Shadow Fall (Tracers Series Book 9) by Laura Griffin Page B

in the target. He unclipped it from the wire. The ten bullet holes formed a tight grouping smaller than a quarter.
    “Pretty good,” she said. “Especially with your right hand.”
    He didn’t say anything, but she thought she spotted the hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth.
    “You are left-handed, right?”
    “A lot of us are.”
    “Us?”
    He tossed the target onto the shelf like it was nothing. If it had been hers, she would have pinned it up in her cubicle at work.
    “The PSD teams,” he said. “It’s a tactical advantage.”
    She stared up at him blankly.
    “I’ll show you.” He turned to face her and took a big step back. “Pull your Glock.”
    “What are you—”
    “Pull it.”
    She reached into her jacket. In an instant, he was on her, his bulk surrounding her, his hand clamping around her arm like a vise. She blinked up at him, shocked by his speed.
    “See?” He released her and stepped back. “Most people are right-handed. They attack from their dominant side, so in a face-to-face assault we have the advantage if we’re dominant on the left.”
    “I never thought about it.”
    “We train for everything. But Liam’s a numbers guy, so he has a hiring bias toward lefties. Anything for an edge.”
    “Over your competitors, you mean?”
    “Over anybody,” he said. “We’re the best out there—and that’s not bragging, it’s a fact. We get a lot of applicants, so we can afford to be selective.”
    “Sounds like you do some of the selecting. Does that make you—what? Liam’s XO?”
    “More or less.”
    She glanced around the room at all the high-tech equipment, some that wasn’t even on the market yet. She’d never seen a setup that compared, not even at Quantico. Her gaze landed on the USMC flag on the wall.
    “Why’d you quit the Marines?” she asked on impulse.
    She glanced over, and by his tight expression she could tell she’d offended him.
    “I mean, you’re obviously good at what you do,” she said. “I would think they’d try to keep guys like you.”
    “I could see the drawdown coming.”
    “Everybody could.”
    He gazed down at her, probably thinking she was pushy. “I wanted to get ahead of it,” he said. “Liam was staffing things up here, and he’s the best CO I ever had, so.”
    She waited for more, but he didn’t elaborate.
    Still, he’d opened up some. Way more than she’d expected when she finagled the invitation. If she played her cards right, she might get him talking about Catalina again.
    “You want to shoot some more?” he asked.
    “Why, you want to change the subject?”
    “Yeah.”
    She smiled and felt the tension relax. “Well, as long as we’re here, I should practice with my Glock. It’s not quite an MK23, but—”
    “But it’s your service weapon, and it could save your life someday.” He nodded at her hip. “Take it out, let’s see what you’ve got.”
    IT WAS A step up from Big Pines, but not the Ritz, thank God. Tara preferred a stocked vending machine to an overpriced minibar any day of the week. She grabbed some snacks and traipsed back to her room, checking out the vehicles in the parking lot, including a black Silverado similar to Liam’s, only this one had one of those ridiculous lift kits that meant you practically needed a stepladder to get inside. Tara shook her head. Cold air whipped around her shoulders, and she had a flashback of riding beside Liam in his toasty-warm, perfectly proportioned pickup.
    She forced away the thought. Liam was officially a suspect until evidence proved otherwise. She had no business admiring his truck, his body, or anything else about him right now—or ever, if she knew what was good for her.
    Her phone chimed as she stepped into her motel room.
    “So guess what I found out,” M.J. said.
    “What?”
    “He was in Aspen.”
    Tara dumped her snacks on the dresser. “Who was?”
    “Liam Wolfe. He was in Aspen, Colorado, the night of the murder, meeting with a client at his