Page 143 of The Most Dangerous Games

And the one I’m about to be.

He almost laughs at himself.

Too late for that now.

After everything that has happened since he was in the water in Antarctica that very first day, trying to save Hannah Wagner, the life Wyatt now needs to save is his own.

And he has no idea what saving it is going to cost.

Or if he’s willing to pay it.

99.

Wyatt presses forward as quietly as he can, trying to imagine his feet barely touching the ground, pretending he’s a ghost.

Every few minutes—minutes that feel more like hours—he stops to look around.

Stops and listens.

Every time he does, he thinks about turning around and walking away.

Wyatt thinks about running, and not just for cover.

He thought he had a solid plan for himself from the time he’d shown up in Ohio. Except plans have a way of changing. He’d learned that fairly early in his life.

Man, have I ever learned that.

A family trait, maybe?

But what did they say in the military? Plans change when the situation on the ground changes. Jack McHenry had told him that one night when the two of them had taken an after-dinner walk in Maine. Or maybe it had been in Kentucky.

Well, now the situation on the ground—this ground—was changing with every step he took deeper into the woods.

Where’s Zhi?

Am I tracking him or is he tracking me?

This was supposed to be about me becoming a man, Wyatt tells himself.

Just not a dead man.

All Wyatt does know, one hundred percent, is that he’s more frightened than when he had been hanging on for dear life to Mount Washington, right before he watched Reg Drummond lose his own grip and fall all the way to what looked like the bottom of the world.

Right after the same thing had nearly happened to him.

Wyatt’s heartbeat? Out of control. His mouth feels as dry as dirt. His right hand, the one with the old-fashioned revolver in it, continues to shake so much he wonders what will happen if he does need to take a shot at Zhi Lin. He looks down and hates what he sees.

If I have to shoot, I’ll miss.

And then I’ll die.

Unless the Chinese gymnast gets his shot off first.

Could Zhi really shoot him dead? Zhi is an athlete, after all. A champion in his sport. One night when Wyatt was quizzing him about that, Zhi had told Wyatt that it wasn’t ever a burning desire to compete that drove him.

No.

It had been his hatred of losing.