Page 96 of Hot Intent

Her pulse increased even more, and it already was leaping in her veins like a rushing rapids. She concentrated on the forest to her right, alert for the slightest movement. Any second, now. She braced her shooting elbow on her upraised knee and used the two-handed grip on the pistol that her father had taught her for maximum stability.

There. Was that a shadow in the trees? So jumpy with nerves that she could hardly sit still, she waited a few more heartbeats to be sure. Alex had said not to waste ammo.

Could she do it? Could she pull the trigger and kill another human being? The words she’d heard so many times in her youth held entirely new meaning for her:Kill or be killed. Her brothers and her dad hadn’t seemed to think it was a difficult choice at all.

An image of sweet baby Dawn’s face flashed through her head. The little girl deserved to have parents. She’d already lost so much in her short life. Katie’s fist tightened around the butt of the pistol. She and Alex had no choice at all. They had to do whatever was necessary to stay alive out here.

The shadow glided forward, moving away from her and slightly right to left. She would have to time it carefully for when the attacker was between trees. She picked a gap ahead of the guy and waited for him to reach it. She drew in a slow, deep breath the way her dad had drilled into her, and held it as the black-clad man stepped into the gap. She squeezed the trigger.

The pistol leaped in her hand, startling her. The man fell or dived to the ground—she couldn’t tell which—but from above him on the hill like this, she still had a small sight line to target him.

Alex shot twice behind her, quickly. After her shot, his target must have taken off running.

Two shots. Right. Her brothers and dad said you always double-tapped your target. Shoot once to drop it and shoot a second time to make sure it’s dead.

She’d been a pretty good markswoman over the years. Assuming this weapon was sighted reasonably true, she could make the second shot. She exhaled slowly, held her diaphragm perfectly still, lined up the pistol’s sight on the black, leather-clad lump and took the shot.

A grunting cry from her target signaled a hit.

Uh huh. He’d been playing possum. But now he was shot for real somewhere in his center of mass, which meant he was probably seriously wounded.

Should she shoot him again or save her bullets for someone else? God, she wished he had more training.

“Incoming, your left,” Alex bit out.

She swung her attention to the left, setting up for another shot. A man burst out of the trees no more than a dozen feet from her, scaring the hell out of her. She fired twice, fast, almost instinctively. The guy slammed backward to the ground, but rolled over. She dived behind the rock as he fired back at her.

She could hear him breathing in ragged gasps. She’d hit him for sure. Making a mental picture of the spot she’d seen him go down and using the gurgling rattle of his breathing as a guide, she rolled out from behind the boulders. She’d expected a small target, like the top of his head, and that was about all the guy gave her. Nonetheless, the shot was at a range of about fifteen feet, and her father had trained his kids thoroughly.

Katie didn’t miss. The top of the man’s head exploded in a grisly eruption of red gore. She glimpsed a palm-sized chunk of the guy’s skull fly up into the air, twirling end over end in macabre flight.

She looked back to her right. Crap! The lump of the first guy was gone. “Splash number two,” she bit out. “Number one’s hit but on the move.”

“Got it,” Alex replied tersely. He switched to Zaghastani. “When I say to go, we’ll go down the hill in front of me. You’ll follow me. Have your gun ready.”

Yikes. They were going to break out of this position and she should expect to shoot her way out. She backed deeper into the crevice until her back touched his, keeping her vision trained on the slice of forest visible beyond the boulder. Alex eased away from her and she slid backward again until she contacted his back once more.

She felt his body gather in preparation to leap, and she did the same. Without warning, he jumped up.

A man shouted from what could not have been more than twenty feet away. She spun and darted out of the crack just in time to see Alex shoot the attacker in the face, rendering the guy no longer human.

Another man roared over the top of the boulder from behind them, practically on top of Katie. Terrified beyond any ability to think, she reacted instinctively, whipping up the barrel of her weapon and firing as fast as she could pull the trigger.

The weapon jumped hard in her hand three times, but the fourth time it merely clicked. Empty. Crap. Those had been her last three shots.

Her target yelled and crashed on top of her, knocking her down hard as his weight slammed into her. She hit the dirt hard with the man’s weight crushing her.

She grunted, her breath knocked out of her, and shoved in panic at the man’s unbelievable weight. He was bleeding profusely from a neck wound, soaking her with hot, metallic smelling blood.

He twitched convulsively and then was still on top of her. She heaved for all she was worth and managed to push him aside and pull her legs free of what she hoped was a corpse.

Panting from exertion and panic, she scooped the pistol out of the guy’s hand as Alex gestured urgently from a dozen yards away for her to get moving.

She leaped to her feet and ran for him. His weapon rose fast to point at her and she ducked out of his line of fire as he opened fire at someone behind her.

Jeez! How many guys were out here, anyway?

Alex moved out then, walking fast, placing his feet with cat-like lightness. She tried to mimic him, but it was damned hard work and she was still trying to catch her breath.

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