Trust Me, I'm Trouble Read Online Free

enough for Steve. They’d be enough for me to make her as a mob enforcer. And no one who wants continual use of his fingers cards a mob enforcer.
    We pay our rental fees, grab safety gear, and head to the firing range. It’s busy, but not so busy that we have to wait for a booth. I lay the Beretta I always rent on the table so I can adjust my safety glasses before loading the gun. The glasses are too big and constantly slide down my nose. Dani never seems to have that problem. Somehow she looks just as lethal wearing plastic glasses and headphones as she does without.
    She waits as I inspect the gun and load it. She’s a stickler for proper procedure. Always point the gun downrange. Always assume the gun is loaded. No coffee on the shooting line. Blah. Too many rules. But both she and Mike insisted I learn how to shoot in case another Petrov tries to use me as a body shield—which is hardly likely given that I turn down the dangerous cases these days, but as it’s probably the only thing they agree on, I took a note.
    “There is something you are not telling me,” Dani says over the dull roar of the other shooters. She’s leaning against the wall of the booth, her arms crossed, looking relaxed. She always seems most at ease when there’s a gun in the room.

    I fire a few rounds into the distant target. It’s hard to tell from the booth, but I may have managed a reliable group. It’s down by the lower left quadrant of the target, but it’s a group.
    “Move your right foot back,” Dani says, her expression shrewd and assessing. “Lean more over your left.”
    Dani didn’t exactly volunteer to teach me. She prefers to keep me completely separate from her day job as hired muscle for whatever criminal syndicate happens to be shorthanded. Training me in the fine art of killing people is too close to that part of her life for comfort, I guess. But I insisted. Mike gave me exactly one (totally unnecessary) driving lesson during which I nearly booted him from the car for stomping on an imaginary brake pedal on the passenger-side floor every time I rounded a corner. I figured that subjecting myself to his teaching style while I was in possession of a loaded weapon was not the best way to stay out of prison.
    Besides, I like being around Dani. She doesn’t push me to be something I’m not. She doesn’t judge me, as long as I’m not acting stupid. And she doesn’t need protecting. I can just be with her. No expectations, no apologies, no guilt. She is to me what a gun is to her—I’m most at ease when she’s in the room.
    She arches an eyebrow, still waiting for me to spill my secrets. I adjust my stance and my aim. “I’ll tell you later,” I say, because hell if I’m shouting about my mom issues at the top of my lungs.
    I take a few more shots, but they end up hitting the same place on the target. Dani leans forward and fixes my grip on the gun, her movements patient but firm, her fingers warm against mine.

    “Holding it like this feels clunky,” I say.
    “It applies rearward pressure to counteract the forward pressure of your shooting hand. Try again.”
    I do as told, and this time my shots end up in the lower right quadrant of the target.
    Dani sighs, which I see more than hear, and comes over to stand behind me. She wraps her arms around me, placing her hands over mine on the gun. She still has to shout despite her mouth being right next to my ear, but that’s not as weird as the chill that zips down my spine at the thought of her mouth being that close to my ear. Earth to Julep—you’re supposed to be paying attention.
    “You are working too hard to align the sights. You won’t have time to do that in a fight anyway. Focus on the front sight. Now take a breath and let it out halfway. Squeeze the trigger slowly so the movement does not change your aim….”
    Bull’s-eye.
    She hesitates, and then steps back. The sudden absence of her body heat makes the ambient air that swirls in feel colder