Page 2 of Reaper

Direct intercept line. Twenty degrees off his vector, putting me between him and the woman without appearing to cut him off. The jacket hem fluttered in the breeze from the nearest bonfire. I could see the outline of something hard against the fabric. Not obvious. Not unless you were looking for it.

He hadn’t seen me yet. His focus was entirely on her, tracking the movement of her shoulders as she shifted her weight, the way she tucked the phone into her pocket and glanced up at the hayride sign. Considering it. Maybe joining the queue. Maybe not.

The watcher took another half-step. His right hand drifted closer to his jacket.

I was eight feet from him now. Close enough to see the stubble on his jaw, the way his eyes never blinked. Dark eyes. Empty. The kind that have seen things and decided not to feel anything about them.

The festival roared around us. Kids shrieking by the game booths. The hayride chain clanking as the wagon made its turn at the far end of the track. Somebody winning at the bottle game, finally, the barker shouting congratulations through his rubber mask. The woman reached into her pocket, pulled out a five-dollar bill, and stepped into the hayride queue.

The watcher’s weight shifted to his front foot.

I closed the last three feet in a single stride, angling my body to block his sightline to the woman without fully facing him. Casual. Just another festival-goer moving through the crowd. My right shoulder brushed his left as I passed, close enough that he had to adjust his stance or risk colliding.

He adjusted. His eyes flicked to me for half a second—assessment, not recognition—then back to the woman, who was now three people deep in the queue, handing her five dollars to the attendant.

I kept moving. Past him. Behind him. Circling wide until I was positioned with my back to the same row of hay bales, twenty feet further down the fence line. New angle. Better sightlines on both of them.

The watcher hadn’t moved. His hand was still hovering near his jacket. His eyes tracked the woman as she climbed onto the hayride wagon, settling onto a bale near the back, pulling her knees up to her chest against the cold. The wagon jerked forward. The chain clanked. The skull sign swung in the breeze as the wagon carried her into the dark stretch of trees.

The watcher stood perfectly still for five full seconds. Then he turned and walked—not hurried, not slow—toward the parking area at the far end of the field.

I keyed the radio again.

“Watcher moving to parking. Female subject on hayride. I’m following.”

The radio clicked once.

I pushed off the hay bales and fell into the crowd, keeping fifteen feet between us, moving at the same measured pace. The watcher didn’t look back. Didn’t check his six. Either he was confident or he was stupid. The way he moved suggested the former. Confident men make mistakes. Stupid men just die faster.

The parking area was a half-lit expanse of gravel and patchy grass, cars parked in uneven rows, the orange glow from the festival just reaching the nearest vehicles. The watcher walked to a dark SUV parked at the far edge, keys already in his hand. Not running. Not yet. He opened the driver’s door and stood there for a moment, looking back toward the festival, toward the trees where the hayride had disappeared.

Waiting.

I positioned myself behind a pickup truck two rows over, low enough that the bed blocked my silhouette from his sightline. The cold gravel bit through the knees of my jeans. I didn’t move. Didn’t breathe any harder than necessary. The radio was silent against my shoulder. The club was listening. They’d be moving into position around the perimeter, covering exits, ready if I called.

The watcher got into the SUV. The engine turned over. Headlights swept across the gravel as he backed out, turned, and idled toward the festival exit road.

Not leaving. Circling.

I was on my feet before the taillights reached the first bend, cutting between parked cars, heading for the tree line where the hayride track emerged. The wagon would complete its loop in three minutes, maybe four. The watcher was positioning himself to intercept when it returned.

I hit the trees at a jog, boots silent on the packed dirt of the service path that ran parallel to the hayride track. The festival noise faded behind me, replaced by the creak of branches, the distant rattle of the wagon chain, and the low, steady hum of the SUV’s engine somewhere to my right, moving slowly along the access road.

The hayride track emerged from the trees fifty yards ahead. An open stretch of field, then back into the festival proper. The watcher would have a clean line of sight to the wagon when it came out. If he was armed—and he was—that open stretch was the perfect place to make a move.

I broke from the trees twenty yards short of the track exit, angling across the field toward the access road. The SUV’s headlights were off now. I could see the dark shape of it idling at the junction where the access road met the festival perimeter, engine running just loud enough to carry on the cold air.

The hayride wagon creaked and rattled through the trees behind me. Kids laughing. The attendant shouting some canned spiel about ghosts and goblins. The woman would be sitting on her bale, knees pulled to her chest, probably cold, probably wondering why she came alone to a Halloween festival on a night like this.

I closed the distance to the SUV in thirty seconds flat, coming up on the passenger side where the watcher wouldn’t see me in his mirrors. The engine rumble covered the sound of my boots on gravel. The window was down halfway. I could hear his breathing. Steady. Controlled.

The hayride wagon emerged from the trees. Orange light caught the wooden rails, the stacked bales, the faces of the passengers—kids wide-eyed and excited, adults pretending to be scared. The woman sat near the back, her dark hair coming loose from its knot, hands shoved into her jacket pockets. She was looking at the festival lights, not at the access road. Not at the dark SUV idling thirty yards from the track.

The watcher’s hand moved to the center console. I saw the glint of metal. Not a phone. Smaller. Flatter. A badge.

Police.

Or something close enough to it.