Chapter 107: New Friends
A week after Lola's departure. A shooting range in northern New Jersey, just across the GWB.
The range was called Gunfire — a members-only facility outside Fort Lee that Ned had vouched Andrew into the week before, the kind of place that took its liability seriously and its clientele more so. Clean lanes, good ventilation, professional staff who left you alone once they'd established you weren't going to do anything stupid.
Andrew had been here four times in seven days.
"Bang. Bang. Bang."
He emptied the last three rounds from the magazine in controlled succession, set the Glock on the shelf, and stepped back. His hands had the specific deep ache of someone who had been gripping something with sustained force for three hours — not injury, just the body's honest accounting.
He pulled off his ear protection and looked at the target.
Grouping was tighter than Monday. Still not where he wanted it, but the progression was visible and consistent, which was what mattered at this stage.
Shooting — Short Firearms (Beginner): 76/100
Ned came off the adjacent lane, already unloading with the automatic efficiency of someone who had been doing this for twenty years. He looked at Andrew's target, then at Andrew.
"You're moving fast," he said. "For someone who started a month ago."
"I've got good fundamentals," Andrew said. Which was true — the martial arts and boxing work had given him body mechanics that transferred. Stance, breath control, the specific discipline of not anticipating the shot. The technical knowledge was new; the underlying physical literacy wasn't.
"Still," Ned said. He looked at Andrew's target again with the expression of someone revising an assessment. "Most people take six months to get consistent grouping at fifteen yards."
"I'm motivated," Andrew said.
They cleared their lanes, checked in their rental equipment, and walked out into the August afternoon.
Ned drove them to a diner on Route 4 — the kind of New Jersey roadside institution that had been serving the same menu since 1962 and saw no reason to change. Booths, laminated menus, coffee that arrived without asking.
Ned ordered a burger and a beer. Andrew ordered a Reuben and a Coke.
"Still not drinking," Ned observed.
"Still not drinking," Andrew confirmed.
"You're twenty-two," Ned said, with the mild bewilderment of a man for whom this represented a failure of imagination.
"Twenty-one," Andrew said.
"Even more reason."
"I drink occasionally," Andrew said. "I just don't need to."
Ned shook his head with the expression of someone who found this position philosophically incomplete but was prepared to accept it.
They ate for a while in the comfortable quiet of two people who had developed a rhythm. Andrew hadn't planned on Ned becoming a regular feature of his weeks. It had happened through the specific logic of proximity and compatibility — Ned had vouched for the membership as an extension of his guilt about the surveillance situation, they'd ended up at the range on the same mornings several times, and at some point the pattern had become intentional rather than accidental.
Ned was, Andrew had concluded, genuinely good company.
The qualities were real and consistent: direct, loyal, funny in the dry way of people who had seen enough of the world to find it absurd without being bitter about it. Excellent shot — the kind of marksmanship that came from years of regular practice rather than natural talent, which Andrew found more instructive to watch than natural talent would have been. Good at listening without giving advice that wasn't asked for.
The one significant qualification: Ned was currently experiencing his marriage in a way that produced the specific low-grade distress of a man who knew something was wrong and had decided not to look at it directly.
Lana's name had come up twice in the past week, both times with the same quality — a sentence that started and then redirected, a subject changed before it arrived anywhere.
Andrew watched Ned's face across the table and thought about what he'd seen at Central Perk three weeks ago — the woman following Lana out. And this morning, outside the shooting range — the same woman, same coat, same deliberate positioning that was just slightly too purposeful for coincidence.
He'd been filing it under not my problem.
He was reconsidering that filing.
"How's Lana?" Andrew said.
It was a casual question. It landed with the weight of a non-casual question because of what was underneath it.
Ned took a drink of his beer. "She said she was shopping with friends today."
"But?"
"But nothing." A pause. "She does that a lot lately. Shopping. Friends." He set the beer down. "I don't ask."
"Why not?"
Ned looked at the table. "Because if I ask, I have to deal with whatever the answer is." He said it plainly, with the self-awareness of someone who had diagnosed their own avoidance and found it easier to maintain than correct.
Andrew said nothing.
"I know," Ned said. "I know."
"I didn't say anything."
"You have a face," Ned said. "It says things even when you don't."
Andrew picked up his Coke. "I think you should talk to her."
"I know I should talk to her."
"Then why—"
"Andrew." Ned's voice was tired in the specific way of someone who had been tired about the same thing for long enough that the tiredness had become structural. "Let's talk about something else."
Andrew let it go.
The diner moved around them — a family two booths over, a contractor type at the counter reading the Post, a waitress refilling coffees with the autopilot precision of someone who had made this loop ten thousand times.
Andrew was watching the room in the general way he watched rooms when he wasn't specifically looking for anything.
Near the entrance, a woman was sitting alone at a two-top with a cup of coffee. She was oriented toward her cup. She was also, in the specific way that people who were watching someone oriented away from the person they were watching, positioned to see the booth where Andrew and Ned were sitting.
Andrew looked at her for three seconds.
Familiar back. Familiar coat — dark, practical, not quite weather-appropriate for August, the kind of coat that had pockets and was chosen for function.
He'd seen her this morning outside the shooting range.
He'd seen her at Central Perk following Lana out the door.
He put his sandwich down.
He walked to her table before he'd fully worked out what he was going to say. Sometimes the direct approach was the right approach because it was the only one that produced real information.
He knocked once on the table, lightly, and sat down in the chair across from her.
She looked up.
Late thirties, maybe early forties. The kind of face that had been trained to give away less than it was thinking. Professional composure — not civilian composure, the specific variety that came from working in environments where composure was functional.
"Hello," Andrew said.
A flash of something — not quite surprise, more like the rapid recalculation of someone whose peripheral awareness had failed them. Gone in under a second. "Can I help you?"
"You were outside the shooting range this morning," Andrew said. "And at Central Perk on West 10th three weeks ago, where you followed Lana Lavie out the door about eight seconds after she left."
The woman's expression didn't move.
"I think you're now following Ned Lavie," Andrew said. "Which is interesting given that you were previously following his wife."
"I don't know what you're talking about," she said.
"You've had about half a cup of coffee," Andrew said, looking at her cup. "You sat down roughly when we sat down. Your sightline to our booth is clear from this position. The coffee hasn't been refilled, which means you haven't been here long enough to need a refill, which means you followed us from the range."
She looked at him.
He looked back.
"I'm going to go," she said.
"That's fine," Andrew said. "But whoever hired you — if this is about Lana, Ned doesn't know anything about whatever's happening there. He's — a bystander." He paused. "That's not a warning. It's just accurate information that might be useful to whoever you're reporting to."
Something moved through her expression — the rapid processing of someone deciding how much to acknowledge.
She stood, picked up her bag, and left without another word.
Andrew watched her go through the window, then watched her get into a dark sedan parked on the far side of the lot rather than the near side, which meant she'd parked where she'd be less visible from the diner entrance.
Professional.
He went back to the booth.
Ned was looking at him.
"That woman," Andrew said. "Have you ever seen her before?"
Ned looked toward the entrance, then back at Andrew. "No. Why?"
Andrew thought about how much to say. Ned was perceptive — he was a cop, he'd been tracking people for two decades — and telling him half the story was probably worse than telling him the relevant portion.
"She was following you," Andrew said. "She was also at Central Perk the morning Lana came to talk to me. She followed Lana out."
Ned went very still.
"Someone has been watching both of you," Andrew said. "I don't know who hired her or why. But you should know."
Ned was quiet for a long moment. The burger sat in front of him untouched.
"How long?" he said.
"At least three weeks," Andrew said. "Probably longer."
Ned looked at the entrance again. The sedan was gone.
Andrew watched him process it — the cop part of him, the methodical information-integrating part, working through what it meant and what it didn't and what required immediate response versus what required careful thought.
"Okay," Ned said, finally. Quiet, controlled.
"You need to talk to Lana," Andrew said.
This time Ned didn't redirect.
"Yeah," he said. "I know."
After lunch Andrew went back to the range alone.
He worked through the afternoon in the focused, iterative way he'd been working through the summer — identify the specific failure mode, address it, repeat until consistent, move on. His grip was the current project: the tendency under fatigue to compensate with the wrong hand, which threw his sightline off on the back half of a magazine.
Three hours. The range emptied around him as the afternoon got later.
By six o'clock the grouping was where he wanted it.
Shooting — Short Firearms (Beginner): 89/100
One level increment from Proficient.
He cleaned his lane, checked in, and caught a cab back to the city as the sun was getting low over the Palisades.
He thought about the woman in the dark coat and the sedan and whoever had hired her, and about Ned sitting in the diner booth going still when the information landed, and about Lana coming into Central Perk with her negotiating posture and her careful composure.
Something was happening in the Lavie household that was bigger than a difficult marriage.
He'd told himself it wasn't his problem.
He was starting to think the problem might not agree.
[Reader Support Milestones]
500 Power Stones → +1 Chapter
10 Reviews → +1 Chapter
Enjoyed the read? Leave a review.
20+advanced chapters on P1treon Soulforger