a pistol rather than a rifle.
My position didn’t allow me to see anything useful, so I rolled back out on the far side of the bench, rose to my knees, and peered between the slats of the bench. Now that I knew what I was looking for, I had only to scan the area where I had seen the shooter. What I was looking for, among all the sparkles of light where the sun hit the water, was that one sparkle that moved sideways, like a slow-moving meteor among fixed stars. There was no glimpse of the reflection of the sun in his scope immediately, but then I saw it. He had moved a little down the mountain, to come closer, his scope blinking in and out of sight as the weapon moved up and down with each step.
The light stopped moving, and he fired again, this time with no hope of hitting me. The second round hit, if anything, a little farther away than the first.
If this was the same guy who sent Peasil after me, and now was taking care of the job himself, he might be a killer but he wasn’t a professional sniper, wasting a shot that way. If he’d made the mistake of allowing me to see his scope, maybe he would make others. Maybe he would miscalculate the trajectory given distance, rising heat, and the drop of what was possibly a Steyr, a decent gun even in the hands of an amateur.
I checked the terrain again and the distance from where I estimated the shots to have come from. He had missed the element of surprise but he wasn’t just going away, a testimony to his stupidity or determination; either quality made him dangerous. I could lie here and let him come closer, find out who he was and end this. But I was badly outclassed in terms of firepower and the closer he got the greater risk for me and the dogs.
“Stay,” I whispered to the Pugs, and, keeping low behind the scrub at the near edge of the mesa, crawled a way until I could see where the edge dropped off onto a stone staircase like the one I’d come up on the other side. If he was coming after me he might come up those stairs. Better to grab the dogs and make a run for it back the way I came, though it was longer. Once I was a few steps down the hill, the mesa itself would provide cover. Then it was just a matter of hightailing it back to the parking lot before he could cut across the valley and intercept me, but I’d worry about that later.
I looked up at the sky. With any luck the storm would hit suddenly, as they often do, and the shooter would be flushed out of the mountain. But for now it worked against me; the clouds had started creeping across the sun and I couldn’t always see him by the reflection off his scope.
I calculated the distance and figured if I was wrong, if the shooter was an expert with the gun I thought he had, he’d get the trajectory right and the shot would hit me within two seconds of his firing. But even if he had reloaded in preparation, if I moved just a little he’d have to get me in his sights again. A target alerted is a difficult target.
I raised up on my knees and peered again through the wooden slats of the bench, wondering where he was. The positive thing was that if I didn’t know where he was, neither did he know my precise location. If only I could get him to react. I unwound the leashes from the leg of the bench. “Here we go,” I said to the Pugs and started to rise to my feet. Then I stopped and dropped down again, when I realized I might have made a terrible mistake myself. “Wait a minute, pups,” I said, my heart suddenly going bonkers in my chest.
Either I was correct in assuming that this wasn’t an expert sniper … or he didn’t care if he actually shot me.
I thought of the other shot coming from someone else at the pistol club. What if there were two people involved? The killer had sent Peasil to get me. Here was another one. Who knew how many people were in league? Maybe I was so preoccupied with what I would tell Max, I didn’t