Edge

those preying upon you make noise moving in for the kill (humans tend to be the loudest approaching that climactic moment; other animals, the opposite). You’d think that snaps and rustling would seem to come from everywhere. But it doesn’t take long to learn to compensate forechoes, judge distances and know with more or less certainty where the source is located.
    After a few moments I detected some faint snaps ahead of me. Maybe they were from branches clicking together in the increasing breeze, maybe a deer, maybe they were the footfalls of a man intent on kidnapping a sixteen-year-old girl.
    Then, about a hundred yards away, near a body of water, I saw the outline of Carter’s house. I scanned carefully. No movement other than leaves stirred by taut wind.
    Moving closer.
    Pausing and scanning again.
    I was two hundred feet or so from the house when I spotted Loving.
    Yes, it was definitely the lifter. I caught a glimpse of his face. He was wearing the same clothes, or similar ones, as yesterday when we’d had our meeting at the flytrap. He wasn’t carrying his weapon; he was using his hands to move aside brush and branches as silently as he could. I’d hoped to catch him on the path; he’d be less cautious there than at the house, where he would anticipate danger; he would have done his homework and learned that Bill Carter was a retired cop and surely armed.
    Loving now drew his weapon and pulled back the slide slightly to make sure a round was chambered.
    I drew mine as well and started after him.
    I couldn’t help but think: What would Westerfield, or anybody, say if he were observing this? Wasn’t my job to get my principal, now hiding three hundred yards away, to safety as fast as I could?
    Then why was I stalking the lifter?
    There are herding dogs that move sheep around in a field and then there are herding dogs that both guard the flock and attack predators, however big and however numerous. . . .
    Sorry, Abe. I’m the second type. I can’t help it.
    I narrowed the distance, debating my next strategy. I’d called Freddy from the road and knew there were officers and agents en route, running silent. Already local officers would be setting up roadblocks. Freddy’s ETA was probably twenty minutes.
    This was a poor area to stage a one-on-one tactical assault and, though the ID was certain, I had no clear target presenting. Loving was in and out of shadows. A missed shot would be far too dangerous and not worth the risk.
    And where was his partner?
    I continued on. Once he was in the house, it would take him ten minutes to search all the rooms and realize that his edge had left and was not hiding in the obvious places.
    I was moving closer, still under good cover and largely silent.
    He approached the garage and looked in. He’d see Carter’s SUV inside. He eased into the bushes separating the building from the house itself. He crouched and moved along a low gray fence connecting the two structures. The foliage was high there and dense. It was hard to see his form but I could just make it out. Then I stopped, a twitching in my belly. If Loving continued another fifteen feet or so in the direction he was headed, he’d be in a clearing. And would present a perfectly backlit target.
    I lifted my weapon and aimed where he’d appear.I was about eighty feet away. Not a particularly long distance for a powerful handgun like this—a .40 caliber. Even with the short barrel, a cluster would likely kill him. I remembered the training. Three shots high, three low. Move aside from where your muzzle flash would’ve registered and prepare to fire again. Count rounds expended.
    He kept going. Ten feet to the break in the plants.
    Then eight, then six. . . .
    I suddenly felt my heart rate increasing, my palms cooling from sweat.
    Here was Henry Loving in front of me, nearly in my sights. . . .
    Two thoughts came into my mind: We have specific rules of engagement that require us to make a surrender demand unless we or someone else is in imminent danger. That rule applies to every hostile, even those who are armed and who are willing to use a sixteen-year-old girl’s screams to force her sobbing father to tell what he knows.
    Even those who’d tortured and killed a good man like Abe Fallow.
    But my second thought was: three high, three low, step aside, prepare to shoot again.
    I curled my left hand under my right, aimed steadily, evened my breathing.
    Four feet until the shadow that was Henry