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

most satisfying part of the hunt for him. Like he wasn’t ashamed of having a hard-on for Snow Pixie. He’d felt it the minute he’d seen her onstage through his brother’s eyes. She tantalized him. Excited him. Aroused him.

Kai wanted her close-up. From that minute, he’d wanted her.

He drew a breath. Let them get closer. Choosing his moment. Patience. Every good boy deserves favor. He waited in the darkness as they came straight in line with him. Waited a few more seconds until they were moving off to his right on the path.

Then he made his move.

Despite his condition, Bryan had made it up the ridge with very little difficulty. The slope was gradual and low, and Natasha noticed a newly minted resolve in him. But he’d lost a lot of blood, and she could tell he was hurting.

They took their original path through the rainy woods. As soon as they got on it, she’d handed him the flash, dropped back a step, and adjusted to his pace, helping to steady him by putting one hand on his shoulder, and the other on his left forearm. She had assisted Anna the same way when the arthritis in her hips and legs became severe. That was one memory from the Uzhur she hadn’t lost.

Natasha had been acutely on the alert for their pursuer from the moment they started up the path. It occurred to her that she would be watching it if all roles were reversed tonight. But it was the straightest route to their objective, and the high old trees to either side were a buffer against the sweeping wind, and the hard-packed ground wasn’t too muddy, which made it easier walking for Bryan. Still, she felt exposed and vulnerable. Her guard was up.

If it hadn’t been, Kai likely would have pounced without warning. He could be light on his feet when he chose. If he’d sprung from behind, she might not have detected him.

But instead he was coming from the right, and the falling rain outlined his massive form in her peripheral vision.

All in an instant, she turned and saw him racing toward them, and then Bryan felt her body tensing and turning, and he turned and also saw him and reacted, stepping in front of Natasha, putting himself between her and their attacker.

Kai closed in with a few large strides and struck. His right fist around his knife, the knife sweeping up toward Bryan’s chest cavity in an underhand arc. As it rose, the blade caught a glint of light from the Mag, reflecting it into Natasha’s eyes. It looked like a steel fang.

She had less than a second.

Her hand still on his shoulder, she shoved Bryan hard to the right. He didn’t expect it. Neither did Kai. As Bryan stumbled sideways in the rain, Kai pivoted toward him, lining up with him, leading with the blade. He wanted him out of the picture.

“No!” Natasha shouted. “No more!”

Startling Kai. Drawing his attention.

She bent her knees and took a wide, low stance. Her hands in front of her. Wanting to keep his focus on her.

It worked. Kai knew he couldn’t ignore her. She was too much of a threat.

He moved in on her. All his height and weight. All his long-armed reach. All his muscle. All of him committed to the attack.

Her automatic impulse was to move backward. Which was what he wanted. So he could put pressure on her, use all that size and bulk and momentum to get her on the ground. Where he would have control.

She bent her knees. A half crouch. Lowering her center of mass. Giving her better balance. She was no longer thinking. Not with her cerebral cortex. Not consciously. She was thinking with her nerves. She was thinking with her body. Acting on trained responses she hadn’t known she knew.

Stay on your feet. Block the knife.

He lunged. Ramming toward her with his left forearm up and out in front of him, bent at the elbow, locked at a right angle so he could push it under her chin like a metal crossbar. He expected her to reflexively fade back. He expected his drive to add to that backshift and make her lose her equilibrium and throw her off her feet. He expected to get that forearm across her throat and choke off her windpipe, then force her down and pin her underneath him with all of that superior body mass.

But she didn’t do what he expected. As the forearm came toward her throat, she moved in and under it instead of back and away, hop-stepping to his left side.

Kai was too big and strong for her. A second after she got hold of him, literally the time it took to get over his surprise, he expanded his bulked-up shoulders and spread his arms with a wide, sweeping motion, literally shaking her off.

That gave him what he’d wanted in the first place. Natasha stagger-stepped on her heels and fell backward onto the cold, wet ground, rain in her face, his huge figure hovering over her, looming over her, the knife in his hand and that taste like burning tires in her mouth.

Kai looked down at her for a long moment. Snow Pixie, there at his feet. His brain was on fire. His heart pumped. He felt an unbearable heat and tightness in the fork of his crotch.

He dropped his left hand to his sidearm holster. He was thinking he would make his cuts with the blade so she stayed down and incapacitated, put a bullet into the middle of the boyfriend’s head, and finish with her at his leisure.

Was thinking it.

Then Bryan charged.

The Big Dipper trembled on the water, waves pounding its stern, sweeping it forward on a seventy-knot wind. Tai had turned on the masthead light, and its bright white beam was glaring straight out over the bow into the rainy darkness.

He motored toward the shore, speeding ahead to outrace the highest surge. A wave heaped up under his keel