Collision Course

Chapter 5

Crack! Crack! Crack!

Casey McIntyre fired the last three bullets in her Glock 17G thirteen-round clip, hitting dead in the middle. No center mass for her. All her shots went straight to the head of the silhouette with one hundred percent accuracy. She nodded her head in satisfaction.

Since she'd left the service and come home, she started most of her days the same way. She tried to tell herself it was to keep her skills sharp but in reality, anger drove her. She still had so much of it stored up inside her, along with a world of hurt.

She trudged to the backstop, nailed up another target and took a black Magic Marker from her jeans pocket. In big letters she wrote a P and an M on the head, making them as bold as possible. At the shooting table again, she reloaded her Glock and checked to verify her H&K P30 had a full clip. The two guns were her personal weapons, much like the ones she'd been issued when she'd been attached to the Special Ops unit in Afghanistan.

She adjusted her ball cap, yanking at the ponytail poking out through the opening in back. Putting on her ear protectors and safety glasses, she picked up the Glock and sighted.

Bam!

Again the first shot drilled a hole in the center of the head.

Die, Paul Marsden. You asshole. Rat bastard. User.

The next three shots, in rapid succession, stitched a straight line down the torso. With defiant satisfaction, she emptied the rest of the clip into the genital area, blowing a nice round hole in his package. The act gave her the first real sense of wiping away the past and taking control of her life since she'd come home. She had to suppress an urge to lift the gun and blow on the barrel the way old-time gunfighters did.

Reloading the clip, she fired again. By the time she'd finished, she'd gone through two more and the silhouette hung in shreds and tatters. Wiping her hands on her jeans, she tore the target down and replaced it with another. Again she marked it with initials-A.A.S.-and drew a circle around them with a vicious stroke. Then she picked up the Heckler & Koch, settling the familiar grip into the palm of her hand.

This time when she sighted, she aimed for center mass and unloaded the entire clip without pausing between shots. Reloading with rapid speed, she fired in the same pattern, over and over again, until she'd used all the .45mm ammo and left a hole in the silhouette big enough to drive a small car through. By then her arms were quivering, her body covered with sweat. Sitting on the bench at the loading table she forced herself to slow her breathing and her racing pulse before policing her brass and packing away her gear.

Shooting the ghost of her former lover had been cathartic but not half as satisfying as destroying the target marked A.S.S.-Col. Aaron Sherman Smart.

Good initials for him. They suited bastard that he turned out to be. A sanctimonious son of a b***h.

She'd be hard pressed to decide which of the two men she hated more. Probably the uptight colonel. An example of chauvinism at its worst. Or best, depending on the point of view.

But while Aaron Smart had tried to destroy her sense of self-worth, Paul Marsden had ripped her heart out. Casey hadn't given it lightly, either. She'd never been someone who opened herself with ease to another person. She'd seen too many crushed when intense relationships disintegrated. Except what happened to hers was different and had been much, much worse.

She'd heard all the stories about battle zone love affairs. About how the atmosphere of war creates a need for emotional escape. How you needed some kind of sanctuary from the daily grind of battle and blood.

What a fool she'd been to believe herself exempt from such hunger. Paul had zeroed in on her like a homing pigeon, working his magic on her a little at a time. He'd played on her vulnerability, a neediness she seldom gave into. She'd always found it better, working in a male-dominated venue, to never show susceptibility. She'd believed Paul, though. Believed they shared more than battlefield s*x.

The end of the affair left her in emotional shock. She doubted she'd ever forget the day she learned her rotation had ended. Her term was up, anyway, her discharge days away. Paul came to her tent when he heard the news and she, the foolish i***t, thought he'd come to make plans to keep in contact until he, too, arrived stateside. His words were like a shower of ice water.

"You know how it is, right, babe?" The words said with a casual smile as he leaned in the doorway of her tent.

Right, babe?

Right. Plunge a knife in my heart and leave before the bleeding starts.

"But you said-"

"I said what you needed to hear." He'd leaned closer. "We're a little short on females out here, in case you hadn't noticed. You were the best of the lot, the most feminine, although that's not saying much."

She'd stared at him, shocked, at his cavalier words. It nearly destroyed her to be smacked in the face with the vivid reality he was a man doing what predatory men do-telling a girl what she wants to hear to get what they want. Then yanking the rug out from beneath her when they discover-shock!-she thought they meant it. He'd decimated her sense of self-worth.

In hindsight, she should have known better. But she had been drawn by his sexy dark looks, a smile that made every part of her quiver with anticipation. His knowledge of a woman's body was second to none. She believed the seductive words he whispered in her ear, the promises he made. He'd made her look forward to the erotic nights after bloody days and given her hope for the future. In the tense, warlike atmosphere of the Middle East sandbox, she'd been vulnerable, and he'd known how to play off her susceptibility.

Then he'd brushed it aside as "business as usual during a war. Babe."

Casey was proud of herself. Even while her heart shattered and tears threatened to clog her throat, she'd managed a careless smile and brushed him away with a wave of her hand. She hadn't cried a drop until her plane landed in the good old U.S. of A. Then she'd booked a hotel room and spent the night crying until there was nothing left, leeching him out of her system before she had to face people again.

And she did one more thing. His criticism of her femininity hurt much more than she'd let on, so she indulged herself with a trip to a boutique specializing in sexy lingerie. She still hadn't recovered but she hid the pain much better now. No one would suspect beneath her jeans and t-shirts or tailored blouses, she wore lingerie to make a man hard just thinking about it. She'd also learned not to trust any man again. Ever.

Aaron Smart was another matter altogether. Old-line military, he hated the new setup attaching women to Special Ops, a traditional male stronghold. Maybe he hated women in general. Whatever, he'd made her life a living hell during her last year in the Army. As if Afghanistan hadn't been tough enough already.

Back home in Connelly-her life in pieces, her foundation knocked out from under her-she made a strong effort to keep her parents from seeing how destroyed she was or how much she felt like a displaced person. Her one outlet for her anger and pain turned out to be the time she spent each morning on the gun range. What did it say about her that her two best friends were her firearms?

"I'd hate to be either of those guys you're shooting at," a voice from behind her joked.

Casey jerked at the sound, almost dropping her gun. Her nerves were less than stable and anything could bring out the fear she tried to keep so well hidden. But when she lifted her gaze from the table, she saw the grinning face of Ira Guillory, the owner of the shooting range, and relaxed. Her father's friend, he'd known her since Doug McIntyre had first brought her out here and taught her about guns.

"Trust me, Ira, you'd have to try extra hard to be like either of those assholes."

"Tsk, tsk. Such language from such a pretty woman." He chuckled.

She grinned at him. "Bad habit I picked up hanging out with men."

"So." He sat on the empty bench at the next table. "Now that you're out of the Army and back home, what's next for you? I hear you spent the last year working with Special Ops. Nothing around here that exciting."

Yes. What is next for me? Any jobs for women who are ex-Army with Special Ops experience, toting around a badly crushed heart? Oh, and don't forget a college degree with majors in political science and criminal justice and six disillusioning years with the FBI.

Tired of the suffocating federal bureaucracy, she'd quit and enlisted in the Army, disappointed to discover the same bureaucratic layers she'd run away from. Now she had skills she didn't know what to do with and a serious issue with trust.

So where did she go from here? A question she asked herself daily. She felt like a balloon waving in the breeze, tilting one way then the other, unable to find a safe place to land. Some days she was disgusted with her inability to move forward, with the unsettled emotions constantly plaguing her.