Hunters, Matt Rogers [pdf ebook reader .txt] 📗

some of its power tearing through Jada’s head.

When it hit the top of Slater’s vest, it didn’t debilitate him, which it damn well would have if it had hit him at full force. Just because a bulletproof vest can stop a bullet doesn’t mean it nullifies the force of the impact. It can crack your chest, your ribs, rupture your stomach, give you internal bleeding.

None of that happened.

Slater returned fire twice, only milliseconds after Zircon fired. But the thud deep in his chest threw his aim off. Only by millimetres, but that’s enough. One of his rounds sliced through the soft skin on the side of Zircon’s neck and the other missed his scalp by a hair.

Then he was gone, plunging back into the shadows from whence he’d emerged.

Slater dropped Jada’s corpse unceremoniously and bolted towards the threat. He slowed as he reached the doorway and stepped inside with every sense firing, every detail clear as day to his overworked brain.

It was a small empty room. No furniture, nothing.

A door in the opposite wall lay half-open, still swinging from Zircon’s bulk thundering into it.

He wasn’t here.

He was somewhere in the house, but not here.

Slater back-pedalled into the hallway and found King aiming his weapon with his good arm. Violetta had her gun in hand, but Alexis was motionless, the injury to her mid-section making her hesitate, freeze up in the heat of the moment.

Slater said to King, ‘Get them out.’

There was no hesitation.

There couldn’t afford to be.

King recognised his own limitations, realised it was the right call, and burst off the mark. He looped an arm around Alexis and thrust her toward the front door. Violetta followed hot on their heels. The house was now a death trap. They didn’t know the floor plan, didn’t know the nooks and crannies. Slater’s adrenaline had suppressed any post-concussion symptoms that might be lingering, so he was close to a hundred percent, at his full combative capacity. King certainly wasn’t, and that might prove to be a hindrance, so he’d prioritised the safety of others. For him, a selfless decision, considering he was more comfortable sacrificing his own life.

Slater dropped to a crouch and aimed his SIG down the hallway, expecting Zircon to reappear at any moment.

He didn’t.

The house went horrendously quiet.

Cat and mouse.

Slater stalked into the hallway.

The shadows enveloped him.

39

If Slater had learned anything from his career, it was that nothing compared to the experience of hunting an armed man in total silence.

If he stopped to truly think about it, it’d cripple him with nerves. One wrong step, one missed blind spot, and a bullet would rip his brain to shreds. So he didn’t stop to think about it. He fell back on his training, letting automatic instinct take over, because common sense would only demand that he flee.

He probably should.

But fuck that, he thought.

He cleared the hallway, breezing past each doorway, making no more than a whisper of noise. He reached the end and came to a door, firmly closed. He paused and listened. Nothing.

Then something.

The slightest motion in his peripheral vision lit up every alarm in his head. He pivoted, aimed, and fired. Took a chunk out of the plaster wall. The sound was like a bomb in the empty house. His eardrums rang, his vision pulsed, and when the echo faded away there was nothing there.

Had he imagined it?

A big shape loomed out of another doorway, further down the hall, and the flash of a muzzle flare nearly blinded him. The sound blasted his eardrums at the same time as the bullet struck him in the mid-section. This time, there was no human skull to slow its stopping power. It slammed into his vest and knocked him back against the closed door at the end of the hall.

That’s where uncanny reflexes saved his life.

As soon as he registered the silhouette in a different doorway he knew he would be hit. If it struck a vital organ, he was dead, and there was nothing he could do about that. But if it didn’t, then he could return fire, no matter how badly it hurt. So he was ready. Ready when it hit him like a gut punch, knocking all the air out of him, and he returned fire as he was falling backward, already having factored in the shift in aim.

Zircon wasn’t wearing a vest.

Hubris.

Slater’s bullet hit the man in the chest. Slater knew that much, even in the lowlight. There was the characteristic jolt to the torso, the spinning away, the small spray of blood.

But Zircon was gone again.

Rescuing himself from the inevitable follow-up shot.

Slater fired it anyway, because he couldn’t slow his automatic mechanisms. It was an instinctual pop-pop. But his second bullet only shredded wood off the door frame.

Silence settled over the house again.

Slater had to be objective. Had to override the pain, tell himself the facts. You took the equivalent of a gut punch. You shot him in the chest. Be logical.

Even though he couldn’t breathe, he went in for the kill.

Zircon was weak now, recoiling, on the defensive. If Slater allowed him time to regroup, the operative might muster a second wind.

Slater crept right up to the doorway.

Pressed his back to the wall.

He could see a sliver of the room. Not enough. There was a chest of drawers and a wardrobe and—

Zircon bull rushed him.

Which meant he was fatally wounded, and this was a last stand, but Slater knew instantly it was an effective one. The two-hundred-and-fifty pound man practically skidded through the doorway and clashed hard with Slater. He’d been right there on the other side of the same wall, biding his time, and now he barrelled through the doorway and crushed Slater chest-to-chest, trapping the SIG somewhere between them. Slater sensed his barrel wasn’t aimed all the way back at himself, so he pumped the trigger. The blast roared between their bodies, and the bullet smashed into Zircon’s ribcage, tearing muscle and shredding bone.

But the big man didn’t go down.

He used the