Always Time To Die

Chapter 46

CASTILLO RIDGE

FRIDAY NIGHT

They're coming right toward me.

Quickly the sniper thought about shooting angles and avenues of escape. He should go to ground and wait for them to drive around the back of the ridge. That was the plan.

That plan hadn't called for freezing his ass off while the two of them photographed graves and took a midnight hike up Castillo Ridge. If he had to wait much longer, he'd be too cold to shoot straight. Then somebody could die instead of just bleeding a lot all over the snow.

It wasn't that he minded the killing itself; like everything else, it got easier with practice. But a fatality was always investigated more thoroughly than a simple "accidental" shooting.

They were still coming toward him. Any closer and he'd have to use his eye rather than the scope. As it was, he couldn't see more than one or two square inches of the target at a time.

Finally Carly and Dan veered away, following the informal trail horses and cattle used in the summer when they were turned loose to graze.

The sniper began to breathe a little more easily as the targets got farther away. When he realized they were going to climb all the way to the top of the ridge a few hundred yards from him, he sighted in and recalculated the angles.

Then he smiled. If they stood and admired the view, it'd be a piece of cake.

Confident again, the sniper held position except for his eyes. He looked away from his prey, barely tracking them with his peripheral vision. Animals, even civilized ones like people, often sensed a direct stare.

And from what he'd learned about Dan Duran, that boy was barely housebroken, much less civilized.