The blood trail was easy to follow in the deep white snow.
Her quarry was leaking badly now, but still making pretty good time. She could have caught up with him easily enough, but because he was armed, she was holding back, staying close to the trees, offering him no clear sightline. She didn’t know how handy he was with that crossbow, and she didn’t want to find out.
He was a bow hunter, and he’d been stalking deer until she began stalking him. On this snowy weekday the Barrens were empty; she had seen no other hunters, had seen no one at all. She and her prey were alone in a chalk-white forest, watched only by the trees.
He couldn’t help leaving tracks, of course—deep ragged pockmarks in the hills of snow where his boots clomped down. But the scarlet thread of blood was easier to see in the failing daylight. She only hoped she finished things before dark. Using a flashlight would make her an easy target.
Really, the job should have been over by now. Had it gone as planned, she would be back in town, sipping cocoa at the Main Street Diner and thawing out after her exposure to the January chill. But because he had the bow, she hadn’t wanted to get too close. She’d tried a kill shot from a distance, crouching in a blind, her target hovering over the gun sight. With a long gun she would have made the shot, but with the pistol it proved too great a challenge. She nicked him in the shoulder on her first try, got him in the leg as he was scrambling away.
She wouldn’t have thought a man with two slugs in him could get very far, especially when one of the rounds had lamed him. But the will to survive was a remarkable thing. For more than an hour she’d chased him through the Barrens as the winter sun became a pale smear of saffron in the western sky. She had seen him raise a cell phone to his ear a couple of times, but she couldn’t get a signal out here and she was betting he couldn’t, either.
He was slowing now, his reserves of energy giving out.
She wondered if he’d gone bow hunting often. She wondered if he had killed many deer, and if so, if he had tracked the wounded animals, following their blood spoor. Probably. Karma was a stone-cold bitch sometimes.
The sun was a blister on the horizon when she found him in a clearing. He lay on his back in the deep powder like a man trying to make a snow angel. The crossbow was by his side, but his hand wasn’t on it.
She couldn’t tell if he was alive or dead. She approached slowly. When she was a yard away, she saw his eyelids flicker as a puff of breath drifted clear of his mouth.
She put her foot on the bow and eased it sidewise, out of his reach. Then she just stood there, looking down. She knew he was seeing her only in silhouette, a wild-haired apparition limned by the dying sun.
“Help me,” he said in a sandpaper rasp.
She shook her head. “Sorry.”
It was a lie. She wasn’t sorry.
He tried to make sense of what was happening to him. His pupils darted, frantic, in the frozen mask of his face.
“Who are you?” he asked at last.
“My name’s Parker. Jacob Hart hired me.”
That ought to make things reasonably clear. She watched as comprehension widened his eyes.
“I’ll pay you more,” he said. “I’ll pay double. I’ll pay anything.”
“You got one thing right, buddy. You’ll pay.”
She steadied the pistol, targeting his heart.
From this distance she couldn’t miss.