Chapter 14

The men chasing us didn"t need to spread out too much. They knew where we were. Treed like two bears in the woods.

We had claws and teeth and a bad attitude. But our hunters had all the cool modern tech.

This close, they may have even had a way of getting live data from the surveillance cams. Not that they would get anything useful from it when we weren"t moving. The odds against a camera trap being pointed up the tree where we"d parked ourselves were pretty fucking astronomical.

Regardless, an infrared sensor likely told them where we were when they landed. Even if the rain was now pounding too hard for the night-vision goggles, they wouldn"t have any trouble closing in on our last known location.

The three white sheets, each tied under its own tree, might or might not lead the enemy in a nice circle with us in the middle. The fabric must be soaked through by now. I could only pray the sodden, saggy material still had what it took to catch a flashlight beam in the darkness.

Noah"s idea was a good one if it worked. Who couldn"t love the idea of an enemy wandering in a circle around us instead of tramping directly to our tree?

More time to observe your opponent is always better than less time.

After what felt like endless years of tension, we spotted three individual sources of lights bouncing and bobbing through the darkness below.

"I"m a little insulted," I murmured to Noah. The patter of rain would mask our voices if we kept them down. "Three men? That"s all we rate?"

"You expected them to field an entire football team?"

"No, but c"mon. A little respect would have been nice. Who do they think they"re playing with here?"

"Two naked college kids, only one of them never even made it to college."

"This naked college kid is going to make them pay for getting cocky."

Noah chuckled softly. It was a good sound.

The three men might not respect us, but they respected the forest enough to move slowly and cautiously. Most criminals tend to spend their prime crime time in big cities. That"s where the money, neon, and bottle service live. Clumped close together at first, they took their time at spreading apart so they weren"t all coming for us head-on.

I wasn"t blinking rain out of my eyes as often. Fuck. It was slacking up.

Wonderful. The last thing we needed was for those guys to switch from halogens to night vision.

An eerie whinny cut through the darkness. Screech owl. That"s what it would have been back home. Some kind of owl anyway.

One of the lights stopped moving. He may have thought it was a voice. Some kind of signal from me or Noah.

I held my breath. Next to me, Noah did too. Funny how you can hear a guy trying not to make a sound when you"re doing that exact same thing.

The drizzle was almost back to a wet mist. The owl whinnied again a little louder. Poor little guy checking in on his feathered friends.

The halted light started moving again in the direction of the whinny.

"He"s going the wrong way." Noah"s murmur tickled my ear.

"A stroke of luck," I murmured back. "Watch this."

A moment or two later, the light was sweeping a horizontal from left to right and back to the left. He"d walked right up to one of the white sheets. Now he was having a WTF moment.

Such moments were never destined to last long. He"d be delayed only a beat or two while he figured out what he was seeing and that it meant bullshit. Then he"d move on.

Take your shot. Now.

The mist wasn"t as miserable as pounding rain would be, but I was still straining my eyes to make out details that simply weren"t there. The swinging light reflected off the sheet and back onto the light"s user—but not enough to give me much.

How was he carrying that light? How large was it? A guy had options.

He might wear it as headgear on his forehead to keep both hands free to operate his weapon. Or the light itself might be a weapon—one of those heavy-duty flashlights the more hands-on goon could use to dole out traumatic brain injuries.

The mist started to drizzle again. I blinked harder.

Headgear.

Had I really seen that for sure? Or was I seeing what I hoped to see?

Noah handed me my missile—a twenty-four-ounce can of peaches in heavy syrup. A pound and a half of mass in a cold aluminum shell.

A football weighs less than a pound and offers a considerably more aerodynamic shape.

But a football didn"t do much damage when it hit you.

Take the fucking shot. This guy ain"t standing here shaking off his dick forever.

A fifty-fifty shot at being wrong was still a better shot than missing my chance to take aim at a stationary target.

Aim for the head.

If it is his head.