Wind River Wrangler (Wind River Valley #1)(88)
Chapter Twenty-One
Anton moved his thumb lightly down the curve of his SOG SEAL Team Elite seven-inch blade. He sat in his hide on the largest of the two Pine Grove halves. It was the closest, distance-wise, to that cedar cabin sitting out half a mile away on the valley floor. And his target, Shiloh Gallagher, was in that cedar cabin.
The chill of the morning was deep as the sun just began to climb over the horizon. He’d been in his newly created hide, halfway up the hill, surrounded by Douglas fir, for two days. Getting lucky on his stakeout, lying prone in a pasture of deep grass on the ranch, he’d seen her ride up to the hills and disappear.
Anton had waited until night, left his sniper post in the pasture, and walked the mile to Pine Grove as marked on the topo map he carried. What surprised him was the cabin hidden on the other side of the tallest hill. And it was there that he’d seen not only Shiloh, but a cowboy. He’d lain perfectly still until they’d both ridden away. Clearly, there was a relationship between them and it only made him feel even happier that he could destroy both of them.
Moving his thumb down the titanium nitride–coated blade, he visualized how he was going to use it on that bratty Shiloh. He’d stalked her for six months in Manhattan. And he found he enjoyed this stalking out here in Wyoming even more. Leath liked nature. He liked the challenge. He was the hunter. Shiloh was his quarry and, now, he was in active stalk mode with her whether she knew it or not.
The SOG SEAL knife was used by the black ops teams. It was a special knife created for special needs. His full lips pulled upward slightly as he closed his eyes, visualizing exactly what he was going to do with her once he captured her. He was waiting for that cowboy to drive off sometime this morning without her. He was hoping Shiloh would be left alone. Alone and unable to defend herself against him.
First, he would silently enter the cabin. He’d already checked it out at night, using his infrared rifle scope. It had two entrances. One on the east side and one on the west side. He’d looked into the windows when there was no one around. Laid out the room design in his mind. There was one working bedroom, so he knew where she’d be sleeping. Two rooms were empty except for what he thought might be a large gun cabinet in one of them. He knew of Shiloh’s hatred of weapons, figuring the cowboy was the shooter, not her.
He had a police scanner radio on him and knew the Lincoln sheriff’s department was actively trying to locate him. They would never find him. He’d spent time hunting in Africa in all kinds of challenging situations and changing conditions. Anton knew how to hide. None of these law enforcement idiots would ever think about looking for him here. He was sure they were tearing up Wind River Valley all the way to Jackson Hole from one end to another, trying to locate him. He’d left no trace of where he was or where he’d gone. Knowing how to stalk, how to become a shadow, using the night as his friend and cover, Leath smiled a little more.
The SEAL seven-inch blade was coated with a matte black finish of titanium, making it invisible in the night. There was no flash or reflection off it. The AUS-8 steel it was created from contained vanadium in it, making the blade incapable of breaking even when encountering the thickest bone in the human body, the femur. And he had been envisioning how he was going to use this knife on her.
He was pleased that the blade had serrated teeth all the way across the top, which meant he could jerk it upward, tearing open her flesh. The knife also had a staggered serration beneath it, as well as on the first third of the blade. Serrations were like tiny sharpened teeth that could surgically cut through soft skin and sink down, ripping and shredding fibrous muscle, ligaments, and tendons beneath it. The serrations were so sharp, it could move through skin and muscle to the vulnerable organs like a hot knife through butter with absolutely no resistance.
It was there that Anton could feel the blade sinking into Shiloh’s soft, rounded abdomen, wreaking havoc, slicing her open, gutting her. He’d open her up so that she suffered in agony for days before she’d die. Gut wounds were always the worst. It was a slow, painful, and grisly death. He would keep Shiloh alive, tape her mouth shut so she couldn’t scream, tie her hands up above her head, then watch her writhe in nonstop agony. Yes, he was going to enjoy every minute he spent with Shiloh, watching her slowly die over a three-day period. She’d die of peritonitis, septic poison finally reaching her circulatory system and going to her heart. Once it did, she’d die of cardiac arrest.
Anton was going to enjoy this so much, and he smiled more deeply, appreciating the serrated teeth on this specially made knife. He’d dreamed of this for years. There wasn’t a day that went by when he wasn’t creating a strategy to find her, stalk her, and then gut her. She’d put him away. He wished that she would live more than three days but under the circumstances, it wouldn’t happen.
As he sat there, listening to the birds sing around him, his hide covered with green netting so that it was impossible to see, he thought about other scenarios. It would be easy to get her out of the cabin and back to his hide. He’d spent one full night with his small military shovel, digging out a rectangular hide. It was two feet vertically and six feet wide. Last night, he’d dug it deeper, five feet deep. Anton was waffling between gutting Shiloh right away or waiting and cutting her here and there, making her suffer like he’d suffered for so many years. She’d slowly bleed to death and he could control how long she remained alive. Maybe he needed to take another look at his plans. Anton knew when she disappeared, there would be a manhunt. But he’d take her in such a way that no one would be able to track him back to his hide. He knew how to do it from past experience.