Stone Cold Read Free Page A

back until it held and stopped the boat. He swung his boots over the gunwale and stood in the cold water. It was knee-deep.
    He stayed hard against the wall of willows as he waded silentlydownstream. After no more than a dozen steps, lights from the compound strobed through the brush and he knew that the stand of willows would end to reveal a long grassy slope all the way up to the log home. He was already behind the river fence. If he walked out in the clear, he could be seen by the closed-circuit camera that swept back and forth along the bank. It was mounted on the side of a river cottonwood and accompanied by a motion detector. Because of the roaming wildlife that hugged the river, Nate guessed the motion detector sounded off periodically throughout the night and would likely not alarm the technician inside. But a screen shot of him on a monitor certainly would.
    In the shadows, Nate unbuckled his compression pack and reversed it so it covered his chest. He unzipped the top. For easy access, the items inside had been packed in the reverse order they were to be used.
    For seven full minutes, Nate stood hidden in the river with his eyes closed, going over his plan. Not that something wouldn’t go wrong—it always did. The trick was to try and anticipate the surprise problems as best he could and come up with options on the fly. His assignment was to kill Henry P. Scoggins III, but with a twist of his own. The twist was important to him.
    And if his plans blew up once they were under way, he had to keep the endgame in mind. Even if the result was a bloodbath he hoped to avoid.
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    W HEN HE OPENED HIS EYES, the night seemed lighter, brighter, and suddenly charged with anticipation. The river sounds behind him were louder and more full-throated. He could distinctly smellthe odors and perfumes of the world around him: the tinny smell of the moving river, the decayed mud that swirled in the current he’d stirred up along the bank, sage from the hills beyond the river, even cooking smells that lingered from the log house itself. He took a deep breath, held it, and slowly expelled it through his nostrils.
    It was then he realized he was not alone in the stand of brush.
    Less than three feet away was a heavy-bodied mule deer doe, her big eyes fixed on him and her large ears cupped in his direction. He instinctively reached across his body for his weapon, but paused as his hand gripped the butt of his revolver. Now that he saw her, he noticed he could smell her as well; musky, dank, sage on her breath. His movement had not spooked her out of the willows.
    In falconry parlance, the state of
yarak
is defined
as
:
“full of stamina, well muscled, alert, neither too fat nor too thin, perfect condition for hunting and killing prey. This state is rarely achieved but a wonder to behold when observed.”
    Nate was as close to
yarak
as a human could be.
    The mule deer could help him. She could be his partner. He noticed she was trembling, ready to spring away.
    He whispered, “Go.”
    She did, and with a crash of snapped willows the deer bounded from the brush into the clearing.
    Nate moved swiftly, emerging from the brush right behind her, keeping the trunk of the tree between him and the CC camera. The boxy snout of the camera was pointed downriver but rotating in his direction as he approached it. The deer veered away from the tree and continued bouncing—
boing-boing-boing
—along the fence. As Nate ran straight toward the camera, he reached into the top of his pack and unfurled a black cloth sack that he threw over both the cameraand mount before it could view him. It was like placing a hood over the head of a falcon, and he cinched the drawstring tight and stood back. The camera still rotated inside the sack, and it resembled the head of a man looking from side to side.
    There was another distant snapping of willows and cattails as the mule deer vanished into the