Net Force--Kill Chain by Jerome Preisler (e book reader txt) 📕

of the downpour surprised her. It was already sheeting down so hard she could barely see Bryan in front of her.

“I did this,” he said through a mouthful of granola bar.

“Did what?”

“The rain. Everything. It’s my fault.”

“Bryan, stop.”

He halted dead in his tracks, so abruptly she bumped into him, stumbled backward, and fell on her bottom. The health bar flying out of his hand, Bryan turned, saw her on the ground, and reached out to help her up. “Tash!”

She looked up at him. “Why’d you do that?”

He looked flustered and confused. “You said to stop.”

Natasha sat there in the pouring rain a moment. Then she took hold of his hand, rose, and brushed herself off. The seat of her pants was wet from the soggy ground.

“Bry, listen,” she said. “You’ll never be a weatherman. But please lose the guilt. It’s pointless. I told you, we’re in this together.”

He looked at her. Her face was stern but gentle. “I didn’t mean to—”

“No, listen.” She raised a hand. “Don’t put yourself in a headlock. There’s no time. Not with Gigantor One and Two after us. OK?”

Bryan stood there looking at her. After a second or two, he nodded, his hair dripping.

“OK,” he said.

Natasha nodded back at him, then checked her smartwatch, wiping rain off its display with two fingers. Like their phones, it had gone off-line. But it was still performing basic onboard functions, keeping time among them.

“How much farther off is the shell beach?” she asked.

“About four or five miles the way the creek runs,” he said. “It’ll be a while before we get there.”

She considered that. They were already soaked, and it was getting dark out, the wind picking up, the rain gushing through the leaves and branches.

“You said you had a hiding place...”

He nodded. “A shelter,” he said. “A solid one. It’s pretty close.”

She looked at him.

“We should head over there,” she said. “Get out of the rain awhile. Eat something besides granola bars. If you really think it’s safe.”

“I do.” He nodded over his shoulder. “I have a flashlight in my pack. The left pouch.”

“I’ll get it out.”

It was a large, heavy-duty Maglite. She handed it to him and he thumbed it on. The rain fell in ripples through its conical beam.

“C’mon,” she said.

Squatted at the edge of the trench, Kai dropped from the balls of his feet onto all fours, looked down into it, and muttered under his breath. His instincts—at least his delayed instincts—were spot-on.

Mori and her friend had been here only a short while back. The signs were still fresh, clean and clear.

He pulled out his flashlight, shined it inside the pit. There were timber cross braces along its walls from the rim to the bottom. Whoever dug it had wanted them stable. From the looks of the scattered junk at the bottom, he guessed this was some kind of trash dump...a very old one. What was the old saying? Yesterday’s trash, tomorrow’s treasure. Probably it had been used by several families or maybe an entire community. They would throw their rubbish into the pit until it reached the top, then cover it over with a mound of soil. The oldest form of landfill, going back ten thousand years. But for some reason, this pit had been left uncovered. It made Kai wonder if the island had been abandoned in a hurry.

He played his beam over the side of the pit that faced north, toward the loop trail where he and Tai had stood not forty minutes ago. The upper timber was rotted and flaked and infested with mites and fuzzed with white mold. Being near the surface, it would have the most exposure to the elements. Therefore it would be the one to grow weakest fastest. Maybe even fall apart over time.

But Kai could tell the holes in it were newly gouged from the dark color of the wood inside them. He could tell from their size and depth and spacing that they were made by human fingers. Casting the beam deeper into the pit, about six feet directly below the finger gouges, he could see impressions in the dirt wall where someone had dug in the toes of his shoes or boots. They were large imprints, made by the boyfriend.

Snow Pixie had left no traces.

He studied the interior of the trench a bit longer, then pictured the two of them clinging to the horizontal wood ties, their heads projecting above the rim. The screen of brush between the pit and the trail had enough gaps low to the ground that they could have been surreptitiously watching him and his brother. And without being seen themselves.

He got back on his haunches, thinking. Probably the boyfriend had slipped down the side of the pit when the wood gave way under his fingers, then scrabbled to regain his grip. That would account for the noise he and Tai had heard. The fucking squirrel had cartwheeled through the branches at just the right moment to cover up for it. To make him reach his erroneous conclusion about its source.

Kai stood up. Looked around in the dimness. The marks would have watched until he and his brother went their separate ways and then left here themselves. But in which direction would they go?

He scratched his chin. Surely they had seen Tai start off toward the lobster boat. They would not have gone there.

Which meant they were heading back to their kayak. But if Snow Pixie was calling the dance and even half her training was unblocked, she would try to throw off her trackers. To take a different route than the one they knew.

Kai took about a second to review his thoughts. Took another two seconds to sharpen them. Then he used his onboard to pin his location on Tai’s geo-referenced map of the island, searching the nearby terrain for prominent features.

One stood out immediately. A creek. It was large and close, perhaps a half mile north of where he stood. It thickened and thinned and bent