Stone Cross (Arliss Cutter #2) - Marc Cameron Page 0,126

their predicament. Cutter found a spot where Kilgore had indeed lain in wait in the snow. The imprint of his prone body told an easy-to-read story to someone who knew what to look for: splayed legs, elbows offset to reveal that he was behind a rifle rather than looking through a pair of binoculars. Thankfully, the bitter cold had forced the outlaw to keep moving instead of sitting still.

Cutter closed the distance about the time Kilgore realized he’d traveled in a big circle. He came out of the willows a hundred meters from the cabin, with Cutter another fifty meters behind him.

Cutter gave a shrill whistle to get his attention, post-holing now through knee-deep snow.

The big .404 boomed as Kilgore spun and fired a snap shot. The round went wide, missing Cutter by a dozen yards. Still, the adrenaline of being downrange to gunfire gave his chilly bones a much-needed rush of warmth.

Cutter paused long enough to aim. Putting the crosshairs of Ned Jasper’s scope on the gray spot that was Morgan Kilgore’s chest. The shot kicked up snow at Kilgore’s feet, sending him running again, this time for the safety of the cabin.

Cutter groaned, the cold coming back full force now as exhaustion chased away the effects of adrenaline. Kilgore had likely figured out it was just him out here. And now, with Kilgore running away, a shot was more problematic—if Cutter was even able to hit his target with his hands shaking so badly from the cold. He turned the scope power all the way down to 3X, the lowest setting, giving him less magnification but allowing a wider field of view and letting in more light.

Kilgore probably doubted anyone would shoot him in the back, but he didn’t know Arliss Cutter. Cutter sat down cross-legged in the snow so he could steady his shivering body. There was no way Kilgore was getting back to the cabin with that rifle. Cutter welded his cheek to the cold stock of the rifle, aligning the crosshairs in the scant light, before releasing half a breath. Another miss. Kilgore was less than thirty yards from the cabin now, floundering in the deep snow.

Cutter chambered another round, and looked through the scope again. Both his shots had been low. This time, he aimed at the back of Morgan Kilgore’s head.

Kilgore pitched forward at the shot, screaming and thrashing. Cutter chambered his last round and slogged forward, his rifle at low ready.

“Hands!” he yelled when he was twenty yards away. He could see the rifle barrel sticking up in the snow, but Kilgore could still easily have a pistol. “I said let me see your hands!” The rifle barrel jerked and twitched with his shivering muscles.

“You shot my leg off!” Kilgore yowled. “That’s police brutality. You’re not supposed to aim to wound.”

“Oh, I meant to kill you,” Cutter said, teeth chattering, his voice wobbly with cold. “But I’m cccold, so my aim is a lllittle offff.”

CHAPTER 46

Cutter used his belt as a makeshift tourniquet to tie off the rifle wound, then half dragged, half carried a subdued Morgan Kilgore back to the cabin. Shaking so bad he could hardly hold his head still, Cutter shucked off the frozen parka and got Birdie to help him replace the belt with a slightly better piece of cord. It was, in fact, the same cord that Kilgore and Halcomb had used to tie Sarah Mead’s hands.

They’d tried to bring the dogs in the cabin, but all of them had stood with their noses to the door, waiting to be let back out, where they promptly buried themselves under drifts of snow. The woodstove was cranked up so high that it was just too hot for them inside.

Cutter wanted to crawl inside the stove, but instead spent a few minutes searching his prisoner and the area around the bunk where they laid him out. He’d seen too many good soldiers and law enforcement officers killed or hurt by people who looked near death.

Birdie and Sarah had already untied David and laid him out on the bed, nursing his wounds—which were major and many. His face was a bloody mess, but the serious wounds were internal. It seemed Rick Halcomb had gone after each organ one at a time, even going so far as to tie the poor kid backward to the chair to hammer his kidneys with repeated blows, getting tired on one before starting in on the other. Halcomb had taken his time, methodically moving to