The Shadowkiller

Read The Shadowkiller for Free Online

Book: Read The Shadowkiller for Free Online
Authors: Matthew Scott Hansen
door, knocking his three-year-old Brittney’s Barney the Dinosaur doll out onto the ground. He smiled as he tossed it back inside.
    Mitch pulled sandwiches wrapped in foil from a plastic cooler. “Chicken or tuna?”
    Jack wandered to the back of the Jeep, a lit cigarette already dangling from his mouth.
    Mitch couldn’t believe this guy, not yet awake and he’s hacking a butt.
    Jack took a drag. “You pick.”
    Mitch shoved two sandwiches into a backpack and tossed it to Jack, who stabbed at it with his cigarette-free hand but missed.
    Mitch eyed the cigarette reproachfully. “What the heck good does hiking do if you smoke two packs a day?”
    Jack proudly displayed his pack of Marlboros. “Low tar. And I don’t smoke two a day. One and a half, tops.”
    Jack fetched a cell phone from his gym bag and Mitch held up a hand. “No phones. We’re communing, remember? Anyway, it probably wouldn’t work up there.”
    Jack shrugged and tossed the phone back into the bag and closed his door.
    Mitch aimed his keyless transmitter at the vehicle and locked it with a little chirp, then slipped the transmitter into the pocket of his yellow Gore-Tex parka. In the distance a stone escarpment, capped in patchy snow, jutted five hundred feet above the tree line.
    â€œThat’s it,” he said, his finger arrowing at a slight irregularity in the trees that zigzagged across the mountain’s face. “Nine miles, there and back.”
    â€œGreat,” said Jack sarcastically. “I can’t wait.”

    Four hundred feet above the two hikers, the hawk spiraled lazily, and from this vantage point his extraordinary eyes could make out the texture of their clothes and hair. Although he had excluded them as prey, he continued to watch them for they did not belong here. The hawk continued to drift on the growing morning thermals in search of movement in the forest below. He was hungry. Catching an updraft, he soared a few hundred feet and used the added altitude to bank toward the flank of a densely forested slope. Sailing toward it he felt a presence, not a movement, not a smell, not a sound. But something.
    Deep inside his small brain a circuit was receiving a vibration on the frequency band just slightly above that of his material world. Like the feeling one gets just before something bad happens. The hawk could not know what it was. It just was.
    He normally would have sounded off with a screech, but his brain told him to fall silent, so he automatically flapped his wings to give himself some distance from the oncoming hill. There was something to be avoided in those trees. But it was not like the human animals.
    This belonged here.

6
    T y awakened, and as weak as the dawn light was, it knifed his retina. As soon as he could focus he saw he was in front of a 7-Eleven in the Benz. He vaguely remembered pulling in—when, he couldn’t recall. But he did know he felt like warmed-over dog crap and the half-empty bottle of Glenmorangie on the floormat testified why. He lifted the door, painfully slid out, and shuffled into the store.
    Todd Shelton noticed the blondish guy in the rad car had come alive and was entering his store. He was taller than Todd expected.
    â€œHi. Cool car. You okay?”
    â€œYeah,” Ty muttered. “Got some coffee?”
    â€œRight there. Just made it. Uh, what kinda car is that? Is that like an old ’Vette or somethin’?”
    â€œNo,” Ty said, patting his jacket. Just as he felt a wave of nausea, he realized he’d left home without his wallet. “Shit…”
    â€œIs that one of those DeLoreans?”
    As sick and hungover as Ty was, that this bonehead had just mistaken a Rembrandt for a Thomas Kinkade touched a nerve. “No!” he snapped, exacerbating his headache. Then he softened his tone, anticipating he might need a favor from this unenlightened, pimply youth. “It’s a nineteen

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