Hide and Seek - Lara Adrian Page 0,1

one person coming for him, or whoever approached had now veered into the thicket to make a more circuitous route forward.

“Shit.”

He’d been anticipating the moment his hiding place would finally be discovered, but did it have to be on the darkest, soggiest damn night of the year?

Duarte strode over to his workstation and woke up his laptop. The remote feeds from his half-dozen surveillance cameras mounted in the woods filled the screen. He clicked to infrared mode and glanced between the array of night-vision green images of the woods and rocky terrain that lay beyond the cabin.

His bogey wasn’t hard to find.

Only one, but the son of a bitch was closing in fast.

The hooded, huddled shape moved hastily in the southwest quadrant of his surveillance field. Maybe he had the bad weather to thank for the way his intruder humped so carelessly through the thicket. Either that or Phoenix’s enemies had sent up one of the least professional assassins in their stable to try to take him out.

Duarte knew better than to discount the incoming threat based on initial appearances. Overseas, he’d seen more than one battalion nearly blown to smithereens by decrepit old men dropping IEDs in the middle of a village, or smiling goatherds shuffling along the road wearing forty pounds of explosives wired to them under their tunics.

Hell, in his thirty-two years of living, he’d seen enough bar brawls and domestic disputes to understand that anyone with an inclination or motivation toward violence was to be taken seriously. And dealt with appropriately.

Permanently, when the situation called for it.

As for the creeper who’d infiltrated Duarte’s domain tonight, the bastard was about to get an unfriendly welcome courtesy of Mr. Smith & Mr. Wesson.

Duarte opened the desk drawer and pulled out one of several firearms he kept at the ready around the cabin. Tucking the pistol into the back of his jeans, he got up and killed the flame under his pot of stew.

Taking one more long swig of weak beer for the road, he quietly exited the cabin’s back door and headed out into the rain to greet his unwanted visitor.

2

How much farther could it be?

Lisa Becker reached into her jacket’s hood to smear a wet hank of hair away from her eyes as she peered through the gloom to the path ahead of her. At least, she thought she was still on the path. Hard to tell. It was possible she’d strayed off it a few feet back.

Shit. Or several yards back.

The last thing she needed was to get herself totally lost in a thousand acres of dark woods on the side of a steep mountainside. What the hell had she been thinking, coming up here at this hour, in a torrential downpour besides?

Find him.

That’s what she’d been thinking. For the past six hours, she’d been running on confusion and fear and desperation. She needed answers. She needed safety. Someone she could trust.

She needed help like never before in her life.

And she prayed she’d find it here.

Picking up her pace again, she pushed through the tangle of wet ground cover and spindly saplings. Her foot squished into the soggy pine needles and spongy earth, mud sucking at the soles of her shoes.

Rain poured off the forest canopy overhead, soaking her from head to toe. Brush smacked her in the face as she hustled along. With each hurried step she took, the small backpack she wore under her jacket bounced between her shoulder blades. Aside from her purse, the pack held only a change of clothes and basic toiletries, but in the rain, fatigue clawing at her, the damn thing felt like it had gained ten pounds since she’d left her car about an hour ago.

Lisa wrapped her arms around herself and tried to gauge her progress. She had only been up here once before, and even though her visit had been memorable, it had been years ago. It had also been daylight, which she sure as hell would prefer right now.

Maybe she should turn around and make sure she hadn’t veered off-course. Better yet, maybe she should go back to her Camry, which was stuck in a trench of sticky mud down on the pass, and wait until morning to make the rest of this trek.

Panic edged in, but she pushed it away.

Keep moving forward. The cabin is up here somewhere.

He’s up here somewhere.

Please let him be here.

The uneven, rocky terrain was difficult enough to navigate in the moonless dark, but the relentless deluge made every step