He needed to end this, and quickly.
As if on cue, a dark shape appeared around the bend.
Just a shadow through the snow at first, then a deeper, darker outline trudging forward, slow and purposeful, head down against the wind. Thirty-five feet away.
Adrenaline kicked through him, rage a clenched fist in his chest. Liam brought the Bushmaster AR-15 to bear on his target and thumbed off the safety. He tapped the bottom of the loaded magazine to ensure it was properly seated and squinted through the scope.
Conditions had deteriorated so rapidly that Liam could barely see past fifteen to twenty feet. The wind and snow effectively deafened him and limited visibility. His senses, which he urgently depended upon, were blunted.
He needed his target closer to make sure he nailed the shot.
Liam tensed. He focused his breathing and slowed his heartrate. Anger slashed through him. He felt it thrumming through every frozen cell in his body.
This deranged psychopath was dying today. Full stop.
In his military career, Liam had killed hundreds of men. He’d killed dozens more just in the last few weeks. They were the enemy; he was the soldier who took them out.
This, however, was personal.
After what Pike had done to Hannah, the irreparable harm he had caused her… Liam wanted the scumbag to die a slow, painful death. For Liam’s face to be the last thing he ever saw.
Twenty-five feet away. The wind cut through his clothes and whipped the snow into a frenzy. Liam blinked, clearing his vision, and aimed, finger applying pressure to the trigger.
The figure stopped. Pike moved abruptly to the right.
Liam fired. Boom!
Pike’s body jerked. He stumbled but kept moving.
Due to the poor conditions, Liam’s shot had gone wide, winging him in the shoulder instead of the chest.
He quickly shifted to adjust his aim, but Pike had already slipped between two towering pines and vanished into the swirling snow.
He resisted the urge to squeeze the trigger. To fire now would waste ammo and give away his position.
Patience was bred into an operator’s DNA. He would wait for Pike to make a mistake and reveal himself first, then take a confirmed shot.
“She’s mine!” Pike shouted.
Liam gritted his teeth and didn’t answer. Pike was provoking him to betray his location.
“I’m going to take my time with her! Nice and slow!” His voice was muted, stolen by the wind and flung away, echoing off the snow and trees. It sounded like it was coming from nowhere and everywhere at once.
Liam remained crouched, tracking with the rifle muzzle, blinking snow out of his eyes, finger poised on the trigger.
The crack of a gunshot. Bark splintered from a maple tree ten or fifteen feet to his right. Muffled by the snow, it was difficult to determine the origin of the shot.
Another shot boomed. Twenty-plus feet ahead and on his left, bark sprayed from a pine tree. Pike shouted another curse and fired again.
Pike was shooting blindly, hoping to flush him out. It had the opposite effect.
This time, Liam was able to get a bead on where he was likely hiding.
Liam moved. Electric pain shot through his spine in protest, his discs threatening to lock up after so long in the same position.
He blocked it out. He had a mission, and nothing would get in his way.
Keeping low, stock pressed against his cheek, Liam dodged back between the trees and made a wide circle as he flanked Pike’s suspected location. Even with his aching back, he stepped as quietly as he could in the deep snow.
He ducked low, spine twinging, and peered out from around a thick trunk, leading with the AR-15. He squinted, searching through the driving snow and wind for shadowy movement or the glint of metal.
He swept the weapon from left to right, steadily searching in a grid pattern—scan left to right. Bump down five degrees. Scan right to left. Bump down five degrees. Repeat.
There.
Liam glimpsed a blurred figure. Twenty feet to the northwest, barely visible, a small, dark shape poked out behind the tall trunk of a birch tree. An odd contour that didn’t belong. Liam squinted through the scope.
Pike’s shoulder protruded. A thin strip of the back of his skull. He was facing away, searching for Liam to the north, back the way they’d come.
Liam carefully stepped backward to get a better angle, always mindful of the ground conditions around his shooting position. The discs in his spine shifted, fresh pain jolting through him. He stumbled.
Abruptly, the snow beneath his feet gave way. He tried to leap forward, but his boot snagged on a fallen log hidden beneath a drift of white powder.
The shelf of snow collapsed beneath him.
Liam fell.
10
Liam
Day Twenty-One
Liam scrambled for purchase on the collapsing snow, but there was none. His boots skidded, his arms flailing.
He tumbled down the steep slope, tree trunks and fallen logs battering his body, his pants and coat snagging and ripping, twigs scratching his face.
He came to a sudden, jarring stop. His back struck the base of a large pine tree. Pain knifed from his lower back to his neck. His spine felt like it’d been filled with molten lava.
Dizziness flared through him. Black spots behind his eyelids. He blinked rapidly, disoriented and in incredible pain.
He gasped. Snow spilled into his opened mouth. He lay prone in the snow, jammed sideways against the trunk at the base of a steep ravine.
Trepidation speared him. He had to get up, had to get to his feet and reassess the situation. Pike had the high ground now. Liam was a sitting duck.
Urgently, he tried to sit up, instinctively reaching for his weapon. Nothing happened. His body refused to obey.
He moved his arms, flexed his fingers, and shifted his shoulders. His upper body seemed to be in working order.
His legs wouldn’t move. He couldn’t feel his feet.
He couldn’t feel anything from the waist down.
He was numb. No, worse. He was paralyzed.
Fear and dread pressed down, suffocating him. A part of him had been waiting for this for years—the moment his injured back finally failed him.
The moment his own body betrayed him.
He would die here. Unable to climb the ravine, he would succumb to hypothermia within an hour. And Pike was still out there.
The cold was already burrowing into his bones, sinking deep inside him. Thickening his thoughts, the pain blurred everything to a distinct white haze.
You’re not dead yet, Jessa whispered in his mind. Don’t give up now.
She was right. He couldn’t move his legs, but he could still move his arms. He could still shoot. As long as he had breath in his lungs, he could fight.
He thought nothing of his own survival. Only one thought drove him—ending Pike before he could get back to Hannah.
He shifted, ignoring the pain, and got his right elbow under him. He pushed in the snow, managed to raise his torso enough to snag his tangled AR-15, and pulled it out from beneath his ribs.
He pushed himself into a seated position against the trunk, legs splayed uselessly in front of him, and positioned the rifle stock firmly against his shoulder. He peered through the scope, his finger stiff on the trigger, and spanned the ridge top.
Normally, he could shoot a half-dollar head shot cluster at twenty-five yards. Not now. Not in conditions like this.