Murder Game (GhostWalkers, #7)(18)

Once above the forest, he lay flat and took a cautious look around the area below him. He studied each section. Tansy would have slipped deeper into the woods below. It would take a few minutes for the shock to wear off, and then she’d seize the opportunity to make a run for it. He sighed, knowing he was going to have to track her again for sure.

Kadan picked out the route that would be the sniper’s best choice and spent a patient ten minutes watching the brush for movement. The wind picked up in strength as the night wore on, and the needles in the trees and the leaves on the bushes began to gently sway. Everything in him tightened. The sniper would move with the wind.

Motion just south of Tansy’s camp caught his eye and he focused there, catching sight of a blur of darkness moving behind the trees before disappearing. He let out his breath. He had the man now, and he quickly plotted a course to intercept. Just as he began to move, he caught a glimpse of something sticking out from behind a fairly large tree trunk. He studied the shape carefully, wishing he hadn’t shrugged out of his pack. He could have used his field glasses, because he suspected that strange shape was something commonly known as “tree cancer,” a body part protruding from behind the trunk that indicated that a sniper had set up shop there and was waiting for his spotter to mark a distance.

His heart contracted painfully. What the hell were they setting up? Or whom?

Tansy, where are you? No bullshit. There’s two of them. I need to know your position to know that you’re safe.

Telepathy over long distance was always shaky, especially connecting with the same wavelength of someone he wasn’t very familiar with. Oftentimes there could be a few seconds—or even minutes—of delay. He counted every heartbeat, wondering if she was being stubborn or hiding from him. Wondering if she knew that the more they communicated, the easier the intimacy of mind contact would become. She wouldn’t want that. She wouldn’t want him running around in her head. She already had too many strangers there.

Then she was there, flooding his mind with her. His body reacted to her close proximity, the sweetness of her, the feminine rush of heat and silk. The taste of cinnamon bursting in his mouth. There was fear, determination, even courage, although she didn’t recognize herself as courageous. Mostly she was filled with concern—not for him, certainly not for herself—but for the cougar.

He groaned aloud. That damned cat. She’d flung herself in front of a gun for the animal. He should have known she’d be unwavering in her resolution to keep the animal safe.

I’m making my way up to the cougar’s den.

Are you heading south from your camp? He knew the answer before her words formed in his mind. The spotter was edging toward the southernmost point of Tansy’s camp. Maybe he saw her earlier tracks, or maybe something she’d done had tipped the man off to her presence in the brush, but the spotter was tracking her.

Yes, I’m in the rougher terrain, and circling around to make my way up into the granite to get closer to her den. I have a blind up there, and I can urge her to go to safety if they come close. They won’t see the blind.

Her voice still had the little lag time that often accompanied a new connection, but already he felt more familiar with her, his mind adjusting so they rode the same wave with precision. Few were as skilled as he was, and he’d never met anyone untrained who was able to use telepathy as smoothly as he could, but although she sent out her thoughts in a slightly different way from him, she was definitely adept.

I don’t want you to move. Stay right where you are, even if they come close. I’m going to draw their attention away from you . . .

No!

She sent an instant and adamant rejection of his idea, and he immediately caught the image of a cop pushing her away and going down, blood on his chest. He’d read the reports, so many of them, dating back to her teenage years, and that particular case had been vicious and bloody and took its toll on everyone. They’d lost the cop and she had been so broken up over it, and that had been in the early years of her tracking career.

He took a breath, let it out, breathing for both of them. Listen to me, Tansy. I have skills no one else has. I’m a GhostWalker. The things I can do, psychically as well as physically, give me a huge edge. And I’ve had more training than most men know what to do with. He was already on the move, soothing her as he used the granite cliff to shortcut his way to the sniper.

This time he moved fast, using the pads of his fingers to allow him to climb around and then down. If his boots had been off, he would have gone headfirst even faster, but he just used his upper body strength and fingertips, crossing the wall of granite, moving at breakneck speed, crossing slab after slab. Several times he leapt across gaps, catching by his fingertips.

Both the sniper and the spotter should have targeted him by now, but the expected bullet didn’t come. He didn’t make the mistake of slowing down; he almost leapfrogged across the rock walls, zigzagging and moving up and down.

I smell him close to me.

His heart jumped again. Adrenaline poured into his body. He looked down and saw the surface of another giant slab of granite. This one had several smaller pieces jutting out from it. It was the fastest way down, but a fairly large jump. He’d have to push off from where he was, catch himself on a rock across and down from him, about five feet away, and then spring back, making another five-foot jump.

Stay still. I’ll draw his attention.