Quinn - Iris Johansen [72]
“Come on, Gallo,” she whispered. “Let me give you a little nap.”
One minute.
Two.
He didn’t come out of the trees.
Five minutes.
Dammit, where was he?
And then she felt the hair rise on the back of her neck in the most primitive of signals.
Someone was watching her.
He was watching her.
She instinctively dove behind the boulder and waited.
Where are you, Gallo?
Her heart was pounding.
She could feel him out there in the darkness.
Or was he behind her?
She wasn’t sure. She listened.
She couldn’t hear him. God, he was good.
But she couldn’t stay there when he knew her location, and she didn’t know his. Since she was trying to get him without a lethal commitment, she was at a disadvantage.
Fade away. Disappear. If she caught a glimpse of him, then try to line up the shot.
If not, give up the opportunity and come back another time.
She dove into the bushes that bordered the scraggly line of pines beside the boulders.
No sound.
Move swiftly.
She no longer felt his eyes on her.
But that might only mean he was close but could not see her.
And she couldn’t see him, dammit.
Put distance between them.
Damn, she hated to run from Gallo.
She’d almost had the bastard.
She would have him.
Only an opening foray, Gallo.
The battle is yet to come …
Two Days Later
SHE WAS GETTING CLOSE again, Gallo realized.
He felt a rush of excitement as he caught a fleeting glimpse of Catherine before she disappeared into the pines.
She was probably going to circle and come at him from behind. He was still, listening for a sound.
There was no sound. But he’d bet that she was in motion.
Stay and confront her? Risky. She had almost gotten close enough to take him out twice in the last few days.
Why not stay? What did he care?
But he did care, or he would have plunged off the cliff into the lake in those first hours after he’d gone on the run.
Bonnie had made him care.
And he cared because Catherine Ling’s pursuit had pierced the wall of despair and desperation that surrounded him and injected him with a shot of pure adrenaline. The hunt brought back memories of the missions that had been his life for so many years. Memories that enabled him to block out the more recent painful recollections.
The missions had been brutal, fast, deadly. Hunt, find, kill.
But Catherine Ling’s pursuit had not been brutal. In the few glimpses he had caught of her, he had thought she was like a black panther, stalking, graceful, beautiful.
But, yes, definitely fast and deadly.
So did he run again?
He started moving. As silent as Catherine. As fast as Catherine. He could feel his heart start to pound, the excitement electrifying every muscle.
Follow me.
Let’s play the game a little longer.
Who knows? I may let you win it.
CHAPTER
11
One Week Later
SHE NEEDED A BATH, Catherine thought as she woke in the cave where she’d sheltered for the day. She slept from dawn until late afternoon because the hunt was at night. She’d taken a chance and swum in the cold lake on the property the day before yesterday. She couldn’t afford to do it again anytime soon. She had thought she sensed Gallo and had quickly returned to shore.
It could be imagination. It seemed she was always sensing Gallo these days. His presence was all around her, in the trees, the hills, the lake.
He was the last thing she thought of before she went to sleep and the first thing when she woke in the morning. Not that she slept much.
Not since she became aware that Gallo was also stalking her.
The realization had come to her about two weeks after she had found and begun to stalk him. This hunt had been like nothing in her experience. He was like no one she had ever targeted. A phantom, silent, swift, moving all around her and yet only permitting her brief glimpses, the slimmest of opportunities.
After that first encounter he could have chosen to leave the area, but he hadn’t done it.