Free Speak of the Devil by Allison Leotta Page B

sat atop an old dresser. The door of the safe had a covered keypad. Jack stuck his hand under the cover and keyed in a pattern.
    The door swung open with a creak; Jack reached inside and pulled out a smaller box, which he cracked open. Nestled inside gray foam was a black semiautomatic handgun. He popped out the magazine, then racked the slide and glanced inside the chamber to confirm it was empty. Jack held the weapon, barrel-down, to Anna. She made no move to take it.
    “What am I supposed to do with that?”
    “Learn to use it. We’ll go to the range.”
    A laugh escaped her throat before she could stop it. “I’m more likely to shoot off my own foot than a robber.”
    “That’s why you go to the range, and take classes about gun safety.”
    “You know the statistics, Jack. Olivia is more likely to get shot with this than any intruder.”
    “No, we keep it locked up, and you learn to use it safely. I’ll wager those statistics would be different if they only measured homes where a gang member had already broken in.”
    She nodded. Fair point. “Where did you even get this?”
    “It was Nina’s.”
    Anna had no idea that Jack owned a gun. What else didn’t she know about him? She looked around the shadowy attic, wondering what was in all the other boxes.
    She sank down into an old chair. It sent up a poof of dust, making her sneeze. He handed her a handkerchief. “Thank you.” She wiped her nose. “I don’t want to learn to use a gun.”
    “Why not?”
    She thought, I’m moving into Nina’s house, taking over Nina’s family. I don’t need to carry Nina’s gun, too. She said, “I’ve worked on dozens of cases involving civilians with guns. They never end well.”
    “You’re talking about cases where the criminals are armed. You haven’t seen a case where the victim had a gun, have you?”
    “No.”
    “That’s my point.”
    “When did you become a spokesman for the NRA?”
    She was trying to make a joke, but Jack’s face remained dead serious. He pulled up another rickety chair next to hers and took her hand.
    “Anna, I love you. I’m worried about you. The danger out there is real. I can’t go through that again. I can’t let Olivia go through it again.”
    She met his eyes. They were filled with love and a sort of fear she’d never seen there before.
    “How did it happen?” she asked quietly. “When Nina died?”
    Jack set the gun back in the box and looked up at the wooden beams, as if they might provide a clue. “She was a sex-offense detective with MPD for many years. But a few weeks before she was killed, she got transferred to the power-shift to do drug buy-busts. They made her the UC.”
    The power-shift was a fancy name for a crappy job—putting in overtime in trouble spots in the city. Going from sex-offense detective to buy-busts was a demotion. As the undercover drug officer, Nina would have dressed like a street addict and bought dime bags from corner boys. It was dangerous work, and it paid less than being a detective.
    “One night, after she made a buy, an addict tried to steal the drugs off of her. He put a gun to the back of her head, and shot her.”
    “Mm.” Anna cringed. “Did they catch him?”
    “No. MPD investigated, and they threw a lot of resources on it, but they never made an arrest.”
    He leaned back against the chair, closed his eyes, and rubbed his temples between his thumb and middle finger. His jaw clenched and unclenched.
    “I’m sorry,” she said. She put her hand on his neck and kneaded his tense muscles.
    They sat quietly for a while. Finally, he turned to her. “We’ll go to the range this weekend.”
    “No.” She shook her head. “I don’t want to learn to use a gun. I don’t want it in the house, not with Olivia running around. I’m sorry. Can’t we just update the alarm?”
    Jack sighed and locked the firearm back in the safe. “You’re damn right we’re updating the alarm.”
    He carried the safe down to the second floor