Big Shot

Big Shot

Julie Mulhern

J & M Press

Copyright

Copyright © 2022 by Julie Mulhern

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Let’s Stay in Touch!

Also by Julie Mulhern

Chapter One

July 1975

Miami County, Kansas

Elegant hands clutched the 12-gauge shotgun. Elegant as in manicured and soft with long fingers. Those hands didn’t dig ditches or saw wood or even mow the lawn. Thatcher Cooke had no reason to dig or saw, and he had a teenage boy from down the street mow.

He was dressed for a day at the country club, not the Fin and Feather (also a club, but one dedicated to hunting, fishing, and horseback riding). He grinned at Graham Landingham, puffed his chest, and settled the gun’s butt against his shoulder. “Pull!”

He shifted the gun’s barrel too quickly.

Bang!

Thatch’s shot went wide, and an intact clay pigeon crashed to the earth.

Graham flashed a grin that flirted with smirking. With his madras shorts, golf shirt, and deck shoes, Graham looked as out of place as Thatch. “Nice shooting.”

We were at the club’s skeet range, in essence an enormous field. No doubt filled with bugs (bad), rodents (worse) and snakes (worst). I wore khaki pants, a long-sleeved denim shirt, and sturdy boots (in case the snakes left the field for the stations arc). It was too hot for long sleeves, long pants, or the long pauses between Thatch’s shots, and my temper was short. I’d come to shoot, not insult other people’s talents, or lack thereof.

“You could do better?” Thatch demanded.

Graham chuckled. “I couldn’t do worse.”

I swallowed an annoyed sigh. Friday afternoon, and the weekend was already off to a rocky start. I’d sensed this weekend was a bad idea. Too many men with outsized egos. Throw in guns and alcohol, July heat, hunting cabins not meant to house people in high summer, cicadas loud enough to make shotgun blasts seem quiet, and my propensity for finding bodies, and the whole thing spelled disaster. In capital letters.

Thatch scowled and reloaded. “Pull!”

The clay pigeon flew across the field. Thatch fired. And missed. Again.

“You do know you're supposed to hit the clay?”

Mocking a man with a shotgun? I frowned at Graham.