildly irritated that he hadn’t gotten Sam’s goat to suddenly wary.

  Miranda shook his roommate’s hand. “Pleased to meet you, Chris. I have to confess, I’ve seen you play a few times,” she added, her tone admiring.

  Chris’s grin went from an amiable nice-to-meet-you to a high-wattage well-hello-there smile. “Sure hope we won those games then.”

  “Boy, did you ever,” Miranda smiled in reply. “With tackles like yours, it’s amazing the opposing team doesn’t get carried off the field in stretchers.”

  “I like you already,” Chris answered as they took their seats.

  Miranda glanced between Sam and Chris, openly inquisitive. “So are you two dating?”

  “Sam finally agreed to put me out of my misery and let me take her out again,” Chris answered. “Last time I sort of made a fool of myself on tequila.”

  “Who doesn’t make fools of themselves on tequila?” Miranda replied with a little laugh and a wave of her hand.

  Chris shrugged, sheepish. “Yeah, well, I figured the least I could do was try to make it up to her this go around.”

  Wes watched Chris slide his arm around the back of Samantha’s chair, saw her sit back into the crook of his arm like she belonged there.

  “You alright there, Wes?” Samantha asked in that honeyed, whisky voice of hers.

  The hell I am.

  Wes met her eyes. Saw the challenge in them, daring him to say something about her and Chris.

  “I’m perfect,” Wes replied with his best smile. Mirroring Chris, he stretched his arm on the back of Miranda’s seat as he settled down beside her. But he was irritated, just bordering seething. His plan to have Sam pissed-off jealous had gone sideways not ten minutes in, and besides that, she looked goddamn gorgeous tonight.

  “So how do you and Wes know each other?” Chris asked Miranda.

  “Oh, we’re both in Purcell’s Investigative Journalism course,” Miranda explained, smiling over her shoulder at Wes. “And we’re competing for an internship at The Statesman,” Miranda added with a smirk.

  “So you’re…frenemies?” Chris asked, glancing between the two.

  “Something like that.” Miranda laughed.

  Wes signaled a passing waiter and ordered a couple beers for himself and Miranda before he looked pointedly at Chris and Sam’s iced teas. “You two on the wagon tonight?”

  “Got a game tomorrow,” Chris reminded him.

  “I’ve got a rifle marksmanship trial out at Fort Hood,” Sam explained. “But then, you probably already knew that,” she said, her eyes narrowing just slightly. Enough so that he knew he wasn’t off the hook yet. So… she was definitely still pissed then.

  “Why would you know about what’s going on at Fort Hood?” Miranda asked, glancing at Wes.

  “Oh?” Sam murmured, her smile curling like smoke. “You didn’t know Wes is covering the Ranger Challenge?”

  Miranda’s brows rose. “So that’s what you’re up to. I was wondering what you were covering with this article. You’ve been so hush-hush, but Purcell warned me it was good.”

  Wes shrugged casually, though his eyes remained on Samantha.

  “You a good shot with a rifle?” Chris asked Sam.

  Sam looked amused. “I’m from a ranch in the middle of nowhere surrounded by thousands of Limousin cattle, each with an average weight of over two thousand pounds. What do you think?”

  “I think I should shut my mouth.”

  “I’d say that’s a good idea,” Sam replied, nudging him teasingly with her shoulder.

  Miranda turned back to Wes. “So why are you covering the Challenge?”

  Wes took a casual sip of beer. “A&M’s cadets have won every year for just about as long as it’s been around. Just surprised no one’s reported on it before.”

  “But that’s common knowledge around these parts,” she pointed out. “What’s your angle?”

  “I’m doing a profile on one of the top cadets,” he replied smoothly. “Interesting background. Comes with a twist.” He met Sam’s eyes, smirking.

  “You’ll have to tell me more about it,” Miranda murmured, openly curious.

  “You show me yours and I’ll show you mine.” Wes’s smile was just this side of lascivious. And he made sure Sammy knew it.

  But she surprised him by leaning toward Miranda and asking, “So, did you finalize the story you’re covering for the internship? You mentioned it last time I saw you.”

  “What story?” Chris asked, curious.

  “I’m doing an exposé on the disproportionate number of Mexican and black inmates on death row in Texas, versus their white counterparts,” Miranda explained. “I thought it would take some doing, but my advisor was completely supp
ortive of it.”

  “Damn,” Chris’s brows rose. “Wes, you’re fixin’ to get a whoopin’. Miranda sounds serious.”

  “This have anything to do with your uncle?” Sam asked quietly.

  Miranda nodded, thanking the waiter as he dropped off their drinks.

  “I have an uncle over in Polunsky prison doing some time for manslaughter,” she explained to the group. “When I visited him this summer, we were the only white folks in the visitor’s area, besides some of the guards,” Miranda remarked. “When I asked him about why so few white folk were there, I couldn’t believe the stories he told me. So I dug into execution records that I could find over the last ten years, and sure enough, the numbers of non-white death row executions were significantly higher.”

  “Is that directly correlated to the percentages of the races incarcerated?” Sam asked.

  “You’d think that,” Miranda replied. “But I found more often than not, non-white offenders were given death sentences for similar crimes when white offenders were not. My contention is that the system is ultimately prejudiced. Now I’m conducting all the research and pulling together the facts to support the opinion.”

  “Goddamn, you want to light the world on fire,” Chris told her, sitting back. “That’s not just internship worthy—hell, that could make national news if you pull it off.”

  Miranda shrugged. “That’s the hope.” She shot Wes a teasing look. “You might as well give up now, Wes. No way you’re going to beat me for that internship.”

  Wes took the little jab in stride, not saying anything more about his article. He could tell Sam was surprised that he didn’t brag harder—she had expected to him to leverage her to show off a little, but he didn’t. Instead, Wes sat back, drinking his beer, looking to all like he didn’t have a care in the world.

  As they talked and joked over sizzling fajitas and another round of drinks, Wes let his fingers trace the edge of Miranda’s shoulders, sitting a little closer to her than absolutely necessary as they exchanged looks throughout the meal.

  He could tell he’d upended Sam’s plan of putting him out by dating Chris. But what he was stunned by was the fact that Samantha looked at him and Miranda with a sort of pleased approval. And that irritated him more than it ought to. Because he didn’t want her to approve. Wes wanted her to smack his hand off of Miranda, grab him by the shirt, and haul him out of the restaurant like he belonged to her. Irrational, but there it was. And he wanted to kiss and touch her again…like she belonged to him. Because even though she sat next to Chris, pretty as you please, Wes felt like she did.

  “Well, that’s all she wrote, folks,” Samantha said after a stretch of casual conversation, long after the food and drinks had been polished off. She slid a hand over Chris’s arm. “You mind giving me a lift home?”

  “Only if you promise to come to my game tomorrow night,” Chris teased, his eyes twinkling.

  “I guess that depends,” she replied.

  “On what?” Chris asked.

  “You gonna win?”

  Chris nudged and kissed her cheek. “Only if you’re there to cheer me on.”

  Sam smiled. “Well, then I guess I’d better be there.”

  Then I’ll be right there with you, Wes thought mulishly.

  Sam shot him a grin as she stood to go. But instead of saying goodbye, she leaned forward and winked at Miranda. “You give this one hell,” she told her conspiratorially, nodding at Wes. “He needs it.”

  Miranda shot him a sly glance—all sex and sizzle. “Oh, I will.”

  *

  September—Saturday Morning

  Fort Hood, Killeen, Texas

  S A M A N T H A

  The early morning sun hadn’t baked the brown earth of Fort Hood’s rifle range yet, but it was already a cloudless day with a white-washed blue sky.

  Today’s qualifier was the pistol and rifle marksmanship rounds. Generally a place for Samantha to shine, but this was Texas, and most of the cadets had been shooting weapons of some kind since they were wearing short pants.

  Sam could still remember the first time Uncle Grant had taught her how to wield a weapon. She’d been going out on roundups with him for a couple years, on the back of her pony, bristling with pride and energy. But the first time she saw a bull charge a group of ranch hands on their horses, she’d frozen, petrified. Uncle Grant had had to calm her down, assuring her the hands were fine—that what had happened was just part of raising steer.

  “You’re old enough to hold a BB gun now, and I’m gonna show you how to use it,” Uncle Grant had told her. So they’d started with that. And over the years, she’d graduated from a BB gun to a .22 pop gun and finally to the heavy metal, from 30-30 Winchester bolt action rifles to a Springfield M1A.

  Her uncle had been a sharpshooter and a member of the US Navy Marksmanship Team. She’d admired his Marksmanship Medals hanging on the wall in his office, could barely contain her excitement when he’d set up an impromptu hay-bale range so he could teach her how to shoot from a distance with precision. He challenged her every year to try to go farther and farther, moving from bright bull’s-eyes to colorful beer bottles hanging from trees and clear mason jars that were harder to spot at a distance. Sam had finally gotten good enough to hit jack rabbits and rattlesnakes at a distance, her ability to shoot moving targets more than several hundred yards out nearly legendary in her small town. But a crack shot in the good-ol’-boy state of Texas was dime a dozen.

  Today was going to be hard. Because it wasn’t a matter of just hitting the target. It was about being able to repeat it. Consistency—that was the real nail biter. One shot was lucky. Two was skill. Three or more was a completely different level of play.

  A swarm of cadets settled into a semi-circle around Fort Hood’s range. They’d thinned out the herd starting at four hundred yards. Most cadets, including Rita, couldn’t pin a target beyond that distance, but Sam doubted most of them had practiced for years growing up. By seven hundred yards—they were down to five shooters for the final challenge: Sam, Alejandro, and three other cadets with eagle eyes and steady hands.

  Colonel Sasser had the rough burlap matting pulled back again. Sam looked out into the distance, focusing in on the target. Now the bull’s-eyes sat at about two-thirds of a mile out in real money. Probably the farthest she’d ever shot. Sam shook out her hands and rolled her shoulders, trying to quell the anxiousness.

  “You’ve got this,” Rita murmured behind her, so low, Sam almost didn’t hear her. She nodded confidently, but it still felt like one hell of a long way.

  The M16s they’d been using were replaced with .50-caliber Barrett M90s—a big ugly rifle—nearly four feet long and weighing over twenty pounds. Not so much a rifle as much as it was a heavy artillery piece. She recalled Uncle Grant telling her the .50 cal had been developed for the Browning machine gun during World War I. Designed to be used on vehicles and aircraft, the rifles were dead shots at incredible distances, meant to appear out of nowhere—no notice, no warning. Instant death, like some sort of avenging angel.

  Sam was a little more than a foot taller than the rifle, not that it mattered much when she was lying down. It was intimidating nonetheless. She reminded herself that she’d successfully fired something similar before, told herself it was just another beautiful day at the ranch, with not too much of a breeze.

  You’ve got this, she told herself. Just ignore the thirty pairs of eyes on you right now, including Sasser. Including Wes and that goddamn camera…

  “You each get six shots,” Sasser explained to the final five. “Best out of six gets an automatic pass into the next round.”

  Sasser held out a handful of straws, extending his hand out to her.

  “Ladies first.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Sam drew her straw, then the rest of the cadets after her.

  Alejandro drew the short straw. Didn’t seem to bother him though.

  He checked his rifle before smacking the magazine
into place, smoothly dropping to his knees on the matting. He flicked the bipod legs out and eased himself close to the earth, the stock close to him. He made the adjustments as he looked through the scope, calm as could be. Sasser held up field glasses, a signal he was ready when Alejandro was.

  Everything seemed to slow and quiet in the field, like everyone was holding their breath. The air felt strangely still as all eyes fell on the target, the air thick with anticipation.

  Alejandro pulled the trigger and the massive rifle kicked hard, the boom drawing the attention of everyone within a few hundred yards.

  “Good, but not good enough,” Sasser muttered, lowering the field glasses.

  Sam looked through a pair that was passed to her. Alejandro had caught the right edge of the paper, but only just. Still, for a first shot at that distance, it was impressive as hell.

  Sam tried to calm the flutter of nervousness in her stomach.

  Alejandro fired again, and the rifle kicked, blowing dust off the mat from the muzzle.

  Sam looked up.

  Left shoulder. Overcorrected, but a good hit nonetheless.

  The cadets murmured until Sasser held his hand up.

  Silence descended again over the range.

  Sam stood to the side, watching Alejandro as he relaxed, finger tightening around the trigger even as he breathed out, long and slow.

  The blast from the muzzle was like a lightning crack, and Sam knew he’d hit the target before she saw it.

  The throat.

  Kill shot.

  Alejandro was getting better with each pull. Calmer and more confident. He missed the last shot, and that was only because he’d gotten cocky and fired again too quickly.

  “Five on,” Sasser assessed. “Two kill shots,” he added, his voice hard but approving.

  Alejandro didn’t respond, all business, standing up and stepping back as another cadet replaced him.

  Six rounds later, two on the paper, but none on the target, everyone knew the second cadet was disqualified. Good, but not good enough.

  A third cadet moved to his place on the matting.

  Four on the target, but only one kill shot. Possibly moving forward, but that depended on Sam and the final cadet.