Total pages in book: 47
Estimated words: 46344 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 232(@200wpm)___ 185(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46344 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 232(@200wpm)___ 185(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
She wasn’t the same person that had come back after being taken.
There were times she felt guilty though. She’d not been taken for a long time or been raped. They’d toyed with her, beaten her, pissed on her, and she’d gotten away. The men who dared to take her were dead, rotting somewhere right now, whereas she was alive. Should she be allowed to be different? To feel it? To look at something and see the ugly not just the pretty?
It didn’t really matter though anymore.
She couldn’t go back to the way things once were.
Even if her parents kept trying to change her, they couldn’t take away what had happened to her. She wasn’t their little girl anymore.
Chapter Five
Two weeks later
“You ever had anyone shoot you?” Charity asked.
Dwayne finished loading the gun and looked toward her. Her posture was exactly the way he’d left her to start her first shooting lesson. After two weeks of attack and defense he’d believed she was ready for that next step. Like in school, Charity was a fast learner, and it was in fact a privilege to see her constantly achieving, always working to improve.
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know. I wonder if you give people the time to realize you’re there or if you just go shooting people like crazy.” She started to make gun noises with her hands clasped together, one finger pointing forward as she did it.
“I’m not that good.”
“You’re great though, right? You wouldn’t be where you are now without that skill?”
She was always prying into elements of his life, which he didn’t mind. He enjoyed listening to her talk. Charity had one of those voices what would make a good storytelling voice. She was the first woman in his life that he actually enjoyed being around. Most women he found irritating. Not this woman though.
“Fine. Fine. Don’t tell me.” She held her hands up in surrender, swinging from side to side, looking all cute.
He moved toward her and held out the small handgun, which she turned in her hand, pointing the muzzle up at her head.
Quickly grabbing her, he positioned the gun away from her.
“Are you crazy?”
“What? Doesn’t it have a safety or anything?”
“What exactly do you know about guns?”
“They go bang.”
“You’re a pain in the ass.” He shook his head. “Right, keep the gun pointed away from you at all times.” He moved to stand behind her, positioning her hands and placing her body exactly how he wanted it. He’d already lined up the empty cans he’d found. Her targets.
“How good were you the first time you got a gun?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“I want to know if it’s as easy as it looks, or if it’s hard.”
“It is hard. I couldn’t shoot the beer cans for a long time. It felt like a whole year. I trained constantly to be as good as I am now.”
He felt her take a deep breath as he placed her hands into position, and then she started to shoot. She fired three times and laughed. The cans were all in position and hadn’t been touched.
“Why are you laughing?”
“I fired my first gun. I think that’s pretty awesome, don’t you?”
Instead of joining her in her mini-victory, he spent the remainder of the day showing her. He didn’t stay pressed against her back and stepped away for her to try on her own. As the day wore on and the sun began to set, he saw her frustration start to build. The cans were still in place and hadn’t moved once. The bullets, though; she’d used quite a few.
“You know what, this is faulty.”
“The gun’s not faulty.” He stepped forward, taking it from her, aiming and firing. All five cans landed on the floor.
Perfect.
Precision.
His training.
This was his life.
Taking lives was what he was good at. In fact, he would go so far as to call himself a master in the art.
“Fine. It’s not faulty.”
She wrapped her arms around herself.
“Are you feeling cold?”
“Just a little bit. I’ll be fine.”
He removed his jacket and draped it across her shoulders.
“You know for a badass, you don’t show it.”
“How do I not show it?”
“Well, for one, you don’t kill me.”
He chuckled. “You want me to kill you? It would be very useless training.”
“You think I could take you now. I know all your tricks.”
“You’re not even close to being that good.” He put away the gun and cleaned up the mess while Charity watched.
“Really? You’re not training me to take you out.”
“Charity, I hate to break this to you, but I’m not training you to kill anyone. I’m teaching you how to survive and to have a better chance of making it out alive. This stuff that I teach you will only get you so far. It’ll be up to you to figure out the rest.”
“Oh.”
She was silent for a few seconds, but it was like he could feel her mind working, preparing, getting ready for more questions.