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Tuesday, June 21
Rural Vermont
Weapon drawn, Kim had watched as Nora posted herself at one of the windows with her pistol and Kaplan at another with his shotgun. The shooter was out there in the inky blackness, but where?
As soon as John was ready to open the back door, Kaplan flipped off the lights inside the house. Kim kept her gaze steady, and her vision began to adapt while John hustled outside and down the steps to the grass.
The lightning had shifted farther north, taking the brief slices of illumination and the sound of thunder with it. Otherwise, the storm raged on, a relentless symphony of wind and rain battering the landscape.
Kim scanned the shadowed lawn seeking to identify any sign of unidentified human movement.
Nora lowered her profile to a crouch, breathing shallowly as she watched John’s silhouette merge with the night. Kaplan, meanwhile, had pressed his back against the wall near his window, breaths coming in sharp bursts Kim could hear from across the silent room.
The darkness inside the house was complete, which Kim hoped was a tactical advantage. But the truth was that if the shooter had good thermal vision, he’d be able to find them inside and out.
Her hand tightened around the grip of her weapon, her senses hyper-alert.
Outside, John moved deliberately, with calculated speed toward the back of the property where Kaplan had said an old lumbering road led to the abandoned plant where Makinde had been attacked.
Almost simultaneously, Kim saw the muzzle flash twenty yards in front of John on his left.
A crack of thunder masked the sound of the rifle as the sniper fired.
Nora’s whispered plea, “No, no, no,” was a futile lament.
The bullet found its target. John crumpled to the ground, his warmth spilling out onto the cold, wet grass.
A moment later, headlight beams strobed the house from the front driveway.
“Smithers?” Kim wondered aloud. She glanced at her watch, realizing he’d had time to reach Kaplan’s place by now.
“Who is Smithers?” Nora asked quietly.
“My partner. We split up. He tried to warn Bamford, but the sniper got there first. Smithers was on his way here,” Kim replied.
She hurried to the front window and peered toward the driveway. Smithers climbed out of his SUV, readied his weapon, and headed around toward the back of the house.
He must have seen the muzzle flash when John went down and accurately assessed the position of the threat.
Smithers wouldn’t know the shooter had thermal vision, but he might have guessed.
“If I can see Smithers, the shooter can, too,” she said aloud.
The last thing Kim wanted was Smithers laid out on the grass next to John. Even his body armor wouldn’t keep him alive when the sniper fired the next shot.
Kim watched from the doorway, her resolve steeling.
“Stay inside,” she instructed Nora and Kaplan on her way to the back exit. “I’m ending this.”
A moment after Kim made it through the door, she heard another gunshot crack through the air.
Bile rose in her throat when she saw that Smithers was hit.
His body jolted with the impact as he fell awkwardly beside a stand of trees. Was he dead? She couldn’t tell. Her view was blocked by the trees. But she couldn’t simply leave him there alone.
A moment later, the sniper took a second shot, seeking to confirm the first. He wanted them all dead and so far, he was succeeding.
While the sniper was focused on Smithers, Kim stood still, allowing the darkness to swallow her whole, hoping the shooter was repositioning and might not see her immediately.
She knew exactly where he was now. She’d seen the muzzle flash three times from the same location nestled in the trees at the north edge of the lawn.
And he must be alone. Only one rifle and one shooter to contend with. Which was plenty.
But Kim had no time to waste. His thermal vision would spot her any moment now when he returned his attention to the occupants of the house.
She moved with the stealth of a shadow. Each step silent and deliberate as she closed the distance between them, seeking cover where she could find it.
The storm seemed to conspire with her, each gust of wind and lash of rain covering her movements. She allowed the storm to envelop her. She could feel the killer’s presence, a malignant force in the darkness ahead.
A flash of lightning illuminated the backyard for a split second, revealing John’s body and Smithers’s, too. Her resolve hardened and fueled her determination.
She was completely soaked. Her clothes clung to her body like an icy shroud. Rainwater dripped into her face.
She ignored everything except the shooter. She knew where he was. So far, he didn’t seem to have noticed that she was now stalking him.
She needed only a brief glimpse of him behind the rifle’s scope. One quick look and she could take him out. She needed to draw him out. Make him show himself.
Kim knelt onto the wet ground, patting the mud until her fingers found a rock the size of her palm. She maneuvered the stone from the mud and let the rain wash it clean. Then she lifted it in her left hand as she steadied her weapon in her right.
She took a deep breath and tossed the rock as close to the shooter’s position as she could aim. At the same time, she yelled, “FBI! Put down your weapon!”
She heard the rock thump against something harder than human flesh. A tree trunk? A boulder?
She’d had one chance, and she blew it.
But then she got lucky.
A weak lightning strike brightened the corner of the property where the sniper was nesting. For one quick moment, she saw him.
He looked like an alien being, with the night vision on his face and the rifle on its tripod in front of him.
Her luck was lucky for him, too. He saw her immediately.
She must have appeared like a specter of vengeance stalking in the night.
Quickly, she closed the distance between them.
He hurried to reposition his weapon, but before he could line up his shot, seeking to startle him, Kim shouted, “FBI! Stand down!”
Her words had little impact on him. He barely moved. He wasn’t ready to shoot her, but he took the shot anyway.
The bullet whizzed past her a few inches to her right.
Instantly, Kim fired back.
Her first bullet found its mark.
The impact knocked the shooter away from his rifle. He screamed with pain.
He fell sideways, wounded.
But he reached for his rifle again, scrambling for the trigger.
“Stop!” she screamed over the raging storm.
He kept moving.
Kim fired twice more. Two solid hits.
He fell forward on top of the rifle and then rolled onto his face in the mud.
Adrenaline coursing through her body, Kim approached, weapon ready. She’d hit him three times, but she would empty her full magazine into the bastard if she had to.
She pulled her flashlight and shined it on his head as she flipped him over, ready to shoot him again. His face was a muddy, pulpy mess.
He didn’t flinch. Life had ebbed away from him.
His plans, his focus, everything faded into the black rain that washed over them both.
Kim stood over the shooter, her chest heaving, the weight of the moment heavy on her shoulders.
A few moments later, Nora and Kaplan ran outside into the rain. They looked down at the dead shooter.
“He’s just a kid,” Kaplan said.
Nora sank to the muddy ground, the release of tension too much for her legs to bear.
“Kaplan, check on John,” Kim said, running toward Smithers as two sets of flashing blue lights rushed from the long driveway toward the house and Cooper’s satellite phone vibrated in her pocket.