Читать книгу Manhunter - Лорет Энн Уайт, Loreth White Anne - Страница 8

Naked as the day he was born and smeared head to toe with slate-gray river mud, he crawled up the slope, circling above the cabin, careful not to stand in case he was seen from below when lightning flashed.

The night was black and evil, rain slashing horizontally, wind ripping branches and crashing them down to the forest floor, rivers rising and breaking banks.

There would be dogs soon, he knew. And he was leaving a heavy trail of blood.

But tonight the weather was his friend.

He flattened himself into the wet loam, his breathing ragged as he studied the small cabin in the clearing below, the whites of his eyes stark against his mud camouflage.

Lightning cracked open the sky, and for a brief moment the darkness split, revealing a monochromatic snapshot of the churning gray river beyond the cabin, giant logs spinning violently among bobbing flood debris.

Then the image was gone.

He waited for a second for his vision to readjust, then approached the cabin slowly on hands and knees, creeping round to the side with no windows.

Rain leaked into his eyes and blood continued to gush from the ragged bullet trough across his left thigh.

Pain was his friend, he told himself. Adrenaline was his friend.

Twelve months in maximum security might have blunted the brutal edge of his massive physique, but not the steel of his mind. Being a prisoner of war had trained him for this.

U.S. military black ops had trained him for this.

His art was combat. Tracking. Evasion. Infiltration. Torture. He was a killing machine.

A human hunter.

He inched around the cabin, peered up into a window. He needed clothes. Equipment. A needle. Thread. Disinfectant. Then he needed to make it appear as if he’d drowned in that river while he was heading south for the Canadian-U.S. border.

But he was really going north, to the Yukon. To the small town of Black Arrow Falls where they were sending Gabriel Caruso, the cop who had put him behind bars.

He wanted that Mountie.

The game isn’t over yet, Caruso, he told himself. It’s not over until one of us dies.

He found a rusted piece of crowbar buried in the grass. Ducking round to the front door, he quickly jimmied the bar between the lock and the door. One sharp jerk, and the lock splintered away from wood.

He stilled. Listened. The heavy iron fisted at his side, he entered the dark cabin.

The real hunt had just begun.