Читать книгу Once Stalked - Блейк Пирс - Страница 13

Riley began to imagine the killer. What had he felt, thought, and observed when he came here looking for the perfect spot to shoot from? She wanted to become the killer, as nearly as she could, in order to track him down. And she could do that. It was her gift.

First, she knew, he had to find that spot.

She searched about, just as he must have searched.

As she moved around, she felt a mysterious, almost magnetic pull.

She was drawn to a red willow bush. To one side of the bush, there was a space between its branches and the ground. There was a slightly hollow place in the ground at that very spot.

Riley stooped down and looked carefully at the ground.

The soil in that hollow place was neat and smooth.

Too neat, Riley thought. Too smooth.

The rest of the soil in this area was rougher, more irregular.

Riley smiled.

The killer had gone to such lengths to tidy up after himself that he’d betrayed his exact position.

Imagining the scene by moonlight, Riley gazed down the slope and across the field toward the back of the barracks.

She pictured what the killer saw from this place – the distant figure of Sergeant Worthing stepping out of the back door.

Riley felt a smile form on the killer’s face.

She could hear him think …

“Right on schedule!”

And just as the killer had expected, the sergeant lit a cigarette and leaned against the wall.

It was time to act – and it had to be quick.

The sky was starting to brighten where the sun would soon rise.

As the killer must have done, Riley stretched out prone in the hollow place on the ground. Yes, it was the perfect place, the perfect shape for wielding a high-powered weapon.

But how did the weapon feel in the killer’s hands?

Riley had never actually handled an M110 sniper rifle. But some years ago she had trained a little with the weapon’s predecessor, the M24. Fully loaded and assembled, the M24 had weighed about sixteen pounds, and Riley had read that the M110 was scarcely any lighter.

But the night scope added to that weight, making it a little top heavy.

Riley imagined the view through the night scope. The image of Sergeant Worthing was mottled and grainy.

That wasn’t a problem for true marksmanship. For a skilled sniper, the shot would be easy. Even so, Riley sensed that the killer felt vaguely unsatisfied.

What was it that bothered him?

What was he thinking?

Then his thought came to her …

“I wish I could see the look on his face.”

Riley felt a jolt of understanding.

This killing was deeply personal – an act of hatred, or at the very least contempt.

But he wasn’t going to put it off on account of his dissatisfaction. He could do this just fine without seeing his prey’s expression.

She felt the resistance from the trigger as she pulled it, then the sharp recoil from the rifle as the bullet was fired.

The noise of the shot wasn’t very loud. The sound suppressor and the flash hider had muffled the noise and the burst of flame.

Even so, did the killer worry that someone had heard it?

Only for a moment, Riley felt sure. He had shot two other men from much the same distance, and no one seemed to have heard the shots. Or if they had heard them, no one had thought them extraordinary.

But what did the killer do now that he’d fired the shot?

He kept looking through the scope, Riley realized.

He followed the body in its slouch against the wall toward an awkward squat.

And again the killer thought …

“I wish I could see the look on his face.”

As the killer must have done, Riley got to her feet. She imagined the killer taking a wide brush to the soil to smooth it over, then leaving the way he’d come.

Riley breathed a sigh of satisfaction. Her attempt to link with the killer’s mind had revealed more than she’d hoped for.

Or at least she had a hunch that it had.

She remembered something that Col. Larson had said earlier about whether the killings were acts of Islamic terrorism …

“These days, that simply has to be our default theory.”

Riley’s gut told her that that theory was probably wrong. But she wasn’t ready to say so to her colleagues. Under the circumstances, she knew that Larson was right to pursue the possibility of terrorism. It was simply good procedure. Meanwhile, it was best for Riley to keep her hunch to herself – at least until she could back it up with evidence.

Riley looked at her watch. She realized that she and the others were due at a funeral.