Page 131 of Lone Wolf

“Listen…” he began, not gently, but not not gently either.

“I need to move the hell out of here before we kill each other?”

“Yes.”

“Gimme the stupid coaster.”

He slid it across to her. She set the glass on it, dead in the center. Cracked that gap-toothed smile. “You’re the worst, X.”

“You’re the worst, too.”

59

A Trained Assassin Maneuvering with

Ninja Dexterity

Karissa Lopatina knew he was coming.

Given the security stations, police patrols, and surveillance cameras that limited mobility around and within the gated community and Allman’s own towering sheer walls topped with anti-climb razor spikes, she figured the Nowhere Man would take a sniper’s approach.

Which is why she’d set up in an overlook position on the dense and wooded hillside stretching down the west side of Allman’s estate. Two-thirds up the slope just above a red barn, she was bellied onto the warped plywood ledge of a long-abandoned tree house. Prone position, the leaf-strewn wood hard against her knees and elbows, eye to the scope. She’d replenished with a fresh Savage 110 from her stock, the thermal upping the rifle’s weight by a touch over a kilogram, and she’d turned down the gain so she’d give minimal reflection back off her eyeball. The load was a 168-grain round with enough foot-pounds of energy that even if she missed the precise mark she’d take off a limb and he’d die by exsanguination.

For additional concealment, she lay under sniper’s camouflage mesh treated with Armus active IR camouflage that hid her IR and thermal body signature. A rucksack to her side held three CamelBak bladders filled with performance fluids to keep her electrolytes and blood sugar at the right levels, the thick plastic tube resting an inch below her chin so she could corral it into her mouth when she required hydration. She’d urinated once already right in her cargo pants, fighter-pilot diapers absorbing her DNA. The dampness was an irritant in the coolness of the night but nothing she couldn’t manage.

She’d been set up here long enough for the front half of her body to start flirting with numbness, and she alternated tensing and relaxing individual muscles to stimulate blood flow without having to move. The lack of streetlights and traffic signals in the neighborhood conferred a denseness to the night, a robe of black wrapped around her perch. Foliage and treetops shaded her further into the hillside, shearing the faint starlight into camo splotches laid across her hide.

She’d advised Allman to keep inside away from the windows, a command easy enough for him to oblige given that he cloistered in the carapace of his house like an eel in a reef. She’d arrived eighteen hours ago, cloaked in the pre-daybreak gloom, in order to scout the surrounding terrain. Moving slowly between positions of cover, she’d assessed the vantages, calculating angles to Allman’s HOME, SWEET HOME from 360 degrees and rank-ordering every last line of fire.

She’d thought one step ahead of the Nowhere Man, choosing the second-best sniper hide overlooking the location from which he could have the best angle on Allman. When he appeared, she’d have a clear field of fire on him.

Then a single shot would get it done.

There was only one problem, of which she was unaware.

Evan was already set up at the third-best hide.

Without moving his head, Evan surveyed the artificial lighting of the back deck on which he’d taken up position across the canyon from Allman’s house. A solar-powered LED topped each post of the railing, though he remained safely in shadow. It was a hair past midnight, which meant there’d be no change in the automated lights for the foreseeable future, and he had six hours and twenty-seven minutes before daybreak would shift the optic landscape.

He was coming for Allman. Lopatina knew he was coming for Allman. And he knew she knew that he was coming for Allman.

He’d entered the neighborhood through the adjoining upper Las Virgines public preserve over a stretch of low residential fencing and moved from yard to yard, dodging the security cameras of the rich and famous. He’d dropped a rucksack of gear behind a hedge of aggressive needle-bearing yew bushes at the base of Allman’s fence before withdrawing to his current position.

Now he was beneath the pergola to the side of the infinity pool, wedged in a body-size gap behind an elevated wooden Jacuzzi and the edge of the deck. He lay at a slight angle, his legs atop a nest of flex PVC piping from the heating unit, and his torso, arms, and rifle flat on the composite planks.

He’d been in position for nearly thirty-eight hours, in which time he’d observed hikers and cars and couples out for walks, a pack of coyotes pawing silently across a horse trail below, a western spotted orb weaver spinning a perfectly symmetrical web not two meters from his face, and caught fleeting glimpses of a trained assassin maneuvering with ninja dexterity between spots of concealment. The Wolf had given him virtually no chances for target acquisition; he’d charted her course by the almost imperceptible movement of waving branches and dirt trickles. A few hours ago she’d settled invisibly into a hide in the area he’d anticipated—a maw of darkness atop a dilapidated tree-house platform on the facing slope.

At this distance, the four-inch gap in the rails beyond the tip of his muzzle gave him enough horizontal movement to cover the field of fire.

Evan was draped with active IR camouflage sniper’s mesh glazed with active nanoformulated coating to mask his IR and thermal body signature. Tommy had even applied the Armus semiliquid polymer-based paint to the entire rifle and suppressor. Only two parts couldn’t be coated and concealed —the suppressor’s muzzle and the huge hemispherical objective lens of the Phoenix-S, polished to a mirror surface and tuned to gather thermal radiation that the human eye cannot see. He’d take great care not to allow either to come visible to Lopatina’s vantage. As long as he stayed still and concealed, his position would remain unknown.

From what he hadn’t seen, the Wolf was shielded in like fashion, so the only advantage he had was the angle. He was ready. He just needed to pin Lopatina down precisely.

Six hours and twenty-six minutes. Now it was just a matter of self-discipline and patience. He had to end the Wolf tonight. There was no margin for error. Tomorrow Jayla would be released from federal protection into the wild.

The earth rotated and Evan along with it. A wispy claw of cirrus clouds dragged its nails across the gibbous moon. The night was so quiet he could make out the whisper-soft feathers of an owl swooping low overhead.

And then the RoamZone went off, its screen lighting up to DONCHA WISH—