to Raife’s Defender. He opened the metal shop door quietly; Raife’s eyes never lifted from his work as his friend entered his domain. The space was large but not excessively so and was filled with the various tools of the trade. Reece expected to see modern computer-controlled machinery but, instead, found himself among aging but well-maintained equipment with names like Bridgeport and Hardinge, relics of America’s industrial age. The cast iron hulks were painted a glossy gray and looked like something that one would encounter in the machine shop of a navy ship. There were rifles on a rack in various stages of completion, numerous workbenches, and a hand-loading table stacked with the tools necessary for loading precision ammunition. A blue Dillon press for handgun rounds sat next to a heavy green single-stage used for rifle cartridges. Boxes of dies lined the cabinet above.
Raife was wearing a jeweler’s magnified optivisor over the worn ball cap that he’d turned backward to accommodate the device. He stood over a waist-high bench vise, focused on the partially shaped blank of French walnut that was clamped inside its cork-covered jaws. He wore a heavy leather apron and his blackened hands held a small chisel.
“There’s coffee,” Raife said, nodding his head toward a desk against the wall without moving his eyes from his work. “Sorry, no honey.”
Reece chuckled as he poured the steaming liquid into an enameled mug painted with the Black Rifle Coffee Company’s logo. He took a seat on a stool a few feet away from Raife and watched as his friend coated a rifle’s action and barrel with a thin black sludge using a small paintbrush. He then lowered the steel into the inletting of the walnut stock and tapped it with a rawhide mallet. He lifted the barreled action and examined the inletting, taking note of where the black oil had marked the raw wood. A dozen chisels, gouges, and scrapers were strewn on the bench in front of him and he selected one. He made a series of small cuts with the razor-sharp tool before retrieving the barrel and repeating the process all over again. Reece always appreciated watching true artisans at their craft and he sat silently as Raife focused, gently inletting the metal work into the wooden stock so that the two became seamlessly joined.
Finally satisfied, Raife turned off the lamp above his work and breathed a sigh of relief.
“How long does it take?” Reece asked.
“The inletting? A few hours.”
“No, the whole rifle.”
“I’ll probably have two hundred fifty hours in this one by the time it’s ready.”
“That’s like two months.”
“Six weeks, but you never were a numbers guy. Yeah, it’s a lot of work, which is why I don’t sell them cheap.”
“What will that rifle run?”
“About fifty grand.”
“Rich kid shit.” Reece smiled.
“That it is.”
“Where’d you learn to build rifles?”
“Back in Africa you had to be self-reliant to survive, so I learned from doing. I wanted to get the trade right, so I spent six months apprenticing with D’Arcy Echols in Utah.”
“He built the .300 Win Mag my dad gave me.”
“He’s the one; best there is. Jerry Fisher down in Big Fork put me in touch with him. For two months all he let me do was sweep the floor and polish metal; my rite of passage, I guess. Then he took me under his wing.”
“He sure can build a tack driver. I need to track down that rifle. Not sure what happened to it when I skipped town.”
“It’s in my vault.”
“What? How’d you get it?”
“Liz gave it to me. You left it in her plane along with some other gear. I hid it until you got pardoned so they couldn’t use it as evidence.”
“That was nice of you.”
“Don’t mention it. Figured if you got killed or went to prison, I’d at least have a nice rifle.”
Reece frowned. “By the way, I noticed an interesting article in a Petersen’s Hunting magazine in the cabin.”
“Did you?” Raife asked.
“Looked like one of the photos was taken right across my lake. Written by S. Rainsford. You wouldn’t happen to know him, would you?”
Raife offered a rare half smile.
“Good catch. I do some outdoor writing under that pen name. Most don’t get the reference today. Just trying to avoid the stigma of being another SEAL author. Let’s go get you your rifle, eh?”
Reece briefly wondered if his urge to hold the rifle again was because it was one of the few tangible links left to his father or perhaps something darker. The last