Chapter 9 - THE EIGHT-HUNDRED-YARD CONFIRMATION
Castellin didn't even cheer. He kept his spotting scope locked on the distant target, a slow nod of professional appreciation working its way through his neck.
"Impact. Dead center," Castellin called out quietly.
Grace didn't celebrate, smile, or look back at the men behind her. Without breaking her cheek weld against the stock, her right hand swept back, cycled the bolt with a sharp, lightning-fast clack-clack, ejecting the spent brass casing onto the concrete pad, and chambered a second round in less than a second.
She shifted her point of aim two hundred yards farther out—to the eight-hundred-yard steel silhouette resting near the tree line at the absolute limit of the range.
The wind flag at the six-hundred-yard mark twitched slightly, signaling a sudden, subtle shift in the valley air currents.
Grace felt the change through the skin of her forearm resting against the bench. Without taking her eye away from the optic, her left hand reached up, making a micro-adjustment of one single click to the elevation turret.
She held her breath at the bottom of her exhale. Her heart rate dropped to forty-five beats per minute.
CRACK.
The rifle fired a second time.
Eight hundred yards downrange, before the sound of the gunshot had even finished echoing off the surrounding hills, a crisp, ringing PING cut through the air. The heavy steel target eight hundred yards out danced on its frame, struck directly in the upper chest plate.
Castellin lowered his spotting scope, turning his head slowly toward Brett with an expression of complete, unassailable victory.
"That's eight hundred yards," Castellin said softly to the stunned police officer. "In a crosswind. Cold barrel. No spotter."
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Brett stood completely frozen. He stared at the distant, tiny speck of steel eight hundred yards away—a target he couldn't even see clearly without binoculars—and then looked down at his sister-in-law sitting calmly behind the massive rifle.
Grace cycled the bolt one final time, leaving the chamber open and safe. She engaged the safety mechanism, rose fluidly from the bench, and turned around to face the two men.
