The Dangerous Edge of Things - By Tina Whittle Page 0,18

Now it had been collected and stored at Phoenix, out of my reach, thanks to the efforts of Trey and Landon and the recently unemployed tech support dude.

Across the green, the padded bad guy was spinning in a circle, the dog fastened tight on his arm, its tawny body pinwheeling like a ride at the fair. The applause ratcheted up in volume, punctuated with hoots and whistles. I stood up too.

“No,” I said, “I didn’t know that.”

I was discovering there was a lot about my brother I didn’t know. But I did know one thing—there was more to this story than I was getting over shawarma and K9 demos.

***

The new key to Dexter’s shop was silver and efficiently shiny. The lock was not. I jiggled the handle and bumped hard with my knee, but the door remained stuck. It took two more bumps before I got inside.

Dexter’s Guns and More was more like Guns and Less now, the firearms and knives having been stowed in the safe, leaving the display cases and wall hooks empty. Only the Confederate flag and its associated paraphernalia remained—an infantryman’s jacket, a box of buttons, a single boot.

I put the keys on the counter. The fluorescent lights washed the beige walls into blandness. The smell of linoleum and floor wax tangled with the vanilla potpourri I’d put in the ashtrays. It looked empty and blank, but not fresh-blank like a new canvas. Empty-blank like a hole.

I had no idea how to fill it. I pictured the racks single file with rifles, the cases lined row after row with matte black metal—Walther PPKs and Glock 19s, weapons both utilitarian and exotic. Magazines and clips and the ammo that came in cardboard boxes with the texture of playing cards. Shot cartridges and shells. Camo and holsters.

A gun in your hand isn’t just a gun, Uncle Dexter told me once. It’s part of you. Don’t ever pick one up unless you know exactly what you’re capable of doing with it.

He should have warned me the same was true of gun shops. Stripped and bare, it was even more daunting than when stuffed wall to wall with weapons. Part of me wanted to bolt right back to Savannah. Right after I smoked seven cigarettes in a row.

Instead, I stuffed another piece of nicotine gum in my mouth and went to the safe. Then I pulled out one of the revolvers, a Ruger .357 double action. Petite, with a cushioned grip and shiny stainless steel frame, it nonetheless packed a wallop. This one was unloaded, but I could feel its potential. Unfortunately, until Cobb County coughed up my carry permit, it remained in the shop, untested.

I put it back in the safe and prepared to return to the Ritz, hoping I wouldn’t run into Trey there. As long as my tote bag contained his MRI, I knew guilt blazed across my forehead. But until I could come up with a plan, its plush bubble of security was best, at least for the night.

A plan, yes, one that was smart and flexible and included strategies for dealing with a human lie detector. An action plan. Because I knew the first part of my strategy had to include a face-to-face with Mr. Seaver.

Chapter 9

As it turned out, Trey wasn’t at the Ritz. I didn’t find him until the next morning, when I showed up at Phoenix. Yvonne escorted me to a different room this time.

“In there?” I said. “Are you sure?”

She nodded, then handed me a new VISITOR pass. Her eyes glittered sharply. “Don’t lose this one. And leave that here.”

I gave her the Krispy Kreme bag—it only had a tiny greasy scrap of donut left inside anyway—and stepped into the room. Yvonne closed the door behind me. It was dark and narrow, with a bright projection screen at one end. There I saw Trey silhouetted against the clear white light, standing with his back to me. He had a gun, but I knew from his lack of protective gear that it wasn’t a real one. His attention was concentrated on a body target projected on the screen.

I felt a little thrill from knowing what this was—a training simulation room, and a fine one at that. All Bluetooth technology, no wire or tethers to destroy the illusion that you were pumping hot lead into someone. Such set-ups were all the rage, my gun aficionado magazines reported, and very very expensive.

Trey pulled the trigger three times fast, and the gun kicked in his