Kari checked her sidearm.Full magazine.One in the chamber.She pressed her back against the wash’s bank and listened to the silence where the footsteps had been.
He’d stopped moving.Which meant he’d found a position he liked.
Which meant the next sound she heard would be much closer.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
He came from the north, as Ben had predicted.
Kari heard him before she saw him—the soft displacement of gravel above the wash, deliberate and unhurried, the footwork of someone who’d done this kind of approach many times and knew exactly how much noise was acceptable.She pressed herself against the east bank of the wash and raised her sidearm, tracking the sound.
“He’s ten yards north of you,” Ben said in her ear.“Moving along the top of the wash.He knows you’re in there.”
Kari said nothing.Any sound she made would pinpoint her position.She controlled her breathing—slow in, slow out, the way she’d been trained, the way she’d practiced a thousand times at the range and never once imagined using in a dry streambed at dawn with a killer walking toward her.
The footsteps stopped.
Silence.The generator’s hum from the complex, distant now.The faint tick of cooling metal from somewhere.Her own pulse in her ears, which she forced herself to ignore.
“Kari.”The voice came from above and to her right—close, ten feet, maybe less.A man’s voice, calm, conversational.“That’s your name, right?Kari Blackhorse.”
She didn’t answer.
“You can put the gun down.I’m not going to shoot you from up here—I need what’s in your backpack, and a body in a ditch complicates recovery.”A pause.“I’m going to come down.If you shoot me, you should know that my employers have standing instructions in the event of my death.Instructions that involve people you care about.”
The threat was delivered without inflection, the way someone might mention a scheduling conflict.Kari kept her weapon raised and her back against the bank.
He appeared at the lip of the wash—a silhouette against the brightening sky, then a shape dropping down with an agility that didn’t match the voice’s composure.He landed in the streambed eight feet from her, his weapon already trained on her center mass.In the gray predawn light she could see him clearly for the first time.
Lean.Late forties or early fifties, hard to tell.Short hair, no distinguishing features, a face you’d pass on a street without a second look.He wore dark clothing and a light jacket and he held his handgun like someone who’d carried one for so long it had become an extension of his hand.
Her mother had seen this face.Maybe not this close—maybe from a distance, through a windshield, before she understood what was happening.But in the last minutes of Anna Chee’s life, this man had been the last thing she’d seen before the desert took her.The thought arrived and Kari put it somewhere she couldn’t reach, behind the training, behind the weapon in her hands.Later.Not now.
“There we go,” he said.“Easier to talk face to face.”
“Who are you?”
“Nobody you need to know.Put the gun on the ground, please.Slowly.Then take off the pack and set it beside it.”
Kari didn’t move.The distance between them was wrong for her—eight feet was close enough that he wouldn’t miss and far enough that she couldn’t reach him.Her weapon was pointed at his chest.His was pointed at hers.A standoff that physics would resolve in his favor if it lasted long enough, because he was set and stable and she was crouched against a bank with her balance compromised.
“You’re the one they sent after me,” she said.“At my house.”
“No.That was someone else.Someone less careful.”His tone carried a faint professional disdain that told her how he viewed the botched assassination.“I was originally assigned to you, but I got redirected.Different priorities.”
“Nathan Whitmore.”
The man tilted his head.Not surprised—assessing.Recalculating what she knew and what that meant for the ending.
“You’ve been busy,” he said.
“You framed Ben Tsosie for it.”
“I staged a scene to specifications I was given.Who it pointed to wasn’t my concern.”He adjusted his grip on the weapon—a micro-correction, a marksman compensating for holding position too long.“The gun, Detective.On the ground.I won’t ask again.”
“How many people have you killed for Devco?”
“More than you’d want to hear.”
